WEDNESDAY 2 APRIL 2003

MR DENIS A STANLEY, MRS JUNE BUTLER, MR MICHAEL CASSIDY AND MR GEOFF NEAL

  1. Good afternoon, lady and gentlemen, thank you for coming to help us with our inquiry into electoral registration in Northern Ireland. Do you feel that the level of registrations so far achieved under the new system is satisfactory?

  (Mr Stanley) It is very hard for us to tell. I am sure you will have read in our memorandum that we canvassed all the people who were on the register previously and the results we got were as reported. There are a couple of points I would want to make about the canvass this year. The most important aspect of registration for this year or, to be more specific, the registration for this year which took place in autumn 2002, is that because of the introduction of the Electoral Fraud Act it had to be on an individual basis. So we went from previously 650,000 households to 1.2 million electors. A personal registration form went to every single person who had been on the register at the end of the September period in 2002 and from that we received a response of just under 90%. That was 90% of twice the number of registrations, but the important point I would want to make about that is that over the years 90% has been the response, albeit from houses; the 90% response rate was to be expected, indeed we had predicted that quite some months before the canvass itself. The difference was that the Electoral Fraud Act specifically removed the ability of the Electoral Office to carry people forward for one year which is the position which currently obtains in the rest of the United Kingdom. In Northern Ireland that has been removed. Therefore, instead of the 10% of non-responders getting a year's grace, they had to be removed immediately from the register and we believe that identifies the shortfall in the numbers from our 90% response rate; the 10% who have gone from the register would equate very closely with 10% of non-responders.

  2. Is that the 115,000, who have apparently vanished from the register?
  (Mr Stanley) The figure would be 130,000.

  3. Is that roughly the 10% you are talking about?
  (Mr Stanley) That is exactly right.

  4. Would you agree with two of the political parties that the number may be even greater than that?
  (Mr Stanley) We have no way of knowing. All we can tell you is that there were 1.2 million people on the register last year and on the new register we have just over 1.1 million, so 130,000 people appear to be the missing numbers. We have no way of knowing whether there should be more people on the register or not.

  5. Are there any other known factors explaining this discrepancy aside from the one you have highlighted?
  (Mr Stanley) The point about it being individual registration is an important one. In the past in the household there was one responsible member of the household who would fill in the registration form on behalf of all the members of the household. Now that we are on individual registration we understand that there is then the difficulty of perhaps apathy amongst younger people who do not readily fill in official forms. We are also concerned that there may have been people who were filled in on the old family form who were in fact not living any longer in the parental home and may have moved elsewhere; so we may have had a degree of duplication on the previous register. We also believe that the Electoral Fraud Act, with the need to supply the national insurance number and date of birth, has reduced fraud. There will now be less opportunity for people who perhaps in the past had deliberately defrauded the system. Finally, there is the carryover. Those are the four factors we would see affecting the registered numbers this year.

  6. You mentioned the reduction in fraud. What is your best estimate of the proportion of the drop in registrations which is likely to have been caused by eliminating fraud and redundant entries?
  (Mr Stanley) We have no real way of knowing. Measures were never taken in the past, there were no comparative figures in the past about the way in which people had fraudulently, or not, got on the register. We do have some figures in respect of the duplicates which are now on the register and my colleague June Butler will be happy to touch on those. It is extremely difficult to tell because there were no comparative figures in the past.
  (Ms Butler) No, there were never figures on duplications, it was always something which was very difficult to establish because of discrepancies in names and that was the only fact we had about any of our electors up until this year. There was also this question of people moving around and being carried over within the register. There is no doubt in my mind that for many years there have been people who were kept on the household form and then they themselves registered individually somewhere else. This year we have established that on the current register there are somewhere in the order of 600 duplications. We have been able to pick that up by surname and by date of birth. That does not include the obvious category of twins because they would have different national insurance numbers. Of the around 600 people, there are about 50 who would have the same name and date of birth and may or may not have different national insurance numbers and those will be investigated further. Around 200 have declared other addresses at which they are registered and that was one of the questions on the forms, so they cannot really be considered as duplicates, because they have declared their dual registration. However, there are about 400 whom we are investigating at the present time who would appear to be registered at two locations in Northern Ireland. On the question of the national insurance number and the date of birth, we are looking at those as duplicates, but we are looking at national insurance numbers generally to see whether putting those down has been a deterrent for people registering.

  7. Would it be fair to say that about 130,000 people have vanished from the register, you are engaged in some kind of investigation of about 650 people and you have no idea what proportion might have vanished through eliminating fraud. Is that where we are?
  (Mr Stanley) We have no way of knowing where the 130,000 are. We have pursued them in the sense that we wrote to every individual who had not responded to us. During the canvass period in November we wrote out to everyone who had not responded. In January we wrote to every single household from whom we received no response, to say that they were not on the register. The register itself is available in district council offices and in our nine area electoral offices, as well as being available to MPs, MLAs and councillors. We believe that every opportunity was afforded to people who were not on the register to check whether they were or not. In addition to that, under the rolling registration system, people who are not on the register have every opportunity to come back on again.

  8. When you said you had written out to those who had not responded, these would be people you were aware of. What about houses which may have been in streets which were missed last time or new areas where folk have moved in? Was any attempt made to reach out to them?
  (Ms Butler) We contacted people twice. In November we wrote to those persons who by that stage had not responded; the people who had been on the previous year's register were contacted individually in November and reminded that the registration canvass period ended at the end of November. We also wrote again in January to all those houses in Northern Ireland where no-one was registered, and that was about 150,000 houses, to remind them that no-one in that household was registered.

  9. You said in one of your answers that you had difficulty in knowing what the numbers were. When you say you had written to those houses from whence there had been no response, did that include some new housing developments and where did you get that from?
  (Ms Butler) Yes, indeed. We are constantly updated by the Valuation and Lands Agency in Northern Ireland of new developments and new properties and also all our area electoral officers are in frequent contact with the local councils' building control, so they are advised on a regular basis. We are aware of new property developments and our database is constantly updated to that effect.

  10. May I take you back to Mr McCabe's question and your response? You said that you have identified 600 duplications for this year. Have you performed any statistical comparisons between what you found this year in respect of duplicate names and what was the case last year?
  (Ms Butler) No. Before this we had no way of knowing what were duplicate names because there could be numerous people with the same names. Same names are one thing, but we had no way of knowing whether they were actually the same person. It is not until this year when we have the personal identifiers in terms of the date of birth and national insurance number that we can be sure of saying that that is the same person.

  11. There was evidence to suggest that same names were one of the reasons behind the new Bill coming forward and one of the reasons for discrepancies. Surely there must have been some analysis of the old register which suggested that duplicate names were an issue, otherwise it would not have been such an issue in the House.
  (Mr Stanley) I am not aware of any work having been done whatsoever on duplicate names of that nature. I have only been with the Electoral Office a couple of years, but I am not aware of it having been done prior to that.
  (Ms Butler) I am aware of one exercise which was done once a long time ago. I have been in the Electoral Office quite a number of years. Nothing was ever taken forward. We have just introduced a completely new computer system within the Electoral Office; the previous computer system was fairly primitive and it would have been quite difficult and quite tedious to do an exercise of that sort with rather aged IT.

  12. So there are no plans to carry out such an exercise.
  (Mr Stanley) In the future, yes.
  (Ms Butler) In the future, yes, and we may look at these duplications but it would be a comparative study on computer now; the paper to paper exercise would be a very lengthy and very complicated exercise. If I may say, a lot of our work at the Electoral Office at the moment consists of things we would like to have spent more time doing but has been a bit watered by lengthy lists which we are getting in our area offices from all political parties in relation to rolling registration and we have been a bit hampered by that and the sheer time and energy that has involved. The statistics of people going onto rolling registration and rolling registration forms coming in has taken a lot of our time and energy.

  13. My next question is constrained by the fact that we only have statistics on the new register and not the old, but of the 600 duplications you have identified or which have been identified to you, are there significant variations between any of the constituencies?
  (Ms Butler) No.

  14. None whatsoever?
  (Ms Butler) No; not particularly. They are spread throughout Northern Ireland, but that is part of my ongoing investigation.

  15. Did you do any particular study in respect of constituencies which we could call hotly disputed?
  (Ms Butler) No. It is part of an ongoing exercise. We are not focusing on one constituency more than any other. When I personally have had a chance to look at those, we shall be writing again to all those people.

  16. You will be aware that there has been some concern, and always has been, about those people who may be disadvantaged. For example, the Falls Community Council have been concerned about it and at least two of the main parties have been concerned about those who may be classified as having learning difficulties. What has been done to ensure that such groups as the disabled and illiterate have not been disadvantaged in the registration process?
  (Mr Stanley) May I just address the first point? Those people who have learning difficulties are in a particular category and I should just like to touch on that before going on to answer the other question. The position is that people who are unable to make up their own mind for whom they should vote do not have a right to be on the register; in other words everyone who is on the register must be able to make up their own mind on how to vote. With individual registration, each person is required to fill in and sign the form personally unless they are unable to do so. There is then a section at the bottom for those who are not able to sign the form to have an attestor sign it on their behalf, then the reason why the person cannot sign must be given. In some cases we are getting back reasons which say for instance that the person has mental incapacity or they have Alzheimer's disease or whatever. Where that occurs we write out a standard letter, which I think is a sympathetic letter, simply explaining the position and saying that if a person cannot cast a vote themselves they may not be entitled to be on the register. We have had quite a number of people who have accepted that, having attested on behalf of someone else, that person should not be on the register. Therefore we have a number of people who previously, under the old family system, were probably wrongly included on the register and really should not have been there, but that has now come to light under individual registration and as a result some people with learning disabilities have been taken off the register. That is perhaps the way it should be: people who are not capable of making up their own minds should never have been there in the first place. We have had some correspondence with a number of people who feel that their relatives or whoever should not have been removed from the register. We take a very inclusive view. If the person can be included on the register we will include them; if the person or their attestor or member of their family lets us know that the person is capable of making up their own mind, we would accept that. We are not in a position to make any sort of clinical judgment. It is quite clear that anyone who is incapable of making up their own mind cannot have their vote handed to someone else, they must make up their own minds. Really they are a special category and I wanted to touch on that. As far as disabled people are concerned, during the registration process we had almost 1,000 canvassers out around Northern Ireland, 50% more than we had the previous time; from 600 up to nearly 1,000. Their job was to call at every single house and deliver the pre-printed form with the person's name and address on it with two information leaflets, one produced by our sister organisation the Electoral Commission and one by ourselves. The canvasser's job was to ensure that the people who were there got the forms or if they were not there, they left the forms with various items. Then when they called back a week or 10 days' later, they were there to collect the form and to advise people, if they needed advice, on any aspect of the registration process. In addition we had a helpline run by the Electoral Commission which was widely publicised in the information leaflets and if a person had any difficulty they were then able to phone the helpline. We also gave the addresses of our nine area electoral offices so that there was every opportunity for people to make contact with us. We believed that people who were disabled in a physical way would be accommodated: they could either await the return of the canvasser, or they could post the form in, or they could phone the helpline, or they could make contact with one of the adjacent area electoral offices to get help there. In addition to that we provided a braille version of the registration form; people were not able to fill in the braille form but it was a braille version so that a person with sight problems could read the form as such. We also provided the guidance notes in braille and we also provided an A3, large, version of the registration form so anyone with sight difficulties could see a large version of the form. As far as disabled people were concerned, we did our best to ensure that the various categories which needed help received that help. The same would be true of illiterate people. The canvasser would call, the canvasser called back a second time, information was left—I do accept that it was printed information but a campaign on television was also being run by the Electoral Commission giving their helpline number and there was a great array of people at the location of the helpline who were briefed with questions and answers in order to address any difficulties people had. I feel that we made every effort we reasonably could to ensure that people with disability or who were illiterate did have the opportunity to register.

  17. On how many occasions did canvassers call back to such people?
  (Mr Stanley) We do not have a record of that.
  (Ms Butler) Wherever there was any request they called back or they contacted the area office. I know on occasions staff from our area offices went out after the canvass period ended to assist such voters.

  18. You said they did if that was requested, but I am asking, from your records, how many such calls were made?
  (Mr Stanley) We have not kept that record as such.

  19. I am wondering whether it should not be kept because over the years certain things were happening in elections and no records were being kept and as a result we have been fighting a battle for open and free elections for some years. Is there any reason to believe that the proportion of disabled or illiterate people registered is lower than, for example, in the 2002 register?
  (Mr Stanley) We do not ask people whether they are disabled. We do not record on the registration form whether people have a disability and it is not something we have any comparative figures to look at.