17:54 - Division on Baroness Pinnock’s amendment - Ayes: 63 / Noes: 210 - Amendment to the Motion disagreed.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 3 November be approved.
Relevant document: 18th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (special attention drawn to the instrument)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)
My Lords, this statutory instrument is a key part of how we will implement the voter identification policy agreed in the Elections Act 2022. This area was debated extensively during the passage of the Act earlier this year. The Act was passed by both Houses and delivers on a government manifesto commitment.
Through this statutory instrument, we will be fulfilling a major manifesto commitment to
“protect the integrity of our democracy, by introducing identification to vote at polling stations”.
Gaps in our current legislation leave open the potential for someone to cast another’s vote at a polling station. Our priority is adopting legislation that ensures the public can have absolute confidence in the integrity of our elections and certainty that their vote belongs to them and them alone.
The introduction of a voter identification policy is the best solution to this problem and has long been called for by the independent Electoral Commission, as well as by international organisations such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which regularly monitors and reports on our national polls.
The statutory instrument sets out further detail on the new processes that will be put in place to help us implement this policy. First, it sets out the updated polling station conduct rules for a range of elections and referendums. It details exactly how photographic identification documents will be checked and how data will be recorded by polling station staff.
Secondly, it sets out a series of updates to the election forms. As you would expect, a number of existing forms such as poll cards have been updated to inform electors of the new requirement to show identification and the types of document that will be accepted. On top of these changes, there are some new forms, such as those polling station staff will use to record data that will help our planned reviews of the policy.
Lastly, the policy sets out details of the new electoral identity documents which can be obtained if someone does not already have an accepted document: the voter authority certificate and/or the anonymous elector’s document. These forms of photographic identification will be available to voters free of charge from their electoral registration officer and will ensure that everyone who is eligible to vote will continue to have the opportunity to do so.
Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)
My Lords, on that specific point, can the Minister explain why younger people are treated differently to older people in terms of which documents will be accepted? Is that not a form of age discrimination?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I assume the noble Baroness is speaking about railcards, et cetera. We had that debate very clearly when the Bill went through. We have discussed it and I do not think there is any need to discuss it further.
Noble Lords
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
Can I move on, please? The statutory instruments also sets—
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, my noble friend has asked a reasonable question. Perhaps the Minister could give the House the courtesy of a reply?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I have given a reply. The details of why we would not accept young people’s railcards were well discussed and debated at the time of the Bill. We are now discussing the statutory instrument to deliver that legislation that has already been discussed.
I will now move on. Showing photo identification is a part of day-to-day life for people in all walks of life and it is a perfectly reasonable and proportionate way to confirm that a person is who they say they are when it comes to voting. Indeed, it has already been a requirement to show photographic identification to vote in person since 2003 in Northern Ireland.
I must also speak to the two amendments tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman of Ullock and Lady Pinnock. I thank them both for having met me in the past week to share their concerns and suggestions for this statutory instrument. On the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, we disagree strongly with the views that she has set out. We are aware of concerns that have been raised in the sector about the pressures that election teams may face, but the Government remain confident that the electoral administrators will be able to deliver this important measure to protect our democratic system from fraud. We have worked extensively with stakeholders across the sector to develop implementation plans, and extensive funding has been made available to local authorities to deliver the new processes and to the Electoral Commission for its national awareness campaign.
The Government also disagree with the suggestion that electors will be prevented from voting. As we have said on a number of occasions, everyone who is eligible to vote will continue to have the opportunity to do so. Any elector who does not have a suitable form of photographic identification will be able to apply for a voter authority certificate from their local electoral registration officer, free of charge. It will be possible to apply online or on paper, just as for registration to vote; indeed, it will be possible to register to vote and to apply for a certificate at the same time. We are working hard to make the application system as accessible and user-friendly as possible, and testing with both electors and electoral administrators is receiving very positive feedback.
Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)
I am sorry to interrupt the Minister again but, if everything is as well prepared and clear as she suggests, why is the Conservative chair of the Local Government Association calling for a delay?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I am aware that he is calling for a delay. I have not spoken to him, and I do not know why he is doing so, because the electoral officers—
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
No. The electoral officers, who are independent in local government, say that they know it will be challenging, but they are confident that they will be able to deliver.
While I cannot agree with the substance of the noble Baroness’s amendment, I also note in passing my concerns about the form that it takes. It is not the usual practice of this House to decline to approve regulations giving effect to primary legislation that has already been passed—for sound constitutional reasons. It is also worth noting that the Liberal Democrats supported the introduction of photographic identification in Northern Ireland elections. The Liberal Democrat Front Bench told Parliament that
“we accept the need for a Bill ... The Liberal Democrats also welcome the Government’s intention to introduce an electoral identity card.”—[Official Report, Commons, 10/7/01; cols. 705-07.]
The legislation passed Second Reading without a vote. I would therefore urge noble Lords to join me in opposing this amendment.
On the regret amendment to the Motion tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, we fully support a review being held rapidly following the May 2023 elections. Scrutiny is essential to ensure that we can refine and improve the delivery of this policy for future polls. We have already committed to a review that will take place after the May elections. I can confirm our intention that the results of that review should be published no later than November 2023. Work is already under way with a research agency on gathering evidence to support the planned evaluation of voter identification after the May polls, alongside our in-house team of analytical professionals. However, to give the House comfort on the independence from government of the review, we are happy to increase the role of the external research agency to include the drafting of the final report, which we will of course publish in full. However, this is conditional on the amendment before us not being pushed.
We would also very much welcome further detailed parliamentary scrutiny of the results. However, we do not believe that a new specific Select Committee is the appropriate method to facilitate this scrutiny or to undertake the evaluation itself. It is the long-established practice of this House that the Liaison Committee considers and directs committee resource.
Lord Cromwell (CB)
My Lords, I spent probably the last 30 years organising election monitoring missions around the world. At the Brexit vote, which some noble Lords may remember, I had a group of young Europeans from right across new and old Europe come to look at how we did that vote. When I asked them afterwards what they thought could be improved, unanimously they said that they could not believe that people could go and vote without some form of identification as to who they were.
I do not think that is the problem we are trying to solve. I think we should have to produce identification; the problem to solve is how we make sure that everybody has it. The Northern Ireland example has been extremely instructive in that regard, and I hope that the Front Bench and the Government will be listening to some of the things said about the need for advertising and the need for ensuring that there is no excuse for people not having an ID card.
If I may finish, I remember many years ago saying to some students I was talking to who had come from Greece—I was a student myself—that I was not sure that I was going to bother to vote. They had grown up with the memory of the colonels, with a military dictatorship running their country, and gave me hell for saying that I was thinking of not going to vote. Now, if we can get that sort of mentality, the thing of “Oh dear, I can’t find my ID card,”—provided you had got one—would be a pretty lame excuse.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their thoughtful contributions and say that I do not intend to rerun the arguments for voter identification. That argument has been won and it is now in legislation. But I will take a little time to further detail some of the points raised by noble Lords on the actual implementation, which is the important thing this evening.
I thank the noble Lords, Lord Browne of Belmont and Lord Weir of Ballyholme, for saying what it is like on the ground. These two noble Lords have lived with this over the last 20 years. They have seen it introduced. They have seen how it works for local authority and general elections and I thank them for that. I think the rest of us who are not living in Northern Ireland can never have that knowledge of how it works and how we can make it work in this country.
There was quite a lot of talk from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and others on support for local authorities to deliver this. Of course, we are aware of the pressures faced by local authorities—and the concerns that the Local Government Association brought up, I think, only yesterday—and their ability to deliver these changes. But we have been working very closely with them and, as I think my noble friend Lord Hayward said, this is not the beginning of it; this has been going on for a good seven months with the legislation there and they knew that this was coming along the line. We have been working with the sector. We have been planning the implementation of this policy and not only that we have been giving additional funds to local authorities so that they can carry out the new duties. The Government remain confident in their ability to successfully deliver these changes.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock and Lady Fox, and many others, said that the Electoral Commission’s budget would be inadequate for communications. The Electoral Commission’s budget for the January communications campaign is over £5 million, which will be supplemented by £4.75 million in funding for local communications—for local authorities to communicate in their own areas.
If this legislation goes through, the Electoral Commission will start its campaign in the middle of January. It will be national and across all types of national media, but local authorities will also have the money to do local campaigns. Along with national government, they do local campaigns very well to get voters to register for voting. This will be added to those campaigns, and I have every confidence that with the money they have, local government and the Electoral Commission will be able to deliver that.
My noble friend Lord Strathclyde is absolutely right. As I said, these arguments have all been had, but, as it came up again, I will repeat the point about the manifesto commitment. Voter identification was in the manifesto, and photo identification became a government discussion because it was found in our pilots to be the only approach that increased voter trust and confidence, which are key aims for this policy. We talked about it a lot during the discussions on the Bill, and I reiterate it now in case noble Lords think that we got it wrong again. We know what we said, and we know why we put in photo ID.
Lord Rennard (LD)
If it was clear what was in the Conservative manifesto and that voter identification meant photo identification, why did the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, who conducted a review of election law on behalf of the Conservative Government, conclude that photo ID was unnecessary and that voter ID in different forms, such as council tax bills or utility bills, would be acceptable? He said there was no need for the photo ID.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
I do not think my noble friend is in his place, but when I next see him, I will ask him.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, mentioned people in poverty finding it more difficult. I remember that discussion and I know that my noble friend Lord True wrote to her. I am afraid I do not know what the outcome was so, again, with apologies, I will write to her about that because I know that it was an important issue for her then.
Digital exclusion is a different thing. Noble Lords would be surprised how many people—even those we consider to be in poverty—have phones. You can go to many libraries in this country and get access online. We also know that it can be done over the phone and by going to your local council. Wherever you can get registered to vote, you can also get your identity. If people are managing to get registered to vote, they can get identity as well. However, I will come back to the noble Baroness on who we are consulting as we go forward.
Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)
If registration is so important—I agree that it is—why did the Government not start this process when they started the campaigns for registration in September, rather than starting it in January?
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
If the noble Lord remembers, we had the death of Her Majesty, and that put things back slightly, but we are doing it now, and people register continually, so that issue is not terribly important.
The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, also brought up the deadline for applying for the certificate. She is right that it has gone to six days before the poll; I remember that we talked about it being the day before. We have been working with stakeholders in the electoral sector. We are mindful of the impact on administrators during a busy period and, on balance, have decided that six days strikes an appropriate balance between accessibility and certainty for not only the elector but the electoral officers.
One noble Lord said that a national insurance number was required, but actually individuals do not need a national insurance number to vote. They will be able to apply using other documents or attestations where they can provide an explanation for why they do not have a national insurance number. Some people have lost it or cannot find it, so there are other ways of doing that to make sure that they can get those documents.
There was quite a lot of talk about putting it back to the next election. After May 2023, there is a possibility that the next election will be a general election. In May 2023, only about two-thirds of authorities will hold polls. That means there will be more opportunity for authorities to learn from and support each other if necessary. If we have a local authority that is not holding an election next to a local authority that is, if it needs extra help in this first period, that is a possibility. The system is not at full stretch, as it always is during a general election. This is not about testing or devaluing local politics. It is a sensible way to run any new process in a system, rather than running it when we are at full capacity.
My noble friend Lady Verma got involved in the Bill; I thank her very much for her support. Again, she is somebody who talks to people on the ground, as we all do, and who has an understanding of how people in all communities feel about the importance of a fair voting system that they can trust.
The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, raised overseas voters. I will take that back to the department, but if he does not mind, I do not intend to talk about that today. My noble friend Lord Cormack raised identity cards, but I will not get into that debate today either.
Publicity is absolutely critical. I do not think I have talked about this, but once the legislation goes through, we will start this in mid-January, so there will be four to five months of clear publicity. That is important.
I thank my noble friend Lord Hayward. He and the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, are the ones in the House who talk and know the most about elections and associated matters. He is absolutely right about students. They will be home for Easter and, by then, they will have seen the campaign over two to three months. They will get their driving licence or passport, or will go to get the identity documents required. As he said, the launch in January is the launch of the big national campaign, but this has been going on for a long time.
I will look at Hansard, but I think I have answered most of the issues that were raised. I return to the fatal amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. I have already made it clear that we disagree with its substance. We are confident of electoral administrators’ ability to deliver this important policy for the May 2023 elections. We have been working hard alongside them to refine and develop these processes and are at present conducting extensive testing of the digital systems that will support them.