Clause 61 - Performance of local authorities
Electoral Administration Bill
2:45 pm
David Heath (Shadow Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs & Shadow Leader of the House, Law Officers (Constitutional Affairs); Somerton and Frome, Liberal Democrat)
May I open by saying that I entirely support the points made by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe? His local government background permits him to speak with authority on these matters. I come from a local government background in another part of the country.
I agree with his point that the procedure should enable the local authority to make an assessment of performance in the first instance. We should then be told whether that assessment is in the affirmative. There is an enormous disparity in performance across the country, and there should not be. Electoral registration is a function that is organised locally, and all elections are controlled locally. The integrity of the voting system is, however, a national function. We, as a country, are entitled to ensure that every part of the country performs to adequate standards.
For that reason, I welcome clause 61. It is right to have some form of performance audit of the various officers who are involved with electoral registration and administration. My only plea is that a checklist or tick boxes to say that we have met so many targets is not included. That is not the way in which we should measure performance. We should share the type of good practice that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe mentioned. His is an extremely good suggestion. He said that we must ensure that, after a registration process, people know that they are registered or, more importantly, that they are not.
The issue shall no doubt be discussed again. We must be more obvious in our efforts to encourage people to be on the electoral register. That point was raised time and again on Second Reading, particularly by hon. Members on the Minister's side of the House. Registration should be done much better. To do that, we must have effective processes, but we must also make more noise.
We must use methods such as those suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) on Second Reading. He suggested a registration week in which there would be a maximum flow of information to the electorate to ensure that they knew that they should be registering to vote. We should not only put letters through letterboxes or knock on doors but stop people on the buses or in tube stations to ask whether they have registered. If they have not, we can tell them how to. We must make people aware that they should be registering.
Some local authorities are good at ensuring that those who are eligible have registered; others are very poor indeed. The Government are absolutely right to stress consistency of performance across the country. I hope that will emerge from the Bill.
We should be able to audit performance satisfactorily, without resorting to bean counting. We must share examples of good practice. Those authorities that are identified as falling short of expectations must use the local government structures in order to do better. The scrutiny committees that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe mentioned were not around when I was involved in local government. However, they are most definitely part of local government practice now. The scrutiny committees should be used to ensure that performance is monitored adequately.
I have one amendment that does not really sit with the others. Amendment No. 12 would amend clause 70, because that is the extent clause. One fact that has been clearly drawn to our attention is that the provisions do not extend to Northern Ireland. There is no obvious reason why they should not. The Electoral Commission would like a degree of oversight of arrangements in Northern Ireland. Those who represent Northern Irish seats in this House would like the commission to have some oversight of the arrangements.
Perhaps there has not yet been sufficient communication between the Minister's Department and the Northern Ireland Office to achieve a happy conjunction of objectives. If so, I urge the Minister to get in touch with a degree of alacrity, because it seems that if we can sensibly send the provisions to Northern Ireland there is no reason not to do so. If everyone wants that to happen and the only problem is the fact that it is not in the Bill, I hope that by the completion of its parliamentary passage it will extend to as many parts of the country as possible.