Heatwave Response

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 21st July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, again, I think that is a matter not for the Executive but for the parliamentary authorities. I am sure they will have heard the noble Lord, who is a most assiduous attender—nobody will have thought of him when people who do not attend very much were spoken about earlier. I think people have heard what he said. Obviously, these things have to be held in balance. Overall, as a parliamentarian and someone who loves your Lordships’ House, I prefer to be able to look somebody in the eye, hear what they say and accept the challenge. I think that is the proper role of Parliament, but I am sure the authorities will consider what the noble Lord has said.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, first, there was a comment earlier that some noble Lords derided concerns about extreme weather. I actually heard those comments and saw them as balanced and proportionate. Will the Minister comment on another danger, which is scaremongering and sensationalism that can create a climate of fear? I watched the news with pictures that were described as, “We are witnessing Armageddon.” Many elderly people, children and so on must have been very frightened when they saw that, so is that a different kind of danger?

Secondly, on infrastructure, it was certainly shown up to be a bit creaky. On Sunday, before the heatwave, the trains I was trying to get were not running because of the weather, and neither were they running yesterday, after the heatwave. Could there be an opportunity for the Government to use their levelling-up initiative to improve infrastructure so that it can cope with weather challenges?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, there were number of points there, and I could quite easily be tempted to go rather further than I should. I said when we were discussing this earlier in the week that I do not really care for project fear in any form. My mother used to tell me the tale of the boy who cried wolf. There is a wolf, actually—there is climate change—but I think it is very important that this be tempered. People can be easily frightened and should not be frightened, because the response that needs to be made is a collective, international response and individuals should not be subjected to unreasonable stress by exaggerated and alarmist reports; there is a balance there.

As for trains on Sunday, it would be a fine thing to be able to get to Stansted Airport on a Sunday, would it not? UK rails are stressed to withstand temperatures of 27 degrees, which is the mean summer rail temperature in this country. Obviously, other countries, where the kind of weather we had earlier this week is normal, stress their rails to higher degrees, but obviously if you stress your rails to too high a temperature, you have problems at the lower level and we are told that there is the wrong kind of snow on the line. Network Rail needs to consider, and I am sure is considering, these matters. Three-quarters of UK track is modern and set into concrete sleepers, which helps prevent rails buckling in the hot temperatures, but I am sure the good railway people will have heard what the noble Baroness said.

Covid-19 and the Use and Scrutiny of Emergency Powers (Constitution Committee Report)

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Constitution Committee on this excellent report. I certainly recommend that it is read widely in the public sphere because it is important to try to assimilate what happened and to learn lessons. However, before I recommend that it is read, I might have to issue a warning because, despite my long-standing hostility to “Generation Snowflake”-like trigger warnings, I must say that reading the report brought me out in a rash of post-traumatic stress disorder. All those bad memories that I tried to supress were brought to the fore with my horror at the ease with which civil liberties were suspended and intrusive legislation transformed the minutiae of everyday life. This was something I would rather forget, but we cannot forget it. The unprecedented attack on the freedom of ordinary activities for which, overnight, we needed permission to do anything—from walking outside to visiting loved ones in hospital or having a pint with mates—is something that we do not actually want to remember, but should never, ever forget, because we should never, ever repeat it.

The fact that public life was closed down has totally discombobulated society. The report reminded me of all those last-minute changes. I remember when the rule of six regulations were published only 30 minutes before the law came into force, making it a criminal offence to have more than six people gathering outside, because I was organising to have six people gathering outside; I was the seventh and did not know what to do. There was a sense of confusion and panic.

The report notes:

“1 in 5 … did not know what Tier their area was in”.


I never understood the tier system; I got completely confused. It says that

“only 12% knew the correct amount of time a person is required to self-isolate”

if they tested positive, and that

“53% … did not know whether they were allowed to visit other parts of the UK”.

We all felt disorientated at all these things. Family Zoom calls—maybe it was just my family—were full of angst and arguments about what we were allowed and not allowed to do. In other words, the stuffing was knocked out of spontaneous interactions and everybody became totally preoccupied with trying to decipher the runes of what we were and were not allowed to do by the law.

This might not be a constitutional matter, but it matters for the constitution. Individual agency of grown-up decision-makers, and taking responsibility, became the collateral damage of what this report describes. The confusion and conflation between guidance and law was particularly damaging, as described in the report, which says that

“‘guidance’, ‘guidelines’, ‘rules’ and ‘restrictions’”

were used

“interchangeably, in reference to … legal requirements and public health advice”.

Worse, as Kirsty Brimelow QC rightly notes, we had the added confusion of the police being equally unclear and often acting on the messaging of announcements by the Home Secretary or the Prime Minister at press conferences, rather than on the law. As for the consequences of some of this, I think this has undermined confidence in the police as an impartial, trusted body implementing the law. It has also undermined trust in the law itself if it can become such a shape-shifter, with hardly anybody knowing what it was.

I also fear that the use of the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 to push through so many of the most draconian measures has damaged the reputation of public health advice more generally. One thing the report does not note is the use of the behind-the-scenes, behind-the-backs-of-the-public devices that we use to soften up public opinion in relation to law changes. It is worth reading Laura Dodsworth’s book A State of Fear, which includes the minutes of SAGE meetings and the discussion on the use of behavioural psychology and nudging, so that the public would be faced with the worst-case scenarios and scared enough to comply with behaviour changes backed by legal force. Rushing laws through, justified by fear, obviously leads to a lack of scrutiny. It has been bad for the constitution that we have allowed fear to push through law.

Moving on, I agree with the report that the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, with its triple lock, would have been a better piece of legislation to use than the Coronavirus Act 2020, which completed its passage through both Houses of Parliament in just three sitting days. Of course, we all know and understand that these legal changes were made in the context of the very real and justified sense that this was an unprecedented health emergency at the start of 2020, but it is the job of the Government to keep society calm. Hyperactive lawmaking, hyped up by using fear, is the wrong approach.

It was not just the Government. While Parliament was complaining about not having scrutiny over the Government, many people on all sides in Parliament went along with this hyped-up, over-the-top, disproportionate fear-mongering. This in turn created a mood of permanent emergency. Even post the vaccine, the misuse of Section 45R of the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act, using the urgency clause for which there is no objective definition, created an atmosphere in which there was no constraint over what could be done. It makes me very nervous now, when I hear people declaring endless emergencies: the climate emergency, the energy emergency, the cost of living emergency. You think, “Oh my goodness; they’re going to bring in emergency legislation for all that, and we’d be locked down for that too”. Some are advocating that we do just that, so I am not exaggerating.

There is a good quote in the report from Professor Hickman:

“Once the true emergency abated … proper legislation should have been put in place. Parliament could and should have insisted on protections such as the ability to amend regulations”.


But Parliament did not, and that is what should have happened. I note that some of us, even if it was a minority, advocated such an approach at the time—not afterwards, as in the report—and were vilified for doing so. Lord Sumption spoke out very early on but was treated as a pariah. When I arrived in this place, I raised certain questions about the legislation; I did so rather anxiously as I was new and arrived here during lockdown. I was treated like a wide-eyed loony libertarian for suggesting a sunset clause in certain legislation and for querying things such as Covid passports. In the House—would you believe it?—a Minister added me and other Members of the House of Lords to a list of Covid deniers for raising this. I felt nervous raising questions or being critical—being not cynical but sceptical.

There is no mention in the report of free speech. You cannot have a constitution report without noting that, although no laws were brought in to attack free speech during this time, free speech suffered by behind-the-scenes methods. I look forward to at least having a discussion about the forthcoming Bill of Rights, which will apparently put free speech as a core societal value; we need to protect it.

This is not over yet by any stretch. I worry that the Government have got a taste for the extensive use of secondary legislation and a lack of checks on executive powers. The new Schools Bill, which I am following at the moment, has rightly been criticised as a power grab to, to quote the noble Lord, Lord Baker, increase

“the powers of the Secretary of State and the Department for Education in a way unprecedented since 1870.”—[Official Report, 23/5/22; col. 689.]

Talking of schools, it is only now that we are admitting, as the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, mentioned, the devastating impact of school closures on young people. We should never forget the human cost of these constitutional changes.

It is interesting to note that, at the moment, there is a panic about those pupils who have not returned to school. That might have something to do with the fact that they were told that school was not so important after all; we locked the gates and education became a secondary matter. Guess what the Government’s response to the increased non-attendance of children at schools is? It is to bring in illiberal legislation that threatens to fine parents. I worry that the legislative track we were on is not over yet.

I make my final point as baroness of Buckley, which is in north Wales; I could not but mention the impact of the legal divergence between the four parts of the United Kingdom. The whole constitutional decision to have legal divergence was completely unnecessary and created a fragmented mood in the country. The mood was almost competitive between the different jurisdictions. My very own north Walian leader, Mark Drakeford, wanted to prove that he was harder on lockdown than anyone else, and Nicola Sturgeon was competing with the UK Government. There were massive arguments in our family about what was an essential good or not, because we lived one mile apart on either side of the border between England and north Wales. If you went on a train, you had to dodge between having your mask on or off as you went down the track. It was ridiculous.

Legal divergence was also bad for scientific advice. If the Welsh jurisdiction said that its science showed one thing, and one mile away the science showed something else, why would any member of the public trust anything that was proved to be scientific evidence? The whole thing became, to be frank, farcical.

Tensions were exacerbated when the country faced a big challenge. Legal divergence has been hugely bad for the union in general and, as I said, was unnecessary. It would have been far better to have had a UK-wide response that we all united around.

Having said all that, I hope there is never a UK-wide response like this again, because I say: never again. This report gives us ample evidence as to why we should think that.

Elections Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Report stage
Wednesday 6th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, I am only saying that I have had no objection to it being a photo ID. The implication seems to be that we, as communities, would object and become disenfranchised but I have not found that. This is the only point I am trying to raise.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Verma. She has raised some of the issues that have prompted me to speak today. I have had a slight change of heart or mind—or my mind has been changed—which is why I am speaking, rather than repeating everything that I previously said.

My concerns about these photo IDs have fairly consistently been that there is no evidence of voter impersonation; it is not an issue. I do not like any move towards a “show us your pass” society. I worry about the unintended consequences of the Government pushing voter ID. In itself, it implies a problem which might then undermine trust in the democratic process. In particular, I echo the query from the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, about the consequences of people being turned away from polling stations. I have raised that before.

I am not very good at paperwork. I am the kind of person who gets it wrong. We have only to look at the best-intended interventions in Ukraine, or in Poland with the issuing of visas to Ukrainian refugees, to see that paperwork can go wrong. I am concerned about people turning up with the wrong thing and being sent away when they only have that day to vote. It would imply to fellow citizens that something dodgy was going on—that they were cheating, rather than just having the wrong piece of paper. What does the Minister advise in this instance?

In following the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, the problem is that we have probably got to a point where the ship has sailed regarding trust in democracy. Something has gone wrong. A constant theme in commentary on elections is that too many people seem to think it impossible for their side to have lost without implying that the other side has somehow won by cheating or that the vote was manipulated. I have been quite shocked by the commentary around the vote in Hungary, in which it has been implied that the only basis on which Orban won was become something dodgy happened and that it was unfair. That was said about Brexit, about Trump’s win and about Biden’s win. In all those instances, there have been implicit or explicit accusations by losers that somehow cheating has happened. There is a broader problem of the undermining of trust in democracy, which I think a lot of people in this Chamber and outside it have created, but it has nothing to do with voter ID.

When I started to talk to people after my speeches at Second Reading and in Committee, I was absolutely inundated by those who said that they disagreed with my opposition to voter ID. Those were not the cut-and-paste emails, which we all receive, or from organised lobby groups. They appeared to be from ordinary people. Pundits and loads of people contacted me—some I knew and some I did not. I have had more correspondence on this than on anything else.

I tell your Lordships this because I was taken aback, but when I started to talk to people, they said that because there is a big debate about trust in the democratic process, for whatever reason, they want reassurance that the ballot box is secure. People said that their motives were about protecting the vote and respecting democracy. I do not know that it can be described as fake news when the Government say there is a discussion about the democratic process, because it seems that there is. I suppose that has happened in the name of transparency, accountability and trying to be honest, so when people say that they want to shore up democracy through ID, I want to take at least some notice.

Another thing that was said, which fits in with the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Desai, and the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, was that they felt insulted by the idea that showing ID would put them off voting. They said, “You think we have such a low view of democracy, that we are so easily put off voting. The problem is that we go out to vote and when we do, people tell us we voted the wrong way.” That was their problem.

I have thought about it a lot and am still not sure but I am prepared to consider some compromise, particularly on Amendment 8. It does the job by letting us have some ID, as wide a range of IDs as possible so we do not have the problem of turning people away at the ballot box. It is also important to recognise that, whether we like it or not, there is a debate about how much we can trust the democratic process, so if there is a way of reassuring people—although I wish we had not got to that point—then maybe we should think about this.

I would like to know what the Minister thinks about the dangers of undermining our trust in democracy by pushing this too hard. Is there a compromise that the Government can make that would, relatively speaking, satisfy all people? Even the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, said he might reluctantly go down that line, despite it going against what he wants, which is to get rid of it altogether.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I did not participate in Committee but I intervened a couple of times, most notably when the noble Lord, Lord Collins, tried to pray me in aid to something I did not say. I want to put my position on the record and, bearing in mind the strictures from the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, I will be quick.

I want to add a cautionary note about this group of amendments. My caution is absolutely not because I want to restrict participation in our elections in any way. The reverse is true, as evidenced by the work we have done in the Select Committee on Citizenship and Civic Engagement, a follow-up report to which was published a week or two ago. I was lucky enough to chair that committee and place on record my thanks to the noble Lords, Lord Blunkett and Lord Collins, the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and my noble friend Lady Eaton. The committee did important work and I made sure that I personally sent the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, a copy of our report last week, as he had made a powerful speech during the last stage.

I argue that our primary objective has to be to ensure that people use their vote. I come back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, about declining turnout. While I understand that you cannot vote unless you are on the roll and have ways of voting, we have failed to persuade people that their vote is worth using, as evidenced by the figures laid out in the earlier remarks by the noble Lord.

I suggest that there are principally two reasons why people go out to vote. The first is that they see the act of voting as having their say—“to chuck the rascals out” is the famous phrase that is often used. We need to find ways to encourage more people to think like that, and about what is meant by being a citizen, and by rights and responsibilities. I am afraid that the Government’s response to our work to try to encourage citizenship education can so far be described only as desultory. I think I speak for all members of our committee when I say that we do not intend to give way on this. However, equally, nothing in these amendments deals with the question of participation. That is the problem, and that is what I am really interested in getting at.

Elections Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

I listened closely to the noble Lord’s speech, and it is perfectly true that he made a very long and important argument about the specifics, but he also expressed a general preference for proportional representation.

I wish to make a very simple point, which I think came across very well in what the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, said. He described how, even under the strict chairmanship of Lord Jenkins, it took 12 months of what he called “immense complication” to look at these issues. That is precisely the problem with all this. It is dangerous to confess to ignorance in this very learned and expert House, but despite covering politics in various ways for 40 years, I have never been able fully to understand or explain all the different voting systems that clever people keep coming up with, and that is an argument against them. If somebody who is paid a salary to try to understand these things still finds them complicated, there is something wrong with them. All right, I am stupid, but I make the point that it is very important for the buy-in of a democracy that people can understand what is being said, what is being offered and how to perform the operation they are invited to perform. They can do so under first past the post, but under proportional representation they cannot, broadly speaking. Therefore, I oppose these amendments and support the Bill.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I used to be a full supporter of first past the post, very much in the spirit of the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, in relation to accountability. However, over recent years I have started to see a problem that I wanted to raise—I am not just doing this as counselling. Because of the whole of Clause 11, we have been invited, in a way, by the Government to discuss electoral systems, and that is one of the problems with the way it has emerged. I would not be discussing it if they had not brought it in, but now that everyone else is discussing it, I will join in.

I was minded to support Amendment 136 until I realised that it was an amendment that would overturn a referendum, which struck me as not a good idea and not likely to fit in with my general position on these things. It is perhaps ironic to those people in this Committee arguing for proportional representation that I was elected using that method in the European elections and came top of the list. I do not know if people think that was a fully democratic system, because a lot of people did not think that I should have been there at all, or elected in that way, when I stood only for very particular reasons, as we know.

These are the problems with first past the post in 2022 that I cannot get my head around. Through this Bill, we want to reassure voters that elections are watertight in terms of fairness and that they represent what they want as voters. In a number of debates, we have discussed our worries about different clauses that might be seen to be disenfranchising voters—sometimes I think these are overwrought worries, but they are worries none the less. It seems to me, however, that first past the post, in lots of ways, makes many people’s votes redundant and represents a frustration with what is happening politically.

I remember that before the 2016 referendum I was invited to a think tank gathering at which most of the people were supporters of remaining in the European Union. They assumed that I was as well, because that is what nice think-tankers did. They said that one problem they had was that the referendum would not be taken seriously if they did not get a big turnout, so what could they do to get a big turnout? The consensus in the room was that it must be emphasised that a vote in the 2016 referendum was a once-in-a-lifetime vote where, for once, every single person’s vote would count. They went out and argued that very successfully and the nation said, “My goodness, for once my vote really will count.” As a consequence, people took it seriously that they were being asked to make a big constitutional decision and that this was one election where every individual vote meant something. In the build-up to the referendum, it led to grass-roots discussion groups being set up around the country, family conferences and people getting together with their research. People took the whole thing extremely seriously and there was an atmosphere of vibrancy and buzz, with people saying, “What should we do?” as they assessed the pros and cons. People rose to the challenge that their vote counted, an idea which I think really resonated.

Elections Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Woodley (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree that Clause 1 should be struck from the Bill, if the Bill itself is not withdrawn. The clause is a dangerous solution to a problem that, as has been said, does not even exist. Requiring photo ID to vote will not strengthen democracy; it will weaken it. There is no doubt in my mind about that. It will damage the democratic rights of millions, disproportionately disfranchising poorer and ethnic minority voters, who, as we know, tend to lean towards Labour in elections.

There is no evidence that voter personation, which is what the clause is supposed to tackle, is a problem in this country. On the contrary, in 2020 there were just 139 allegations of voter fraud, which led to one conviction and one caution for personation. In 2019, although there were local, European and general elections, there was again just one conviction for personation out of 60 million votes—no problem there, then.

If this was not so serious it would be laughable. I am somewhat sceptical. It is not a coincidence that this Tory scheme for voter ID to suppress working-class voters is a mirror image of what has been done to black, Latino and American workers by the Republicans, as has been said. You would almost think that the ruling class was organising across the Atlantic to change the rules of the game itself. Surely not.

It is important to highlight the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee’s warning that Clause 1

“risks upsetting the balance of our current electoral system, making it more difficult to vote and removing an element of the trust inherent in the current system.”

We should not forget that.

Then, of course, there is the financial cost of compulsory voter ID: £120 million over 10 years according to the Cabinet Office. No election in British history has ever been undermined by mass fraud, so why are the Government spending millions of pounds to fix a problem that does not exist?

I believe the answer may simply be that the Government are worried that many working-class voters are starting to realise they were hoodwinked at the last election. Workers and their families are watching this Government take decision after decision that make the very rich richer while the rest of society is squeezed dry by the escalating cost of living crisis that we are confronted with now.

The Government’s total capitulation to the big energy firms has led to eye-watering bills that are rising higher and higher. The national insurance hike next month is a tax on jobs that will hammer the working poor most of all. Real-terms cuts to social security are driving millions into despair and destitution. All this pain and misery is against a backdrop of rampant inflation and crony Covid contracts for the chums of the Prime Minister, who mostly, in my view, likes to party.

Workers are waking up to the Government’s ideological assault on trade unions, the last line of defence against the bad bosses and a system that has attacked them, including this very Bill, especially Clause 27 on gagging trade unions, which we debated last week. Let us look at the Government’s much-hyped Employment Bill. I repeat: let us look at the Government’s much-hyped Employment Bill—except we cannot. It is nowhere to be seen, despite the manifesto pledge to

“make the UK the best place in the world to work.”

It would be scandalous if this promised legislation was again absent from the forthcoming gracious Address. Perhaps, the Minister would like to share his thoughts with us all on this subject.

Faced with the reality that the Tory party is not on their side, many workers and their families who lent the Prime Minister their vote to get Brexit done now want their vote back. This Bill as a whole, and especially Clause 1, looks like a blatant attempt to limit the damage this will cause the Conservatives at the next election.

In this place, we are privileged to play a key role by helping to improve legislation and holding the Government to account. We would not be doing our job properly if we did not challenge bad Bills, and this is a very bad Bill indeed. The Minister will deny it, but Clause 1 is a key component of a backwards, Trumpian attempt to rig democracy in favour of the Tories. That is why I support the cross-party call by my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti and others to strike it out. I urge the whole House to do exactly the same.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I support this proposal that the clause stand part but I have some caveats. A high-profile Guardian commentator alleged:

“The Tories are introducing voter ID purely because they know the people lacking relevant ID are most likely to vote Labour, and they want to prevent them from voting.”


One Labour MP described it as

“a cynical and ugly attempt to rig the system to disempower the poorest and most marginalised.”

I do not believe that at all. It seems to me those arguments—we have heard some here—are concrete evidence that cranky, conspiratorial thinking is alive and well across left and right. I am not convinced that this is a Trumpian plot, an attempt by the Republican Party to take over the Conservatives or anything else. The view that everything is a sinister international plot—and goodness knows I see a lot of that on social media—is itself in danger of fuelling a cynicism and nihilistic distrust in institutions and politics. We should not necessarily resort to it to oppose voter ID. I do not think we need to.

I am prepared to take at face value that the Conservative Government are trying to fulfil their manifesto pledge to tackle potential voter fraud. There certainly has been concern about it although, as it happens, that has largely been confined to postal votes, which are being dealt with separately. But even if I take it in good faith that they are trying to shore up trust in the electoral system, my big problem is that voter ID is a wrongheaded way of doing it; it is likely to backfire and stoke up mistrust.

Let me explain a few of those points. The voting system in Britain is the outcome of centuries of struggle and civic engagement, and often, indeed, class struggle. The degree of trust that allows us as a country to allow citizens to vote on the basis of just showing up and giving their name—it is as simple as that—is a real success story. That is something that the Government and all of us should be proud of and celebrate; and—guess what—there is no evidence that it has been subverted in any way. We should have the same pride that we do not live in a “produce your papers” society, based on constant official checks by authorities. It is important to maintain that distinction between citizens and the state.

That is why so many of us campaigned against ID cards in general when the Labour Party tried to bring them in, and more recently balked at vaccine passports pushed by the Government and backed by the Opposition. Even fully vaccinated enthusiasts for the jab such as myself worried that saying, “You have to show your papers”, was an egregious, divisive encouragement to look at one’s fellow citizens with suspicion. We are now talking about showing your papers when you go to vote. General ID cards are a barrier to being able to go freely about our business, while voter ID is a barrier to being able to vote freely. In that context, voter ID is not just a technical matter; no matter what method is used, it creates obstacles to voting.

I do not think that it will lead to mass disfranchisement and, to be honest, I find it slightly awkward when people say that poorer people and the marginalised will not be able to cope with filling in the forms or getting the ID; that is potentially rather patronising and is not our objection. Let us imagine what it will do to a bond of trust, however, if you go along to vote and witness numerous people being turned away from polling stations; we know that people will be turned away because we have seen pilot schemes in which that has happened. Surely that would put a question mark over those electors, as though they were somehow a bit dodgy, when in fact they have just got the wrong paperwork.

Then there are other kind of nightmare scenarios that I dread. There just needs to be a handful of officious, jobsworth local officials overzealously treating people as though they are would-be cheats with the paperwork, and chaos will ensue. Anyone who has had to go to a government department and deal with the paperwork will know that that is all completely feasible. What is more, the more the Government double down on this—I do not understand why they are doing so— the more they send the message that the voting system itself is a major problem. It gives the misleading impression that large-scale fraud is going on that needs to be tackled, which is just so negative. In fact, as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, pointed out, there are positive ways of talking about engaging voters rather than this negative view that somehow we have to stop all those people who are trying to sneak in and cheat.

Democracy is based on trust. At its heart lies the belief that all people should be treated equally at the ballot box regardless of any social or educational inequality. Your status is irrelevant when you get to that polling booth. The most lowly person is equal to the highest person in the land—every vote is equal. That is based on the belief that everyone can be trusted to decide on the future direction of society and to vote in good faith. That is what democracy is all about.

When a very few bad apples—maybe only one, according to the evidence—become the focus for a Government to reorganise the election practice, or when there is a greater problem of distrusting democracy and democratic institutions, which I talked about at Second Reading, it is a bigger problem, but I do not think that this solves it. When that bigger problem of distrust in democratic institutions is narrowed down to take the form of a managerial, bureaucratic solution, I fear that democracy itself will be damaged. I fear that it will fuel only a climate in which future election results will be open to suspicion and in which the integrity of the system is undermined. However, I appeal to those people who agree in principle with this to avoid cheap sectarianism in making their case.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

The noble Lord is misinterpreting the data within those datasets and what the Electoral Commission and an individual research team undertook to do. They were trying to establish the level of concern. Had the noble Lord allowed me to continue for a few more sentences, I would have identified why I am concerned about that. It is not about a particular election; it is about when elections or referendums become close and contentious.

I speak here as a remainer—I was not a Brexiteer. When a referendum, or some form of ballot, becomes both close and contentious, the way in which the ballots have been conducted comes out as a matter of concern. As a result, it is precisely for those reasons that I am concerned that we should have certainty and security in the process.

I do not regard it as a process of voter suppression. President Trump—or Donald Trump, whatever you like to call him—had a basis of foundation for his arguments against the result at the last presidential election because there were uncertainties about the way in which it was conducted. As far as I am concerned, I want to see certainty in this country.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

In my Second Reading speech, I said that I recognised the sense in which we have a problem of people withholding loser’s consent. I made the point that that was one of the problems we had in America with Donald Trump withholding it. Loser’s consent is a fundamental part of democracy. For many years following the referendum result, there was a substantial number of people who wanted to withhold loser’s consent for a majoritarian vote. That is complicated and there is a political issue going on about why people no longer accept that.

My argument—and this is what I want to ask the noble Lord—is that it is not a technical matter. It has absolutely nothing to do with impersonation. Nobody accused anyone of impersonating anyone. All sorts of accusations have flown but not that one in the UK. Therefore, does this technical way of trying to tackle a problem imply that there is a big problem of impersonation when there is not and therefore fuel the very sentiments that we are trying to reassure people around? It just does not make any sense as a way of dealing with a problem that I agree exists.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her intervention. She and I clearly recognise that there is a problem and there are different problems and you can tackle them in different ways. I happen to believe that photo ID is a way of tackling the issue.

Unfortunately, the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, is not present. I was present on the Select Committee when he gave evidence. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, was also present but, unfortunately, he clearly is not able to be here today. The noble Lord, Lord Woolley, dealt with issues way beyond the question of voter registration and voter ID when he gave evidence to the Select Committee. It was an incredibly powerful submission then and it was last week in his contribution here. He was essentially talking about alienation from society in a much broader sense, and I recognise that. I live in the ward which I think has the largest proportion of voters of west African origin of any ward in the country—Camberwell Green. In Camberwell Green, if you want to collect a package from the Post Office—and I did last week—you are required to produce one of six items of ID, four of which are photo ID, two of which are not and one of those I do not think anybody would use in this day and age. In terms of general—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

I do not think the only metric is how satisfied people were. The most important thing is how comfortable people are with the integrity of the voting system. Just being satisfied with the first rollout of something is not going to give you the final answer. It is right to let local authorities, who know about their local electorates, work out how to reach these hard-to-reach communities. It is right to enlist civil society groups to do the same, as well as political parties, which should know their local areas and know how best to do it.

We know there will be some teething problems, and some voters may not bring the right voter ID with them the first time they come. But according to both the Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators, this happened to a very small degree during the pilots. As I said earlier, pilots are there to find problems so that they can be overcome. I hope that noble Lords will stand back and look at these reforms—

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

I am just about to finish, if the noble Baroness does not mind. I hope that noble Lords will stand back and look at these reforms through 21st-century eyes and see them as sensible and proportionate, and as a reflection of how we live our lives on a daily basis.

Elections Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Thursday 10th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

Yes, that is fine. I think there is even a case for deleting these clauses in Committee.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I was not intending to speak on this part but I feel very queasy about the way a number of noble Lords are using the situation in Ukraine to have a go at this part of the Bill. People are indeed dying for democracy, but they are not dying to defend an Electoral Commission—an unelected quango in the UK. I think it is rather unbecoming to use that.

The Electoral Commission is relatively new to the UK’s democratic life and democracy thrived when it did not exist. At the very least, we should stop aggrandising the Electoral Commission as though the electorate depend on it. There are problems with it and there are problems with the way the Government are trying to deal with it. I am not necessarily defending the Government’s way of solving the problem of the Electoral Commission—

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

Will the noble Baroness give way?

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

Go on, defend it. The noble Baroness used to be in the Communist Party.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Very good, well done everyone, carry on.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

The noble Baroness said that we had a functioning electoral system before we had the Electoral Commission. The commission was a move to improve it, just as votes for women was a very great step forward. I am sure she would not want to go back to the time before that.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I appreciate that I am surrounded by Labour noble Lords who object to what I am saying. One of the great advantages of votes for women was that occasionally we get to say the odd thing that does not go with the grain.

I am raising the problem that the Electoral Commission is not necessarily all good. I want to say this about it. There was a great deal of dissatisfaction about the Electoral Commission’s lack of independence in its response to the 2016 referendum, which I referred to in my Second Reading speech. Such were the concerns about the bias of the Electoral Commission in that period that it had to apologise for the bias of many of its members. This is not me saying it—I am quoting the Electoral Commission, which we are all told we have to listen to.

The bias led to many voters feeling that the Electoral Commission was not fit for purpose and was in fact biased against their wishes as an electorate in that referendum. Many of those people were not Tory cronies but Labour voters—Labour voters who may no longer be Labour voters because they became disillusioned by the fact that the Labour Party told them they had got it wrong, they were duped and they needed to think again. While the Labour Benches are very keen on democracy, they were less keen on the democratic decisions of many of their voters in 2016 and subsequently.

At the very least, therefore, it is important that we look at the role of the Electoral Commission critically and seriously. I do not think the way the Government have gone about reforming it will clarify or help things. I will make those points another time. But to say, as has just been said by a number of noble Lords, that we have a responsibility to take the Bill and thwart it, scupper it, throw it out and all the rest of it, seems to me rather to fly in the face of democracy. A little humility is maybe needed to remember that the plans for the Elections Bill were in the Conservative Party manifesto—which noble Lords will be delighted to know I did not vote for, before they all start.

Nevertheless, I clocked that they were there. We in this House are unelected legislators and need to take at least a smidgen of note of what the electorate might consider priorities. Not everything is a Conservative Party plot but one reason many people voted for the Conservative Party in 2019 was that they felt abandoned by the opposition parties.

[Baroness D’Souza (CB)]

My Lords, I wonder whether noble Lords are fully aware that this is Committee and not Second Reading.

Peerages: Recommendations

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, for tabling this Question for Short Debate, as it raises some interesting challenges and thorny dilemmas for all of us, eliciting a range of interesting contributions so far. In its own terms, I rather like the intention of making justifications for appointed peerages more transparent, with all that information published in the public realm. As a believer in sunlight being the best disinfectant, I believe that the more the public can see all the aspects of the inner workings of Parliament the better. However, I will raise several caveats about whether this would really lead to greater public trust in this House.

As someone whose appointment here was relatively recent and, to say the least, contentious and elicited widespread media comment and speculation—although I note that conspiratorial misinformation is not just a preserve of trolls on social media but alive and well in the mainstream—I have every interest in a more open system. But as an outsider before I entered this place, I always thought that the opaque way people were offered peerages inevitably fuelled suspicion. It was always far clearer to me why hereditary Peers were here than appointed Peers.

The truth is that none of us is here legitimately in terms of democracy. I appreciate that the main public concern is often the notion of cash for honours. Buying oneself into the legislature is obviously unconscionable, but even this accusation can be a lazy trope in our cynical times. For example, as we speak, plenty of people are saying that my peerage and those of several other recent non-party appointments were paid for by dirty Russian money—because, you know, Brexit was a Putin plot, et cetera. This conspiracy theory nonsense is confined not just to the crackpot fringes but given respectable support by mainstream commentators. I am equally wary of concluding that if someone happens to be wealthy or Russian and ends up in this House they are inevitably dodgy.

In general, I am suspicious when the corruption of democracy is confined narrowly to “follow the money” critiques. Is it any less distorting of the legitimacy of the legislature that many Peers here lost their seats because the electorate rejected them in elections, yet here they are, still making laws?

Will the proposed solutions help clear up this mess? I am certainly not keen on endorsing statutory appointments commissions with enhanced vetting powers. This sounds more like a dystopian bureaucratic HR department. Who would sit on such a commission: unelected Peers or civil servants? I do not see how that is more legitimate than any Prime Minister, who at least notionally is accountable to Parliament and the voters.

I note that one proposal is about establishing a new criteria for individuals to meet: a “copious merit” test—I am definitely sure that I would not pass that. Who decides what is meritorious? Is it a moral purity test? Would it be expertise? In which case, are we advocating a Chamber of philosopher kings, removing even further decision-making from the plebs?

All these proposals skirt round the main problem: that this House stands on shaky, undemocratic foundations, as we cannot be held to account, removed or sacked by the voters. Any appointments system will always be flawed or open to cronyism or patronage accusations when it is removed from the most important scrutineers—the demos. The very basis of any legitimate parliamentarian claim to wield the power of lawmaking should be the electorate, yet the House of Lords stands above it. Until that is resolved, I am afraid every other proposal might end up as PR and spin.

Elections Bill

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I warmly welcome the noble Lord, Lord Moore of Etchingham. His witty, erudite and insightful speech shows what an asset he will be here.

The Elections Bill is designed to strengthen the integrity of the electoral process and therefore strengthen UK democracy per se. That is a worthy aim that we should all embrace, but I worry that the Bill takes an overly technocratic and legalistic approach that evades deeper problems and cultural trends that undermine democratic norms today, from assaults on free speech to the fashion for casting aspersions on the capacity and motives of voters. When I am lobbied by opponents of the Bill, who say that the legislation “would not look out of place in Hungary, Russia or China”, I fear that hyperbole and partisan paranoia might distort the important public debates we need to have about democratic elections that this Bill should positively kick-start.

Like other noble Lords I have a lot of specific areas I want to ask questions about in Committee. Will restrictions on third party campaigning lead to disengagement of civil society organisations from political activism? Why on earth did the Government table changing the voting system so late in the day? For now, I have some comments on the alleged voter fraud issue. I welcome the Bill tackling the problems of postal voting. The noble Lord, Lord Pickles, described concerns over harvesting votes, which I think many of us have shared for some time. Of course postal voting is necessary, but it should be a narrow, particular form of voting and not a go-to device so open to abuse. Tightening this would help and would shore up the legitimacy of elections, I have no doubt.

The same motivation is used by the Government to justify the controversial voter ID scheme. However, I am less convinced that this illiberal show-us-your-papers measure is either proportionate or necessary when the data shows such minuscule examples of voter fraud, as we have heard. I do not go along with the overblown conspiracy theories that see voter ID as a dastardly Tory plot of “deliberate voter suppression”, as one Guardian editorial called it, or an evil attempt to rig the system to disempower the poorest and most marginalised. No, I think that kind of discussion is unhelpful. My objections are rather those raised by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, about unintended consequences. Rather than reassuring voters that elections are not being corrupted by fraud, voter ID gives the impression that vote rigging is such a wide-scale problem that we need to change the law. Surely this puts an unnecessary question mark over election results and inadvertently sows suspicion among the public of their fellow voters.

Perhaps one underlying reason for all this focus on fraud is a more worrying problem beyond technical solutions: namely, the increasing disillusion with the democratic decision-making process, as expressed by a greater willingness to refuse to accept the outcome of legitimate votes. We have seen the emergence of the withdrawal of loser’s consent from recent election results. In America, Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” assault on the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election as President is a case in point. Sadly, the precedent for this was set closer to home, in the attempts to frustrate and suppress the democratic result of the 2016 referendum, often led by powerful voices in the establishment, with celebrity QCs turning to the law courts, the People’s Vote campaign, and the likes of John Major—who has been cited by everybody here—and Lib Dem Lords, in fact, calling for a second referendum that demanded going back to the polls until voters gave the correct answer.

While many who oppose voter ID worry about disenfranchising electors now, for me the deeper problem is how widespread it has become to tell millions of voters, many who voted for the first time, that that once-in-a-generation vote should not have counted, with attempts to de-legitimise and tear up their vote by maligning 17.4 million citizens for being duped and not being educated enough to know what they were voting for. So, if the aim of Part 1 of the Bill is to bolster trust in elections, I suggest that far more effective than voter ID would be a robust campaign to restore the value of loser’s consent and to ensure that democratic outcomes are respected, however unpalatable those in power find voters’ choices.

There has also been a lot of disquiet expressed today about proposals to hold the Electoral Commission to account, critiqued as dangerous government interference in the Electoral Commission’s independence. I want to ask how independent the Electoral Commission really is. The commission outed itself as breaking its own impartiality code when the UK had the largest vote in its history. Its chair and commissioners expressed their regret that the electorate voted to leave the EU—in other words, that they voted the wrong way.

These remain sentiments were not just confined to their opinions but were wielded as power, with so much systematic investigation, prosecution, threats of fines and ultimately harassment of leave campaign groups and activists that the present chair of the Electoral Commission, John Pullinger, had to issue a public apology to the likes of Darren Grimes and so on. While leavers have been cleared, there are still those who cite the Electoral Commission investigations as an official stamp of approval to repeat misinformation about the legitimacy of Brexit.

I think it is time we questioned whether democracy benefits at all from a quango set up to adjudicate on and stand above democracy itself. I remind noble Lords that there is already a powerful and fully independent body that can hold politicians and political parties to account. It is called the electorate. I appreciate that my power-to-the-people stance will be dismissed sneerily as populism, but I am rather proud of trusting the people myself.

Downing Street Parties: Police Investigation

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Tuesday 25th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I can only say to my noble friend that the reports of findings will be published in due course. There are investigations under way; those investigations, with great respect, should be allowed to continue and be completed. At that point, obviously, the matter of publication becomes condign.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, we have just done the Third Reading of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, and I wondered whether the Minister would comment on the number of people who have been fined extortionate amounts of money for breaking rules and have been accused of breaking the law. Will they receive an amnesty, as a consequence of realising there was wide-scale rule-breaking?

Secondly, the Minister said the business of government will carry on—needs to carry on—but is there a danger that the Government will be distracted by this police inquiry, and hugely important matters of rebuilding society after lockdown are going to be neglected because of this preoccupation with No. 10 and parties? That is what the country is worried about.

[Lord True (Con)]

I agree with what the noble Baroness has said, and I can certainly give her the assurance that the work of governing is continuing. I do note that people on the Benches opposite are extremely distracted by their perusal of social media. But on the first point, she will understand that I cannot comment on the judgments that are being made in the courts or any individual cases, but obviously, I hear what she is saying.

Retained EU Law

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I am not familiar with the detail of the points my noble friend raises. The general point that the EU tends to legislate in a highly risk-averse way, which has economic consequences, is a good one, and we will obviously have it in mind as we take this review forward.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, one of the key tenets of Brexit was the removal of substantive undemocratic layers above sovereign lawmaking to enhance democratic accountability. But does the Minister recognise that this control over laws is not yet a real, live felt experience for voters? If so, does he appreciate that the retained EU law review is an opportunity for a democratic engagement with voters—not stakeholders—about what they believe should be prioritised in the legislation, and that it should not be left to committees?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness makes an extremely good point, and it is our wish to widen this debate as far as we can. One of the ways of doing it, we hope, will be the standing commission on deregulation, which I referred to in my Statement of 16 September, on which I hope to be able to update the House fairly shortly.