Local Elections (Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Order 1987

HL Deb 03 February 1987 vol 484 cc166-70

4.52 p.m.

Lord Lyell rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 13th January be approved. [7th Report from the Joint Committee.]

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move that the draft Local Elections (Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Order 1987, which was laid before the House on 13th January, be approved.

The main purpose of this draft order that we have before us is to make fresh provision for absent voting at Northern Ireland local government elections. As your Lordships who study Northern Ireland matters will know, absent voters are those voters entitled to vote by post or by proxy. Some of the existing provisions that govern absent voting at local government elections in Northern Ireland will lapse on 16th February 1987 as a result of repeals contained in the Representation of the People Act 1985. That Act set out new absent voting rules for Parliamentary elections which this draft order applies to future Northern Ireland local elections. The draft order also extends the list of specified documents which electors may present for identity purposes when they receive a ballot paper; and also makes other minor amendments to the electoral law in Northern Ireland.

I hope your Lordships will bear with me if I do not propose to dwell at length on the numerous technical provisions contained in the draft order. I shall attempt to explain anything or to answer any questions that your Lordships may have. The general effect of the order is to repeat amendments made to Parliamentary electoral law by the Representation of the People Act 1985 and subsequent regulations. I should like to take your Lordships' time to explain one or two of the main provisions of substance in the order.

Article 2 of the draft order deals with commencement, and provides for the bulk of the order to come into force six days after it has been made, which we hope will be later this month.

Article 4 introduces Schedule 1 to the order. It amends the provisions of the Electoral Law Act (Northern Ireland) 1962. These changes correspond with the changes made to the Representation of the People Act 1983 by the relevant provisions of the Representation of the People Act 1985. In addition, paragraph 41 of Schedule 1 on page 9 amends the list of specified documents, one of which must be produced before an elector can be issued with a ballot paper. The addition to the list is of two new documents, a British seaman's card and a Northern Ireland provisional driver's licence. The measures in paragraph 41 follow identical changes made in respect of Parliamentary elections by the Representation of the People (Northern Ireland) Regulations 1986.

Article 5 of the draft order, together with Schedule 2, bring the provisions for absent voting into line with those for Parliamentary elections. Local electors—as with Parliamentary electors before the passage of the 1985 Act—have until now been required to fulfil specific criteria in order to obtain an absent vote at a particular election. One example is physical infirmity, and another is the general nature of their employment. The draft order also amends the criteria for an elector to be granted an indefinite absent vote, and will enable the chief electoral officer to establish a joint standing list to cover absent voting at local, Parliamentary and even European elections. In practical terms this means that disabled voters, in my first example, will be able in future to obtain absent votes for the three categories of election I have mentioned by means of a single application instead of making a separate application for each local, Parliamentary and European election. One application will, we hope, provide an absent vote for, to take one example, the disabled.

Article 6 of the order makes transitional provision for absent voters. Schedule 3 to the order makes consequential amendments to the Local Elections (Northern Ireland) Order 1985, which concerns the issue and receipt of postal ballot papers and declarations of secrecy.

I hope I have said enough to do justice to what we see as a useful and necessary measure without taking up too much of your Lordships' time. The substantive provisions of the order will, I understand, be widely welcomed by those involved in Northern Ireland electoral affairs, and in particular by electors seeking to exercise their absent voting rights at future local elections in the Province.

My Lords, that said, I beg to move.

Moved, the draft order laid before the House on 13th January be approved. [7th Report from the Joint Committee.]—(Lord Lyell.)

Lord Prys-Davies

My Lords, I do not propose to take up the time of the House on the first of the two Northern Ireland orders. I am not aware of any controversy surrounding this order, which amends the electoral law relating to local elections in Northern Ireland in the way which the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, has described so clearly. The amendments comprised in the order are straightforward and sensible. We are therefore pleased to support the order.

However, I have one question for the Minister. Can he tell the House whether there were any consultations with the political parties in Northern Ireland about the provisions of the order? If there were such consultations, were all the political parties who put up candidates at the last local government elections in Northern Ireland so consulted?

Lord Hampton

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for introducing this order. We are told that it amends the Electoral Law Act (Northern Ireland) 1962 and the Local Elections (Northern Ireland) Order 1985 to make changes to the law in respect of local elections in Northern Ireland equivalent to those changes in respect of parliamentary elections made by the Representation of the People (Northern Ireland) Act 1985.

It seems sensible that so far as possible the law for Northern Ireland should be the same as that for the rest of the Kingdom. We would not dispute that. However, we are now in 1987 and it seems to be some time since the relevant Act was passed in 1985. There are some antiquated passages in the 1962 Act which clearly need tidying up. I ask the Minister just two questions. The Representation of the People Act went on to the statute book in 1985. Why was the situation in Northern Ireland not dealt with then and why has there been such apparent lethargy so that we are dealing with the matter only in 1987?

Of course there are still some differences in the law for the Province. Schedule 1, paragraph 41, is concerned with adding a British seaman's card to the list of documents that may be used for identification before voting. Unfortunately, identification seems to be particularly necessary in the Province to prevent personation, and we can have no complaint at the extension that is allowed. With that, I say that we support this order.

Lord Lyell

My Lords, I am very grateful, as always, for the attention which has been paid by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and also for the courtesy of the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, in speaking about this order. He indicated what he might have in mind in connection with this order. The noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, certainly has a valid point and I stress that this order applies to local government elections provisions.

I think we have been round the course fairly consistently on this matter, both here and in another place. Also, the Northern Ireland political parties have been involved. The parties were not specifically consulted on the contents of the order but I understand that the leaders of the parties, who are represented in another place, were involved. The list contains the Ulster Unionist Party and the Democratic Unionist Party, and then we have this marvellous acronym UPUP. I understand this is the Ulster Popular Unionist Party. Then there is the Social Democratic and Labour Party, and also the Alliance Party, which are represented in your Lordships' House by the noble Lord, Lord Dunleath. We notified them in general terms of our intention to lay the draft order and we also notified its contents before the start of this parliamentary Session.

The provisions of the order already apply to parliamentary and European elections and I want to assure your Lordships, and in particular the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, that the only major element in the draft order which is unique to Northern Ireland is the amendment to the list of specified documents. The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, referred particularly to paragraph 41. That was the subject of earlier consultations with the constitutional parties in Northern Ireland. I am sure your Lordships will be aware that my ministerial colleagues in Northern Ireland and I have made it clear that we will not treat Sinn Fein as if it were a normal political party, so long as it continues its support for terrorism. I wish to express my happiness at the fact that the right honourable gentleman the Leader of the Opposition in another place reiterated his own view on that only last week.

The noble Lord asked about consultation with all the parties which presented candidates in the 1985 local elections. We understand that 29 parties took part in the last local elections. Ten of those parties contained the word "Unionist" in their titles and six of the other parties included the word "Labour" in their titles. I understand there were one or two parties with exotic titles, including one called "The All Night Party". I think your Lordships will see that political life is alive and well in the Province. We believe that this is in the nature of a tidying-up provision.

The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, asked about the commencement of this order and he also asked me to refer to the Representation of the People Act 1985. That Act was enacted in 1985 but does not come fully into force until later this month. I was not previously aware of that, and perhaps I should have been. I hope that information will be helpful to the noble Lord.

With regard to paragraph 41, the noble Lord rightly pointed out that this specifically includes the British seamen's card. I was unaware of the other element mentioned in paragraph 41 but I am given to understand that the provisional driving licence is referred to in, I think, Article 12, and there is a reference also in paragraph 41. I understand that this particular reference covers the provisional driving licence in Northern Ireland, which will be accepted as a form of identification.

With that brief dissertation into the fascination of the nomenclature of the parties in the Northern Ireland elections, I think your Lordships would agree with me that we should move on.

On Question, Motion agreed to.