Elections Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Rennard

Consideration of Commons amendments
Wednesday 27th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

I speak to Motion B1. We have already agreed in this House that compulsory photo ID at polling stations is not necessary. At no stage in any of our debates have the Government presented any evidence that compulsory photo ID is necessary, or proportionate, to what they try to claim is a risk of impersonation. In fact, there is proof that impersonation at the polling station is not a significant problem. The number of replacement ballot papers issued in the last general election, mostly because of a clerical error in crossing off the wrong name, was just 1,341 out of over 32 million ballot papers issued. That is an average of two replacement ballot papers in each constituency, or just one for every 30 polling stations. Mostly, they were issued due to clerical error, not fraud. Therefore, spending £180 million over the next 10 years to make photo ID a requirement to be allowed to vote is wholly disproportionate and unnecessary.

In an earlier debate, it was stated by a Minister that if someone claimed your vote, they had stolen it and you could not get it back. However, the replacement ballot paper system means that this is not the case. Unlike someone stealing a parcel of yours at the Post Office, you can get a replacement ballot paper if one has already been issued in your name and an investigation is made, if necessary.

The Minister referred to Northern Ireland and the recent increase in turnout, which I am sure is not due to the popularity of photo ID. If we look back to when photo ID first came in for the 2003 Northern Ireland Assembly election, we see that estimates were that around 25,000 voters did not vote because they did not have the required ID, and almost 3,500 people—2.3% of the electorate—were initially turned away for not possessing the required ID. There are 20 times as many people in Great Britain, so you can do the maths.

However, there is a sensible alternative to the Government’s proposals. It should be seen as a sensible compromise. It would safely address any legitimate concern that the Government claim to have about impersonation at the polling station. Perhaps significantly, it would also fulfil what was in the Conservative Party’s manifesto in 2019.

In addition to the documents considered acceptable to the Government as proof of identity, there is a document already issued to every voter by the official electoral registration officer. That document is the official polling card. In the local election pilots conducted under the Government’s own rules, the poll card was deemed an acceptable form of voter ID in some council areas and was chosen by 93% of voters where it was an option. This compares with 5% choosing to use their driving licence and 1% choosing their passport. Most significantly, the number of voters turned away from polling stations was half the level of that in areas requiring photo ID. That is the real point of the Electoral Commission’s analysis of those pilots.

Every voter on the electoral register is issued with a polling card. There is therefore no additional cost in making it an acceptable form of ID. A fraudster would have not just to impersonate someone at a polling station but to have stolen their poll card in advance. In the unlikely event of it being stolen, it could be replaced, and someone using the original could be arrested at the polling station for using it. So let us offer this compromise from this House. It offers greater security but no discrimination and no great expensive additional bureaucracy.

I believe that we do not require substantial further debate on this issue tonight, but we do need to act to prevent abuse of a majority in the other place.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I will not say very much about the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, because I wish to concentrate on that in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. All I will say is that I think we need identity cards in this country, full stop.

I feel very troubled tonight. At Second Reading, I made it quite plain that I was strongly opposed to Clauses 14 and 15. I made a similar comment in Committee. On Monday, I was glad to be able to support the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, the noble Lords, Lord Blunkett and Lord Wallace of Saltaire, and my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham, when, along with nine or 10 Conservative colleagues, I voted for the amendments in the name of the noble and learned Lord to delete those two clauses.

I am troubled because, frankly, although I accept the good intentions of the Minister, my noble friend Lord True—his integrity is not in any doubt whatever—I do not think that tinkering will really meet the points that were made by those of us who wanted to delete the clauses. It is not for me to say that we should insist, because it is very much the noble and learned Lord’s amendment and he has made his decision, which, again, I respect totally. However, faced with a choice between tinkering and tinkering, I personally think that we have missed the opportunity to put this Bill in order by deleting two clauses that are fraught with danger to our constitution and election system.

The best we can hope for now is really scrupulous post-legislative scrutiny to see how this works out—it is essential that that happens—but we are put under a degree of pressure. Although this is the first stage of ping-pong on this Bill, when I came in this morning, all the robes for Prorogation were hanging up. The Government are clearly determined to prorogue Parliament tomorrow and not to use time later this week—which could have been used—or next week for a battle. I therefore find myself very much in the position of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, at an earlier stage today, when he praised the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, but said, “Really, the time has come”. I believe it is quite clear that the time has come for the end of this Session of Parliament. It is not one that will go down in the history books as a Session of glory or a Session that has enhanced the democratic credentials of government. It will not go down in history as a Session that has seen our country maintain its staunch defence of the rule of law, as it has done in the past, but that is where we are.

Frankly, the most honourable thing I can do tonight is not to vote. I believe that we should have deleted the clauses, but we have not done so. We gave the Commons an opportunity to delete the clauses, but they completely spurned us. They are entitled to do that, but I do not necessarily think that they were wise in taking the line they took. However, that is the line they took, and it is the line they will take if the amendments in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, are passed tonight.

We should just mark this as a pretty sad episode and, as I say, scrutinise the legislation once it is on the statute book. We will need to come back to these issues. We must make absolutely sure that the Electoral Commission is not trammelled in its work and is able, as similar bodies in other democratic countries are, to ensure that our elections are scrupulously controlled, totally impartial and never subject to the whims of any political party—right, left or centre. This is a sad day for me, but that is the conclusion I have reached.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Rennard

Monday 14th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard]

Those of us who have followed in great detail the Committee proceedings on this Bill will know that I have argued at length, together with other noble Lords, for a large number of measures that could greatly improve the accuracy and completeness of the electoral register, particularly schemes of data matching and data mining, which would enable public and private databases—

[Lord Cormack]

Was it this purity of motive that provoked the Deputy Prime Minister to make his off-the-cuff statement on 6 August?

[Lord Rennard]

The Deputy Prime Minister’s statement on 6 August was clearly not off the cuff and noble Lords to my left should have been aware of what he was going to say in the event of other issues which took place.

If I might proceed with some of my arguments, I would also like to say that for some of these Benches, another argument is very important. In the long deliberations on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, we considered the relative effects on the power of the Executive and Parliament of reducing the number of MPs from 650 to 600. My party has always considered the need to reduce the number of MPs in the context of issues such as greater devolution and decentralisation, and the reform of your Lordships’ House. Not all my noble friends behind me will agree on some key aspects of Lords reform, but we all want to see an effective second Chamber able to hold a Government, of any party, to account. The failure to achieve—

Queen’s Speech

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Rennard

Monday 14th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard]

I think that Lloyd George in his many arguments against the hereditary basis of the House of Lords felt otherwise as he tried to introduce radical legislation.

Turning to more recent times, I would dare to suggest that opposition to the Government’s legislative programme in the past two years has often gone well beyond polite exhortations to the Commons to reconsider. This House has real purpose and real power, even if limited today to the significant power to delay non-financial matters. The power to delay can in practice often be the power to prevent.

The issue of legitimacy for this House to exercise its powers has been debated for more than 100 years. It is frequently suggested that we may now be moving too rapidly to conclude that debate. As I have said previously, it is probably only in this place that a Government intent on proceeding with a principle contained in all major party manifestos and introducing a phased programme of democratic reform over about 15 years could be accused of acting with “undue haste” with only a mere century of deliberation so far.

Proposals for reform appear to have shocked many noble friends to my left in this Chamber—I do not mean to my political left, of course—as well as a few around me. Some of those around me should recall that we have two words in our party title. The first word is “Liberal”, which takes us back to the party of Lloyd George and Asquith and that fight to end the hereditary principle and, at least in Asquith’s case, to replace it with the popular principle for membership of the House.

[Lord Cormack]

My noble friend will of course remember that both Lloyd George and Asquith accepted hereditary peerages.

[Lord Rennard]

Indeed they did, and some of us accepted life peerages. Some of us who I know were strong supporters of the principle of democracy and elections to this place accepted peerages because it was the only way in which we might have a voice in these debates and eventually a vote to support those principles.

For Members around me perhaps looking for a little further guidance as to where our party should be on this issue, I suggest that there is a clue in the second word of our party name, “Democrat”. I take a simple view about the nature of representative democracy: I strongly believe that those who approve the laws should be elected by those who have to obey them.

As for noble Lords who take a more Conservative position, I understand that it took a long time for their predecessors to accept such principles as the universal franchise, the secret ballot and the abolition of rotten boroughs, but I might remind them of what their party has said in more recent times. Under the leadership of Mr William Hague in 2001, the Conservative Party manifesto stated:

“We would like to see a stronger House of Lords in the future, including a substantial elected element”.

Under the leadership of the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Lympne, in 2005, the Conservative Party manifesto said that,

“proper reform of the House of Lords has been repeatedly promised but never delivered … We will seek cross-party consensus for a substantially elected House of Lords”.

In 2010, the manifesto on which 307 Conservative MPs were elected stated:

“We will work to build a consensus for a mainly-elected second chamber to replace the current House of Lords”.

[Lord Cormack]

I know that my noble friend likes to be accurate, so would he acknowledge that in 2007, when another place voted on these proposals, more Conservative Members voted against the party’s official policy of 100% elected than for it? That policy, enunciated in manifestos, has been repeatedly repudiated by the majority of Members of the Conservative Party.

[Lord Rennard]

Indeed, but the question must be put as to why the party stood on that manifesto in 2010 as clearly and unequivocally as it did. The Conservatives stood on that basis over 10 years, with three manifestos— whether there would be a substantially or predominantly elected element or changes to the House of Lords. It was on that basis that they were elected. That is a matter for others to judge them on.

It will be to the relief of the House that I will not quote every Labour manifesto on the subject of House of Lords reform. The noble Lord, Lord Grocott, tried to refer to 11 of them in brief. I will quote just one, which happens to be the one on which the last Labour Government were elected. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, is not in his place. He suggested that whenever the Labour Party advocated Lords reform, it lost. I seem to recall that the Labour Party won the 1997 general election, and did so decisively with a majority of 179.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Rennard]

I simply think that PR is a matter of democracy and we need democracy within this House.

Given the Labour Party’s recent history on House of Lords reform, I am surprised by this new-found enthusiasm for a referendum on the issue. I note that that was in the Labour Party’s manifesto in 2010 but not previously. In the 1996-97 period, leading Liberal Democrats such as my noble friend Lord Maclennan of Rogart, together with the late Robin Cook and other noble Lords and Baronesses—some of them present in the House tonight—agreed a fundamental reform of the House of Lords in the event of the Conservatives losing the 1997 general election. There was no suggestion that there should be a referendum on the proposals. It seems that if there is to be a referendum on the issue it would be because parliamentarians in the other place have failed to do the job that they were elected to do.

I would like to refer briefly back to the report on referendums—

[Lord Cormack]

How does my noble friend square his championing of the referendums for electing mayors of our cities and for AV with resolutely being against a referendum for the biggest constitutional change in the composition of our Parliament that we will have seen for over a century?

[Lord Rennard]

My noble friend and other noble Lords will never have heard me argue the case for referendums for mayors. Noble Lords present during the debates last year on the Localism Bill will have heard me express strong reservations about referendums. There are often major problems with the conduct of referendums. The only exception I have thought of to my general belief in representative democracy above referendums is that the system by which Members are chosen in the place that has primacy should be chosen not by those Members themselves but by the voters.

A number of noble Lords have suggested this evening that electors a year ago chose first past the post and rejected proportional representation—that was the implication of a number of arguments. I remind noble Lords that the option of proportional representation was never offered to the voters last year because noble Lords from other parties and Members of another place were too fearful that people might decide to have that system rather than first past the post.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Rennard

Monday 18th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords—

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords—

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Lord Cormack and Lord Rennard

Monday 21st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, not long ago the noble Lord argued quite passionately that it was too much for your Lordships to consider together the two items of the voting system for Westminster and constituency boundaries. If he is now suggesting that the alternative to piecemeal legislation would have been a more comprehensive piece of legislation dealing with those two issues and the issues of fixed-term Parliaments and House of Lords reform, he is rather contradicting the argument that he made not very long ago.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, was not drawn by the somewhat mischievous question of the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes. Many of us hope that it will be a very long time indeed before we debate elections of any sort to the Second Chamber. When that day comes, we hope that those proposals, whatever they may be, will be seen off.

For the first time, I find myself almost wholly in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, in the substance of his speech proposing the amendment. As he says, it seems quite extraordinary that, in a Bill which is supposed to be clipping the wings of the Prime Minister, we should be giving the Prime Minister such tremendous power. Unless we are to appoint a soothsayer to the Prime Minister—“Beware the Ides of March”—for the life of me, I do not see that any Prime Minister could conceivably be able to forecast so accurately that he could bring forward the date of an election by two months. As the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, has said and as the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, and my noble friend Lord Norton have indicated, that should certainly be deleted from the Bill.

On the postponement of an election, one can understand that there could be a great national emergency or tragedy—one sincerely hopes that there will not be—when it would be quite improper, totally insensitive and wrong to plough ahead with a general election on a specific day. I will not rehearse the sort of things that could happen but we have talked about the foot and mouth crisis of 2001. I was one of those in the other place who strongly supported Prime Minister Blair when he came to the House and proposed that the local elections should be postponed. That was entirely right. God forbid that there should be some disaster like 9/11, but in such circumstances one understands that it would be right to postpone the date of an election.

It is important that the spirit of the amendment of my noble friend Lord Norton should be taken on board by the Government and that there should be a clear specification of the sort of circumstances. I also think it is important, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, has said that such a proposal should be put to and approved by both Houses of Parliament. I was delighted that he made that point so clearly and forcefully. Of course, we shall not be voting on this tonight but I hope that my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness will be able to give us a very positive and encouraging reply. He is a man of infinite resource and he is always genial and helpful to the House, but if he could not give us a real promise on this point of significant change to the current wording in the Bill, then I think on Report there would be amendments which many of us would feel obliged to support.