Representation of the People (Scotland) Regulations 1983 (Hansard, 30 March 1983)

§ Lord Lyell
My Lords, I beg to move that the Representation of the People (Scotland) Regulations 1983 be approved. These regulations have three main purposes. First, they consolidate the existing Representation of the People (Scotland) Regulations, which govern the registration of electors and absent voting at parliamentary and local government elections in Scotland. Secondly, they supplement the new provisions for the electoral registration of voluntary patients in mental hospitals introduced by the Mental Health (Amendment) Act 1982. Thirdly, they introduce a number of changes which, for the most part, have been broadly agreed by the political parties, by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and by other interested bodies. The opportunity has been taken to set out the regulations in a more logical and convenient order. The number of prescribed forms has been reduced and some minor drafting amendments have been made to express the intentions of the regulations more clearly. These consolidating regulations follow the consolidation of existing electoral law in the Representation of the People Act 1983, which came into force on 15th March. Your Lordships approved similar regulations for England, Wales and Northern Ireland on 17th March.
1592 The major change of substance in the regulations is the new provision made for the electoral registration of voluntary patients in mental hospitals. This follows the provisions introduced in the Mental Health (Amendment) Act 1982, which comes into force on 1st April, and are consolidated in section 7 of the Representation of the People Act 1983. Regulation 9 requires a patient's declaration to be attested by a member of the hospital staff authorised for the purpose by the managers of the hospital, and enables the hospital to send the declaration to the electoral registration officer on the patient's behalf. Regulation 13 sets out how the electoral registration officer should enter a patient's name in the register. There will be no special marking on the register which would enable those on it to be identified as mental hospital patients. Voluntary patients will be able to make a declaration for inclusion in the register on or before 10th October this year, and to vote at any election held after 16th February 1984, when the 1984 register comes into effect.
Of the other changes introduced by these regulations, the main one is the change in the timetable for absent voting. Under existing regulations, applications for an absent vote have to be received by the twelfth day before the day of a parliamentary election and the fourteenth day before a local election. This time of grace does not count Sundays, Bank holidays and other breaks.
The Representation of the People Act 1981 extended the timetable for parliamentary elections by providing that Saturdays should be disregarded in the computation of the parliamentary elections timetable. Under these regulations, Saturdays will also be disregarded for the purpose of the absent voting timetable at parliamentary and local government elections. The regulations fix the deadline for absent voting applications at both elections as noon on the eleventh day before the poll. This means that the deadline at a parliamentary election will be moved from midnight on the Thursday two weeks before polling day to noon on the Wednesday. Because of the changes in the parliamentary elections timetable introduced in 1981, an elector will in fact have one day longer to submit his application than he did at the last General Election in 1979.
The other changes of substance are increases in certain fees and fines prescribed by the regulations, including the fee for spare copies of the electoral register and of copies of a return or declaration of a candidate's election expenses. These fees were last increased in 1979. Regulation 75 increases the fine for giving false information to a registration officer from £50 to £100. It was last increased in 1969. These are consolidating regulations, and the few changes they incorporate will, I hope, be useful to all concerned with contesting, running or voting at elections. For that reason, I commend them to your Lordships.

§ Lord McCluskey
My Lords, again the House will thank the noble Lord for describing what these regulations do. I think the House will appreciate that they do for Scotland what the other regulations do for 1593 other parts of the United Kingdom. There is one matter to which I wish to draw attention. As the noble Lord said, a principal purpose is to make things slightly easier for voluntary patients in mental hospitals. The 15th Report from the Joint Committee draws attention to the fact that the Government seem to have acted in great haste here and laid this instrument before Parliament before this enabling Act was published. The Home Office, in reply to that criticism, in effect state that it wanted the order to come into force on 1st April. This, as your Lordships know, is April Fool's Day, and one has to ask why the Government are so keen that this order should come into force on that day. I cannot imagine that their taste is so bad as to have thought that that was an appropriate day on which to enlarge the electoral rights of voluntary patients in mental hospitals. I can only suppose that the real purpose of this unseemly haste is that the Government are trying to clear the decks for an early General Election—perhaps a snap election at the beginning of May. Before the order is formally accepted, perhaps the Ministers will explain the Government's intention and give us the benefit of advance notice of the date.

§ Lord Lyell
My Lords, we are grateful to the noble and learned Lord for, as always, his detailed study. I assure the noble and learned Lord that there was no malice or indeed mischief in suggesting that these regulations should come into force on the day that is traditionally known for pranks, albeit possibly in the Scottish legal profession as in any other walk of life. I stress to the noble and learned Lord that Regulation 9, which is made under a provision originally enacted in the Mental Health (Amendment) Act 1982, prescribes the manner in which voluntary mental patients in hospitals may make declarations to be registered as electors. This Act, the Mental Health (Amendment) Act 1982, is due to come into operation on 1st April. It is essential that the regulations we are now discussing should come into effect on the same day.
To digress for a moment on to a general point, may I say that these regulations consolidate what I call a ragbag of existing regulations which are becoming increasingly difficult to follow for those who need to use them. It was generally agreed that the sooner the new regulations were introduced the better, albeit on 1st April.