Elections: Personation

Debate between Lord Pickles and Lord Young of Cookham

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My Lords, compulsory voter ID was recommended four years ago by the independent Electoral Commission. It has repeated that recommendation several times since. On the Electoral Commission sit representatives of all three parties, including the noble Lord’s own. I remind him that the chair of the Electoral Commission said on this subject last year:

“We have been pressing for this change”—


that is, voter ID—

“not because we believe that voting for someone else … is … a … problem now. But the opportunity for fraud of this kind is clearly there. We want to address this before it becomes a problem, and part of a wider reduction of trust in the system”.

He went on to say that to collect a parcel you have to produce ID, so it is reasonable that you should have to do so when you vote. He went on:

“Unfortunately this proposal risks becoming a political football”—


a sport unknown in your Lordships’ House.

[Lord Pickles (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that there is more to this than just voter impersonation? It is about the very probity of local government. In the inquiry that I carried out for the Prime Minister, I saw many forms of personation and fraud, but it was not the other place that was the target; it was local government. It was to take three or four wards and control a council, which releases hundreds of millions of pounds in contracts and grants. People who do not care about the probity of elections do care about the probity of contracts.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My Lords, the House is grateful for my noble friend’s report, Securing the Ballot, which included some 50 recommendations, nearly all of which are being pursued by the Government, including some that go directly to the issue that he raises: namely, the probity of local government. My noble friend will know better than anyone else that, if the level of corruption in a local authority reaches an unsustainable, unacceptable level, the Government can put in commissioners—which is exactly what my noble friend did with Tower Hamlets.