§ 4 pm
§ Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.
4.15 pm§ On resuming—
§ Mr. SheermanI am grateful to have managed to obtain a debate on the conduct of elections and the role of opinion polling and opinion pollsters. At one point, I thought I was doomed to lack success in this pursuit—that a Jonah was accompanying my efforts. The last time I put in for a debate on the subject, I secured a one-and-a-half-hour slot, but had to withdraw because it was set for the same day as the Liaison Committee was to interview the Prime Minister for two and a half hours. Today I got a half-hour debate and I only managed to get here through almost divine intervention, after coming from the debate on the Floor of the House.
This is an important matter and I want to get to the heart of it straight away. Although I trained as a social scientist and not as an expert in opinion polling, I know a few people in the opinion-polling world. It came to my notice that a range of people within the industry were becoming worried about the state of its self-regulation and what that meant for the proper conduct of opinion polling. Opinion polling is absolutely central to our electoral processes, because if polling is not reliable, objective and conducted to a high standard, it could be manipulative of how people vote and how they are influenced to vote. That polls can be seen to be trustworthy and that people can have confidence in them are at the heart of our democratic society.
For a long time, there was a code of conduct and self-regulation that worked—4.17 pm
§ Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.
4.27 pm§ On resuming—
§ Mr. SheermanAs I was saying, this is a strange sort of debate. During the Division, the Minister reminded me that I took a long time to find out which Department was responsible for the subject. After getting questions answered by the Department of Trade and Industry, I eventually tracked down the Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs. I am glad that he is here to respond to the debate.
We had a system in which the traditional code of conduct was regulated by the polling industry itself. To be honest, the issue at the heart of the debate is, in part, the proliferation of polling organisations and the move away from what we all regard as traditional polling, which we associate with names such as Gallup and MORI. Such polling was carried out by people with clipboards who knocked on people's doors or confronted them in the shopping precinct, and they tended use face-to-face interviews. Telephone polling then became part of the process and, more recently, 432WH there has been internet polling, whereby a rather different way of finding out people's opinions on subjects has been introduced.
As soon as I started talking about the nature of regulation in the polling industry, some people thought that I was having a go at one sector—that I was targeting internet polling and nothing else. That is not the case, and I want to put on record that I have had a great deal of help, not only from what I call the traditional polling sector, but from those in the new sector. YouGov and others have written to me and have been very helpful. I have noticed that most of the major players want a code of conduct and a degree of self-regulation that works. All those to whom I have talked deplore the fact that regulation has become less effective and want something done about it. I hope that, outside this House, this debate will be construed as being constructive. A politician is, for a change, saying honestly, "I don't know all the answers."
As a working politician, I believe that this is an important area for us to tackle. I have long believed that it is much better for an industry to regulate itself than to be centrally regulated by the Government. If an industry can regulate itself effectively, that is preferable to setting up yet another quango that is probably not all that useful and that spends a great deal of taxpayers' money to do a job that self-regulation, at its best, does more effectively.
There has undoubtedly been a deterioration in self-regulation. I am fortunate in having been sent a prepublication copy of an article by Bob Worcester. I must declare an interest: I have known Bob for a long time and we are both governors of the London School of Economics. He has been helpful in informing my discussions and we have written an article on this subject for The House Magazine. Bob Worcester points out that the five main polling groups had a system of self-regulation through the Association of Professional Opinion Polling Organisations. However, both Harris and Gallup left the industry in the United Kingdom and ICM's withdrawal from membership effectively scuppered the association's efforts to represent the professional bodies in the field. The only other body able to self-regulate the industry was the Market Research Society, which found it difficult to cope because it had individual membership rather than corporate membership. Many of its members thought that its method of regulation was cumbersome and involved a serious amount of time and money. Some people described its processes as tedious and clumsy, particularly the way in which the MRS professional standards committee carried out its reviews. I have talked to people with a range of opinions in the industry and it seems that there is discontent with the present self-regulation even among some of the main players, as well as the many new players coming on to the block.
I have been sent a number of advertisements from polling organisations saying that they are cheap and quick, and implying that they will obtain the results wanted. My concern is that some of the polling organisations that have come into the market in recent years are related to, if they are not subsidiaries of, public relations companies. They may be a respectable part of those companies, but it concerns me and other people, both in the sector and in Parliament, that if there is a close relationship, those companies might be giving 433WH advice to major corporations on their public relations side and, at the same time, saying, "We happen to have a polling organisation." I am sure that there is no problem in the most respected groups, but there could be a tendency in the more disreputable areas of the sector for some firms to suggest that they have a convenient polling organisation that will ask the questions that the customer might like, and shred the answers that it does not like.
I have talked to pollsters who have said that they have always stuck to the rules and that opinion polls should be conducted according to good practice. There should be absolute clarity about how many people have been polled. Whether it be a traditional or an internet poll, there should be answers to questions such as: what is the sample group? Is it adequate in number? Is it professionally compiled? Is it weighted in the right way? One question asked of internet groups is, "If only 50 to 60 per cent. of people are on the internet, how does one compensate for the people who are not?" Some polling organisations have a sort of black box that they do not explain very well, and their practices are not very transparent. We need clarity and transparency of methodology. We need to know, in terms of social science, how scientific a poll is, how well it is conducted, whether the technology is useful and whether the right sort of technology has been used.
In all sorts of polling the questioning, sampling and methodology of interview used can be flawed. Traditionally, there have been ways of establishing good principles and good practice. In this debate, I ask for nothing new. I ask that we return to the principles that used to be enshrined in the industry, so that they can be observed and we can all be sure of the work of the pollsters. We must get the technique right, including the size of sample, the weighting and the use made of polling data. Let us make sure that the methods are right and that they cannot be manipulated.
In addition, we must find out what the clients do with the polling material obtained. It is all very well having a 50-question poll that provides a pretty accurate picture of people's thinking about health, obesity, countryside sports such as hunting with dogs, or any of the regular subjects that are polled, but what do those who have paid for that poll do with it? Is it legitimate for them to take only the five answers that they like? Is it legitimate for a newspaper that has asked for polling to bury the answers that it does not like and publish only the answers that it does? How much manipulation of public opinion is carried out by those who pay for the polling?
In the conversations that I have had with senior players from across the sector, including both new and established polling organisations, they say that they want a code of conduct covering not only the way in which polls are conducted but the way in which they are used. Some of the major players have told me how they have turned down certain clients because they will not abide by their rules. What a healthy situation it would be if polling organisations with a set of principles showed the door to people who would employ them and manipulate their work in a way that is unacceptable—
§ Mr. Deputy SpeakerOrder. The title of the debate is "Conduct of Elections", but so far the whole of the hon. Gentleman's speech has been about opinion polls. He will bring himself into order if he draws a specific connection between opinion polls and the conduct of elections.
§ Mr. SheermanI totally accept that, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I shall return to the electoral process in two minutes, but I applied for this debate on the conduct of elections with particular reference to opinion polls, and Mr. Speaker was aware that I would talk about opinion polling.
Referring to the recent mayoral election, the Evening Standard front-page headline of Wednesday 9 June stated, "Mayor race is neck and neck. Livingstone faces fight to the finish, new Standard poll reveals." The following front-page article said that the survey gave Ken Livingstone 51 per cent. and Steve Norris 49 per cent. However, if one then reads the article inside the paper on the detail of the poll, it becomes clear that the person who created that headline had a rich imagination. Some hon. Members—Liberal Democrat, Labour and Conservative—believe that the conduct of that election was influenced by the media, whether for good or ill. Perhaps the media brought more people out to vote in one way rather than another. However, most fair-minded people who had read that headline would say that it did not reflect the detail of the poll as analysed in the inner pages, and the coverage certainly would not have conformed to a code of conduct on the use of polls.
You were quite right to call me to order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but that issue is at the heart of our electoral process. Elections should not be manipulated by people who own newspapers or television and radio stations or, indeed, by the BBC. I often appear on the BBC's "Today" programme, and just before I go on I often hear an announcement such as, "Research conducted by the programme has shown that one in five head teachers are unhappy about the level of funding that they receive." That may not be polling, but there ought to be a standard for that type of research as well, because it influences how people react and therefore how they vote. I know that, very often, the researcher sitting at the back has phoned 20 people to find out whether they can find someone who is willing to go on air.
§ Peter Bottomley (Worthing, West) (Con)Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one thing the Government could do is say that they will only use polling firms that set out their standards and keep to them? That would be a way of saying to the major firms, "We expect you to set out what your standards are and to meet them." Does he also agree that, whatever the code of conduct for polling organisations, they are not responsible for the headlines that result, but they can be responsible for saying to a client, such as a newspaper, that the client should include the sample size and the date when the poll was done, and should meet the other standards that are in the reputable companies' code of conduct?
§ Mr. SheermanI could not agree more. The hon. Gentleman and I are old friends and I believe that we are in complete agreement on that matter.
435WH There are several ways of driving up standards. I am fascinated by the article by Bob Worcester, who said that he
had to sack two clients who expected me to breach professional integrity. Robert Maxwell wanted to decide whether commissioned polls for the Mirror would be published or buried, and Sir James Goldsmith, who not liking the result when we wrote the questions for his Referendum Party, wanted to write his own.Those are the sort of standards that we are discussing. We all know that the perfect world is not arrived at by having a regulatory body, whether it is operated by the Government or the industry. Good standards must be built into a profession and should be reflected in a professional code of conduct—the one brings the other to life. If professional people are running an industry, the decision taken by Bob Worcester is the kind of decision that I would expect them to make. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is right to suggest a system whereby Departments ensure that the industry provides a sort of kitemark before organisations are used. I would like to see a kitemark for all polls, so that if an organisation has that kitemark, it indicates that it accepts the code of conduct of the industry. I repeat that I would prefer that code to be voluntary and run effectively by the industry. There is no such code at the moment, but I believe that it can be resuscitated, and I hope that it will be.Let us get to the heart of how important polling is to the electoral process. We might think that the polling organisations are little back-street operations, but theirs is a billion-pound industry in the UK, and in a democratic society opinion polling is central to the electoral process. Its reliability, objectivity, transparency, methodology and trustworthiness are at the heart of any electoral process.
However, the debate is not only about the electoral process; it is about the knock-on effects of polls. When I was a student of politics at the LSE, I was taught that pollsters wanted to get the results of elections right because if they had high integrity and delivered good results—if they accurately predicted the results of elections—it was good for their commercial business, which was where they got most of their money. I came across a term that I have never heard before, and I am sure that it has not been used much in Parliament: Bob Worcester has asked for an investigation into the practices of "sugging" and "fugging", which are, respectively, selling or fund-raising under the guise of opinion polling. Those practices are sometimes employed by political parties, so again we find polling at the heart of the electoral process. If one pretends that one is conducting an opinion poll but is in fact using it for another purpose—for example, for raising money—the activity should come under the remit of a regulatory body.
I shall not prolong the proceedings, but will close with two final points. First, I have already asked the Prime Minister and the leaders of the other two major parties to discuss this matter, which is at the heart of our democracy. It is right that the parties agree on and push for good standards. Secondly, this subject would be prime material for an investigation by the appropriate Select Committee, but I do not believe there is one. However, it would be appropriate for the Electoral 436WH Commission to consider the matter. I know that many people in the industry would be happy to give evidence in the hope that the Electoral Commission would show the way to a form of regulation that everyone trusted. The issue is vital to our electoral system and democracy and it will not go away. There is enormous interest in the subject, and I believe that the campaign is still only in its infancy.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs (Mr. Christopher Leslie)I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) on securing this debate. Its title, "Conduct of Elections", is very broad. He focused on opinion polling, and I shall speak about that, but I should also like to take this opportunity to discuss other issues in the wider firmament of electoral policy with which I have recently been involved.
My hon. Friend is right to say that polling, the veracity of the polling industry and the validity of its results have the potential to affect the conduct of elections. We know—he held up an illustrative newspaper headline—that the interpretation of polling data is often seen to have an impact on the outcome of elections. In a moment I shall touch on some of the few scant regulations that exist on this topic—for example, those on exit polls. Those regulations were introduced because it is self-evident that a feedback loop in a survey can influence the electoral process.
There is no direct statutory regulation of political opinion polling. As such, there is no definitive ministerial responsibility for it, although I take a close interest in its effect, such as it is, on electoral policy. There are many different facets to the issue, one being data protection. Many in the market research industry in general are concerned about ensuring that feedback and survey returns are kept confidential. After all, they are expressions of opinion that the individuals concerned might not want to share with the wider world, so it is important that the industry complies with the principles of data protection legislation. I am glad to see that, broadly, there have been few complaints that such legislation has been infringed.
Furthermore, professionally conducted market research and opinion polling should be carried out, by and large, in accordance with the Market Research Society's code of conduct and guidelines, which my hon. Friend mentioned. Those guidelines state:
Researchers must not, whether knowingly or negligently, act in any way which could bring discredit on the marketing research profession or lead to a loss of public confidence in it.That statement is very general, but in essence the society believes that the methodology and tactics that firms use should be of a high standard, in order to uphold public confidence. Neither Government nor statute law intervene in that sphere: such standards are, properly, for professional regulation. My hon. Friend is right to say that if a profession can regulate itself successfully and get itself in order, that is the best way forward.None the less, the Market Research Society acknowledges that, in the case of political opinion polls, which apparently account for less than 5 per cent. of the UK market research industry, the present self-regulation arrangements may well be in need of 437WH improvement. Apparently the MRS had a meeting with the leading traditional and internet based UK polling companies in August to address urgently the fundamental self-regulation issues surrounding opinion and advocacy polling. The pollsters have undertaken to return with proposals for improvement by the end of the month. Apparently, the MRS will also make proposals for the self-regulation of market research organisations and individuals who have chosen to be its members.
I understand the points that my hon. Friend made, but I have to tell him that my Department has not received a significant volume of representations calling for Government intervention into polling arrangements, nor, I think, is that the line of action for which he was calling.
§ Mr. SheermanI am not surprised to hear that. I found it difficult to find the responsible Minister, and I am a Member of Parliament of long standing. Anybody outside who knew which Minister to complain to and which ministerial team had responsibility for the matter would be very intelligent indeed.
§ Mr. LeslieThe public are always extremely intelligent. Henceforth, I will keep an open mind and wait for representations to come. If anyone writes to me about the matter, I will be more than happy to read their correspondence.
I was interested to learn that my hon. Friend had tabled an early-day motion on the issue in May. He called then, as he has today, for better scrutiny of polling methodology. He provides much of that scrutiny himself and he has played a significant role in kick-starting the issue. It is incumbent on responsible parties—broadcasters, newspapers, and so on—to make sure that their purported survey findings are an accurate and true reflection of public opinion.
I have noticed some dubious surveys, which my hon. Friend mentioned, particularly those that are in fact a simple tally of telephone votes for option A or B. Regardless of whether one person has made 100 phone calls, or of where the sample of calls originates, the results of such surveys are reported as a true reflection 438WH of public opinion. That sort of approach is a million miles from the many reputable and well established techniques used by proper polling organisations. Such simple approaches do not count as worthy journalism. Clearly, a degree of scrutiny is required, as that would help to secure an improvement in services.
§ Mr. SheermanOne of the great problems, particularly with the electoral system, is what I call the ripple effect. The most obscure, untrustworthy poll in the most minor publication or on the internet can ripple out to the main news on television or radio—on the "Today" programme, for example—and suddenly it has an authenticity that is beyond what anyone would have believed possible. That is dangerous. It is like gossip: a whisper becomes a shout, which becomes a megaphone-amplified voice. The ripple effect is, in my view, especially dangerous because of the number of unreliable polls that we get in some areas.
§ Mr. LeslieI understand my hon. Friend's point and, as I said, there are some simple tally telephone in-type surveys that are a million miles from those conducted by the well established reputable firms in the self-regulated opinion polling industry.
I gather that, when my hon. Friend asked his question in Prime Minister's Question Time, our right hon. Friend said that he would talk to the chairman of the Labour party about the issue. He has done so. I gather that my hon. Friend is making overtures to some of the other political parties and that meetings have been arranged to discuss the matter in the party political arena. We will see what comes from those meetings.
Some issues relating to exit polls merit further scrutiny. In the most recent June elections, one newspaper reported a sample from returns in the European elections before the closure of that poll. That newspaper could well have put itself in breach of the legal requirements. Those are important issues. There are also wider issues about the conduct of elections, including how we broaden participation and make it easier and more convenient for people to vote. We have debated all-postal voting and so forth elsewhere. The Electoral Commission is an important organisation—
It being three minutes to Five o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the sitting lapsed, without Question put.