Orders of the Day — Parliament (Elections and Meeting) Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 26 October 1943.

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Photo of Mr Herbert Morrison Mr Herbert Morrison , Hackney South

I hope to know as early as possible, and to get ready for it, but I do not know at present. The point about a general election is this: Most of us—there is usually a minority of nine or to Members on the Prolongation of Parliament Bills—are agreed that it would not be particularly creditable if we were driven to a General Election during the war, and that the issues would be difficult to shape anyway. Nevertheless, it is not right that for administrative, Neal, or practical reasons, it should be virtually not possible to have a General Election. All that balance of power between the House and the Executive cannot properly function without the possibility of a dissolution of Parliament, or if, owing to the state of the law or of practical difficulties about electors, we could not have a General Election, or if we did the electorate would be so unrepresentative that it could not be trusted to show the general mind of the nation. This Bill does not provide that a General Election shall take place. On the contrary, the next Bill which I shall produce will be rather in the other direction. But this Bill does provide that if the House could not live with the Government or if the Government could not live with the House, there would be nothing in the way of organisation to prevent a General Election taking place. I think that constitutionally, this is right.

The other point with which it deals is the making of it possible for by-elections to be contested with an up-to-date register. Quite a number of by-elections have been contested, notwithstanding the much discussed electoral truce between the parties, and in some cases we are bound to agree, the register has been in a shocking state and not creditable to the country. Therefore, we propose to make arrangements whereby the register can be brought up to date. The new scheme embodied in this Bill is based on the 'National Registration system. It was part of our war-time organisation that there should be a National Registration of the population of the country, kept up to date, and that National Registration system has been of the greatest value in arranging food rationing and in various other matters. If we had not had that system, this Bill would hardly have been possible. The system provided in this Bill can last only as long as national registration lasts. There must be preparation, after the Bill becomes an Act, for the new order of things. There is bound to be some delay between the passing of the Bill and its actual operation, but there is provision for me to fix an appointed day. That is provided in the Bill.

The other aspect that will take time is the registration of the members of the Forces, particularly those serving in overseas theatres of war. We took into account whether we should provide that the Bill should not be operative until all the Forces had been registered, or let it march, with the understanding that the Forces will be in a position to vote as and when they are registered and that elections may take place in which some of the Service people associated with a constituency will be able to vote because they have been registered, while others may not be able to do so because they have not been reached. In due course they will all be reached, and we thought it would not be right to hold up the operation of the Bill until all Service personnel had been registered. It will be possible on the appointed day to produce a register for any by-election, and at a later date, when things are easier, we hope it will be possible—indeed, it will have to be possible if there should be a General Election—to produce a register for the whole country simultaneously. Even if an election were to happen during the war, it would be highly inconvenient to have to produce a register all over the country, but we should have to find ways and means. With regard to by-elections, there will be no great difficulty, but it may be that the register will not be printed but will have to be multiplied by duplicating processes of one sort and another.

In the Bill the new register will be in three parts. There will be the civilian residence register. Here the qualification will be two months' residence before the qualifying date. There will be a business premises register, as is provided for under the present law—because in this Bill we are not making changes in the electoral system or the basis of registration of electors; that is a wider and more controversial issue of electoral reform. This Bill is based on the system as it is. The business premises register presents us with a difficulty. There can be no question of wholesale canvassing by the registration officers in order to make a register in the ordinary way, The scheme is based upon National Registration, and as the National Registration machinery is not able to distinguish between business electors and residential electors, it is obvious that the National Register cannot solve that particular problem. Therefore, the Commit- tee recommended, and the Government have agreed, that in the first stage the obligation must be upon the potential business voter to apply to be registered as a business voter. It will then be for the electoral registration officer to check this up as far as he can and put the applicant on the register or not in accordance with the decision he reaches. There is nothing to prevent the party machine, or at any rate such party machines as are attached to the business voter, entering the lists with a view to the full registration of the business electors. But that has nothing to do with the Bill and has nothing to do with me, not at any rate as Secretary of State for the Home Department. At the second stage there will have to be an annual application, and the registration would then be effective for 12 months. The business electors, like the civilian residential electors, will have the two months' qualifying period.

Thirdly, there is the Service register. On this we have consulted with the Service Departments, and the Ministry of War Transport, in respect of the Mercantile Marine—the seamen—and I am glad to be able to say that we have come to an arrangement whereby the Service Departments and the Ministry of War Transport for the Mercantile Marine will co-operate with a view to securing, subject to any unintended errors, the full registration of Service personnel and seamen. In addition, we propose to register in this Service register civilians who are engaged in war work abroad. We shall provide for all these persons to be registered where they reside or where they would be residing but for their service. Ordinarily there will be proxy voting for men if they are overseas, but if they are in this country, they will have the option either to vote by post or in person. The difficulty with the Services, and indeed with the Mercantile Marine, is bound to be that they are here to-day and gone to-morrow, and no man can be certain whether, when an election takes place, he will be in this country or abroad. We have to be elastic, therefore, and have a system whereby they can vote by proxy, vote as absent voters by post or vote in person, in whatever way is convenient to them, but in such a way that there will be no duplicate voting. The existing law as to absent voters is retained.

I have referred to the qualifying date as to registration, up to which the two months period runs. The qualifying date is to be the last day in the month before that in which an election is initiated. At that date the records will be frozen. The two months qualifying period will go backwards from that date. At that time, as the House will appreciate, in the case of a by-election, and still more if there were a General Election, an enormous amount of work will have to be done by the registration officers. They will have to bring into register form the material which is available to the National Registration officers. It will have to be typed out or printed, multiplied and so on. The publication of the register, therefore, is not to be expected earlier than 36 days after the initiation of the election. As the register is used for all kinds of purposes, in connection, for example, with the preparation of envelopes, canvassing by candidates and their supporters, and so on, clearly tire election cannot take place on the date on which the register becomes available. There must be a further period. We have gone, therefore, on the basis that the register should be ready 36 days after an election is initiated with a power to extend the 36 days to 42 in exceptional circumstances. The kind of exceptional circumstances we have in mind are those in some of the constituencies in the Highlands of Scotland, or the Western Isles, where, I can imagine, the poor registration officer will be faced with a really serious problem.