Interview: Harriet Harman

By Jackie Storer
BBC News political reporter

Politicians are partly to blame for falling democratic participation, says Elections Minister Harriet Harman.

One in five Londoners who are eligible to vote, fail to do so

It is too easy for MPs and ministers to think that the "system's all right - it elected me," she explains.

When a ministerial car is waiting outside your door, democracy must seem to be in pretty good shape, she argues.

It is a frank admission from the minister with one of the most difficult briefs in Westminster - to reverse what sometimes seems like the perennial British disease of voter apathy and alienation.

Ms Harman is a political survivor. She was a member of Tony Blair's first Cabinet and remains a keeper of the New Labour flame.

As elections minister, she has taken on a higher profile than in recent years. A bill and campaign to encourage more people to put their names on the electoral register are in the pipeline later this year.

And on Sunday she addressed Labour's annual conference in Brighton on her plans to close the electoral deficit and boost voter registration.

Social justice

The problem - identified by Ms Harman - is that the country has "democracy deserts", areas, often in Labour's inner city heartlands, where few people register to vote or, if registered, bother to turn out on polling day.

How bad can the system be if a ministerial car is outside your front door? Harriet Harman on the attitude of some ministers

"There are some areas where hardly anybody votes, which are the most poor and deprived areas," she says.

"Black people are less likely to vote than white and homeowners are more likely to go to the polls than their council tenant neighbours," she says.

One in five Londoners who are eligible to vote, do not do so, she says.

"The most basic reason is that people have got to be entitled to vote - they have got to be on the electoral register."

It is more than just a dry administrative issue.

Ms Harman knows that the campaigns for social justice and equality so close to the heart of Labour activists also depend on increased engagement with the democratic process.

About 3.5m people entitled to vote cannot because they are not registered.

A lack of understanding about the registration process, including the fact a form has to be returned every year to give a person the right to vote, is part of the problem, she says.

Complex forms

"Some people think that you become entitled to vote just by becoming 18 and that it's automatic.

"Others think that if they have been on the register and have voted once, that's it.

Harman: Compulsory voting is one idea being considered

"They say, 'well how come the council says I'm not on the electoral register - they sent me a council tax bill yesterday, so they know I'm there'.

"Also the forms vary from borough to borough - some are very clear and very straight-forward, some are Byzantine in their complexity.

"What we don't want to have is a situation where we get a divide between those who do vote and those who don't.

"The problem with that is not just that those individuals don't have their right to vote and are not participating in our democracy on equal terms, but it is less likely that public policy will look towards their needs and concerns."

London campaign

A bill to help make registration simpler and clearer is being introduced later this year.

Ms Harman will also press the issue at Labour's conference, and with London mayor Ken Livingstone, council leaders, community groups and schools during a big publicity campaign in the capital ahead of next May's local elections.

But she says MPs - and ministers - also have their part to play in actually getting people to want to be registered and vote.

We can't just say voters have got to be told it matters - that is not good enough Harriet Harman

It would not hurt for a letter to go out to all those on the electoral register after a vote to give them the result of the election, she says.

"We expect people to automatically want to be on the register and to automatically want to vote even though we don't even tell them who has been elected.

"They might not even know who has been elected until it comes round to the next election - there are a whole range of things we need to address.

"The focus of the Labour Party has always been to get ourselves elected, but we have to do more than that.

"We have got to make sure that democracy is healthy because we care about equality and social justice."

Sense of security?

While she declined to go into the contents of the bill ahead of its publication, Ms Harman says ideas being touted to address the issue include: reducing the voting age, citizenship classes in schools, compulsory voting and greater involvement in the process between elections.

She says she accepts that some people who feel disillusioned with politics, "do not like politicians and believe we are all in it for ourselves".

But it is also too easy for MPs to be "lulled into a sense that the system is all right, it elected me", she says.

This could be applied to ministers as well. "How bad can the system be if a ministerial car is outside your front door? Things must be working pretty well.

"We have got to look at the problem. We can't just say voters have got to be told it matters - that is not good enough," she added.