Draft Police and Crime Commissioner Elections (Amendment) Order 2022
Draft Assistance with Voting for Persons with Disabilities (Amendments) Regulations 2022
(2 years, 1 month ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Lee Rowley)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Police and Crime Commissioner Elections (Amendment) Order 2022.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to consider the draft Assistance with Voting for Persons with Disabilities (Amendments) Regulations 2022.
Lee Rowley
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins.
The statutory instruments are a key part of the implementation of the Elections Act 2022, which was debated at some length earlier this year. The Assistance with Voting for Persons with Disabilities (Amendments) Regulations are made in consequence of or to make provisions similar to section 9 of the Elections Act 2022. The intent of both section 9 of the Act and these consequential regulations is to improve the support available to disabled voters at polling stations, and they do that in two ways. First, they replace the existing requirements to provide a single prescribed device to assist blind and partially-sighted voters with a broader, better requirement that returning officers provide equipment to assist a wider range of disabled voters, so that they can cast their votes independently. They also revoke the reference to that device for UK parliamentary elections where its description is already included in the secondary legislation. Secondly, they remove the unnecessarily restrictive requirement that anyone assisting a disabled voter be either a close family member of that voter or an elector themselves with a requirement that the person assisting be 18 or over. That will allow people to more easily get support to cast their vote where the person is best placed to support them, and where that person may not have met either of the two previous criteria.
Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)
I support the two SIs, and I hope that all colleagues and hon. Members support them. It is good that we are giving greater ability to blind and other disabled people to vote in an easier manner. I do question whether the Department considered still allowing candidates and agents to take blind people into polling stations to assist them to vote. I am sure that the Minister agrees that democracy and its processes need to not only be done properly, but be seen to be done properly. Could that arrangement not give rise to the perception, at least, that unfair persuasion was being placed on an individual?
Lee Rowley
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question, and I understand the challenge that he makes. I will say two things. First, the part of the process that we are talking about is essentially a mechanical one; it is about ensuring that the people who are in need of support can get to the place where they can vote, and the part of the process where people are making decisions will likely be independent of that. There are a range of devices, talked about separately, which will be available so that the individual is able to vote and is supported in the way that they need. Secondly, I am happy to write to my hon. Friend with clarification on his specific point, if that would be helpful. A piece of draft guidance has already come out, which the Electoral Commission has put forward with regard to some elements of these orders, and further guidance will be coming forward. There will potentially be an opportunity, where my hon. Friend or others have concerns about the more intricate details, to clarify them through the Electoral Commission guidance in the future.
The changes are made to UK parliamentary elections by the Elections Act 2022, and the instrument makes equivalent changes across a range of other polls, including most mayoral elections, local authority governance referendums and neighbourhood planning referendums in England, along with police and crime commissioner elections in England and Wales and MP recall petitions across the UK.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
Can the Minister confirm it is the Government’s policy to have police and crime commissioner elections, particularly in the west midlands?
Lee Rowley
Police and crime commissioners have been an established part of the electoral landscape of the United Kingdom since 2012. I cannot comment on individual areas, but there is always a debate about how things are organised—Members should not read anything into that. The principle of police and crime commissioner elections is seeded. Those elections are utilised and are making differences on a daily basis across the country.
The proposed changes are being replicated at other polls, including at English local elections, Greater London Authority elections and London mayoral elections. Separate secondary legislation following a negative procedure will be laid before the House in due course to cover those. The instruments today are essential to ensure that improvements to support disabled voters in the polling stations introduced by the Elections Act are applied consistently across all polls reserved to the UK Government.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
On page 3 of the explanatory memorandum on assistance with voting, paragraph 10 refers to the consultation outcome’s 256 responses, which is fantastic. I think the most important outcome was that from local authority election teams, and we have very good election teams in Blaenau Gwent in south Wales, my home constituency. I just want to check that the proposals were consistent with the views of the local authority election teams. If they were not, what is the difference? I am interested in what their response was to the consultation.
Lee Rowley
I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman on that specific point. As the Committee is aware, a range of views is expressed through consultations. There is an absolute desire on the part of the Government to take all of them into account. We will not be able to agree by default with everybody because of the difference of views, but on the specific points raised, I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman on the outcome.
The draft Police and Crime Commissioner Elections (Amendment) Order 2022 has two purposes. First, it amends the spending rules for police and crime commissioner elections in England and Wales to replicate amendments already made by the Elections Act. The changes will bring clarity to candidates and their agents with regard to what they need to report in terms of benefits in kind—property, goods, and services or facilities that are provided for the use or benefit of the candidate at a discount or for free—relating to those that they have actually used or that they or their election agent have directed, authorised or encouraged someone else to use on their behalf.
In combination with expanded statutory guidance from the Electoral Commission, which is provided for by this order, the changes will support compliance with the rules and ensure that those wishing to participate in public life can feel confident in doing so and be more clear in their legal obligations.
Secondly, the order also inserts two additional welfare benefits into the list of qualifying benefits for proxy vote applications for police and crime commissioner elections. That will ensure that disabled people in receipt of new welfare benefits in Scotland, who have recently moved from Scotland, will be able to make a proxy vote application at a PCC election without the need for it to be attested while a decision is pending on an equivalent welfare benefit in the new jurisdiction where they now reside.
It is our view that it is important that the rules be updated in relation to police and crime commissioner elections to ensure consistency and fairness across the law, that candidates and agents can discharge their responsibilities with confidence, and that disabled electors get the support that they need in UK elections.
Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Cummins.
The two measures before us relate to extending provisions from the Elections Act to the rules regarding police and crime commissioner elections and also assistance with voting for people with disabilities. Let me say from the outset that the Opposition strongly opposed the Elections Act at all stages before it became law a few months ago. It was a bad Bill then, and it is bad law now. Rather than opening up our democracy, it has created barriers to participation, while further weakening it to dodgy finance.
Our serious concerns with the legislation have been shared by civil society and the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee in its excellent report on the Bill, when it said that the Bill ought to have been paused. That has been added to by yesterday’s revelations that the Government have not even assessed the security implications of the most prominent part of the legislation, voter ID provision, which is yet another discreditable element to this story. We look forward to the chance to revisit that soon—I think it is coming before us soon.
Happily, however, Members of all parties agreed with the provisions that the Act made in relation to notional expenditure. Following the 2018 Supreme Court judgment that there was no requirement that benefits in kind or notional expenditure would have to be authorised by the candidate or their election agent, the rules regulating that area of election law were a point of confusion and required clarification. It is safe to say there were serious concerns that candidates and their agents could unwittingly be liable for any transgressions that they had no knowledge of and had never authorised, but from which they were judged to have benefited. It was therefore right to tidy up the law in relation to notional expenditure in the Elections Act, and the Opposition did not stand in the way of those measures when the Act was before Parliament. In the same spirit, we will not stand in the way of applying the same provisions to the elections of police and crime commissioners, so that the full benefit of the change to the law can be implemented and operational across all elements.
On the second measure, regarding assistance with voting for persons with disabilities, I praise the work done in the other place by my colleagues Baroness Hayman and Lord Khan, who worked very hard to make sure that it was included in the Elections Act. We raised this issue in Committee and during consideration of the remaining stages of the Act, and stakeholders expressed their concerns about the initial proposals. As I said on Report, we are grateful that the Government have listened to those concerns and worked with advocacy groups to reach a solution, which is what I believe we have in front of us. The Opposition therefore fully support the measure, which will ensure that the regulations can be felt widely across all elections, but like many interested in this space, we will keep a close eye on things to make sure that its practical application works. The collective vision is that all polling stations should have the right equipment, so that people can access their democratic right regardless of the challenges they live with, and we would be very interested to see how that works.
I hope the Minister is able to indicate how he and his colleagues will monitor this issue to make sure that the approach proceeds as intended. Will there be a report after the first iteration? That would be a proportionate way of working out whether it is working. Have the Government committed in the engagement with stakeholders that this will be an ongoing process? That virtuous feedback loop will be a key part of making sure that the legislation works. Finally, there is a funding implication for the Minister’s welcome commitment in the Elections Act and today about making the equipment available, so can he make an on-the-record commitment that that will be met and that local authorities will not be expected to find the money in other ways?
Lee Rowley
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution. Turning briefly to the points that he made, I welcome his support for the two SIs that we are debating, even if we have fundamental differences about the broader position with regards to the Elections Act, which can be debated in alternative places at alternative times.
On the hon. Gentleman’s two questions about how we will ensure that the changes being introduced through the SIs work and do the things that we hope, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities is happy to commit to reviewing that in the future. We obviously need the opportunity for the legislation to work, and the focus in the coming months will be to make sure that the guidance is accurate and as helpful as possible. We will then review the output once the first elections have taken place, but I am happy to say that the Department will absolutely return to this issue in order to confirm that the SIs have worked in the way that was intended, and to look at whether any learnings can be made accordingly.
In terms of this being part of an ongoing process, we want to make sure that there is a continuous conversation about the integrity and appropriateness of our election processes, and we are happy to return to that in the months ahead and beyond. I am also very happy to do that from my perspective of having responsibility for elections in the Department. I hope that gives the hon. Gentleman some assurances that this will absolutely be a continuous conversation and that, as all good governance requires, there will be a continuous review of whether things are working appropriately, proportionately and properly.
On that basis, I hope that members of the Committee are willing to assent to both of the statutory instruments in front of them today. The first one will ensure that police and crime commissioner elections are aligned with the changes that have already been agreed for other elections in primary legislation, and the second will ensure that we offer a broader range of devices for people who have sight issues, or who are blind, when they rightly go to cast their votes at the ballot box in future elections. As a result, I hope that right hon. and hon. Members will join me in supporting the regulations.
Question put and agreed to.
DRAFT ASSISTANCE WITH VOTING FOR PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES (AMENDMENTS) REGULATIONS 2022
Resolved,
That the Committee has considered the draft Assistance with Voting for Persons with Disabilities (Amendments) Regulations 2022.—(Lee Rowley.)