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Representation of the People (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2008

My Lords, I, too, welcome the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, to his new position with regard to Northern Ireland affairs. I support what he has said and welcome these new regulations. As he said, they are a work of consolidation. I have three observation-cum-questions for the Minister. First, has the decision to allow registration up to 11 days before an election emerged in part because of criticism from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights in 2003 after the previous Assembly elections? It argued that the period was too long in Northern Ireland and that in a democratic society we should move closer to the figure that the noble Lord has thankfully given. My second point relates to the issue of how many people who have not been able to vote will now be able to do so because of the changes. Like the noble Lord, Lord Smith, I welcome the changes to the blind person’s smart pass and the war disabled smart pass, although I suspect that the numbers involved there were fairly small. On the other hand, the Minister should be aware that the proposal that documents, passports and IDs no longer need to be absolutely up-to-date to be usable will have major implications. The chief electoral officer’s figures from the March 2007 Assembly elections show that about 3,500 people were turned away because of inadequate or no documents. Over half of those were people who had a passport or driving licence. In fact, on a certain definition of the figures, two-thirds of those people would now be able to vote. I welcome this, but we should be aware that we may be doing something quite radical by putting back on the register possibly 60 to 70 per cent of those who, at the previous Assembly elections, were refused the right to vote. I saw such cases in polling stations in Northern Ireland. It is probably the right thing to do but it is quite a radical step. Does the noble Lord agree that those numbers are roughly right? They are certainly more significant than the number who will be affected by the changes regarding the blind person’s smart pass and the war disabled smart pass? My final observation is that in this consolidation of the regulations there are significant sections on registration, absent voting, postal voting and access to electoral registers and marked registers. Can the Minister confirm that some of the recommendations arise from lessons learnt from electoral fraud in the Birmingham area and are being wisely applied to the people of Northern Ireland? I welcome the regulations, particularly the proposals to help to encourage young people to vote. The steps that are being taken to improve young people’s access to voting—it is a great problem in Northern Ireland—are very wise provisions and probably the most benign in the proposed regulations.