Representation of the People (England and Wales and Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Regulations 2024

Debate between Lord Rennard and Viscount Stansgate

Monday 13th May 2024 Grand Committee

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I take advantage of the fact that I have been relieved of the chairing of this Committee by my noble friend Lady Fookes to make one point. It follows the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, with which I wholly agree.

Last Thursday, I went to the Electoral Commission and had a discussion with the chief executive, with other colleagues. We were talking about various aspects of the preparations that they are making for the next general election. However, it will come as no surprise to anyone, and I rise only to make it clear to the Committee, that arising from that discussion was that there is bipartisan support for the point that I am making and which the noble Lord made. There is a crying need for the consolidation of electoral law. I very much hope that in a modest way, the Hansard record of this Grand Committee can be used as further proof of that, and that a future Government will find the legislative time to do this. It will be widely supported when it comes.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, has once again demonstrated the essential truth of one of his major campaign pledges during the 1993 Christchurch by-election—that he would be very good at scrutinising secondary legislation. It is always a pleasure to work with him on such matters.

I am tempted to ask the Minister how often the Government have had to bring forward measures such as this, as a tidying-up and housekeeping exercise, since the Elections Act of 2022 became law. I will resist. However, the current measure is one of numerous examples of the Government appearing not quite to understand what they were doing in seeking to implement a Brexit deal which lacked details when it was agreed.

In considering what is before us today, the Shadow Minister in the House of Commons, Florence Eshalomi, explained that understanding this measure required understanding five or six different Acts and regulations spanning over 40 years of legislation. To correct the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, it was in answer to a Question of mine in this place some time ago that it was revealed that at that stage there had been 16 statutory instruments involved in implementing the Elections Act 2022, running to 803 pages, all of which have been added to since then by one, two or three further statutory instruments. This is simply the latest of them. The scale of the statutory instruments required by the Elections Act has presented a significant problem, not just for Ministers but particularly for those responsible for the conduct of our elections. I believe that the burden may have become intolerable and the risk of mistakes in the conduct of our elections has been increased significantly by this complexity.



First, can the Minister update us on government thinking about what we are all asking for—the proper consolidation of all our election laws, as recommended by the Law Commission, which has done much work on this subject?

Secondly, does the Minister accept that the Government’s explanation of the difference in voting rights between EU citizens from Ireland, Cyprus and Malta and those from the 19 EU countries with which we do not have voting and candidacy treaties is an anomaly that requires a fundamental review of the franchises for all our UK elections? In particular, does she accept that the principle of residency would be a good basis for the local election franchise, as those who pay for and receive services from local government should be able to vote for the people in charge of those local authorities? The principle of no taxation without representation is a good one. The Government seem obsessed with removing people from the electoral rolls, making it unnecessarily hard to register and then harder to vote if you are among the categories of people without acceptable photo ID from the very tightly drawn list.

Thirdly, what steps will the Government take to ensure that the different levels of voting rights applying to different EU citizens will be explained to them all?

Finally, what progress is being made with the 19 EU member states with which we do not have treaties concerning voting and candidacy rights to agree such treaties, bringing EU citizens in those countries into line with those from Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, Poland and Denmark?

That said, the measure has our support as it provides some clarification and corrects mistakes that were inadvertently made.

Elections Bill

Debate between Lord Rennard and Viscount Stansgate

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Thursday 17th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

Sorry? There was a huge collection of different communities. But it is really essential that we engage with these people.

When the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, said that she wanted every single vote to count, I could not have agreed more. What we are talking about is ensuring that every single vote is available to be counted, and I hope that I might persuade her to change her mind on this. However, we will wait and see what the Minister says. I look forward to going back to that school, or indeed to any other which might invite me.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, the amendments from the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman and Lady Meacher, and the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, in this group, ask many sensible questions. Perhaps, no question is no more appropriate than that asked by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and we all look forward to the Minister’s answer to that in particular.

The questions in this group are about the cost to taxpayers which may follow from the Bill introducing compulsory photo ID at polling stations. As the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said, we need to know much more about the extra costs to be imposed upon local authorities. The Minister himself was a council leader not very long ago. He will know how local authority finances have been dramatically squeezed in recent years—real-terms cuts are perhaps 40%. Meanwhile, they have also retained the burden of statutory responsibilities, including many connected with social care.

The Government’s impact assessment suggests that making the changes proposed in relation to compulsory photo ID may cost as much as £230 million over 10 years, with a best estimate of £150 million. But the truth is that we do not really know. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, quoted the Association of Electoral Administrators saying that many of these costs were unquantifiable. But the costs of the scheme proposed by the Government are still significantly higher than those of a simpler form of voter identification, as was suggested in the last Conservative manifesto and in the report conducted on behalf of the Conservative Government by the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, who sits on their Benches. So the Government are proposing to go much further than in their own manifesto—a point that should be noted—and in the report by the noble Lord, Lord Pickles. But both proposals for compulsory voter ID, with or without photos, seem to me to have a lot of costs that are not necessarily included in the impact assessment, and neither scheme has been shown to be at all necessary in any way.

The Government claim that there is public support for the proposals on compulsory photo ID, but I doubt there would be much support if people knew that the cost over 10 years could be £230 million, or if they understood that voting at polling stations is as safe as it is at present. Perhaps the public would prefer their money to be spent on hundreds more police officers or more teachers, doctors and nurses. The Government spend a great deal of public money on market research, much of it perhaps for their own party benefit. In that research, they should perhaps test this proposition in one of their surveys: should there be compulsory photo ID at polling stations, or police officers, doctors and nurses? I would like to know the answer.

In my view, the Government are simply not getting their priorities right if they are genuinely concerned about electoral integrity. An estimated 9 million people are not on electoral registers, or are incorrectly registered on them, and are therefore unable to vote. If the Government were really planning to spend money on improving the integrity of our electoral system, they would not have withdrawn funding for the voluntary organisation Bite The Ballot. During a debate on this Bill, the Government praised its efforts. Bite The Ballot organised events such as national voter registration week, and it succeeded in getting many more young people registered to vote, at very little cost. But that little cost—a few thousand pounds—was too much for the Government. Perhaps it registered the wrong people—principally young people.

But the Government can spend, or want to spend, hundreds of millions of pounds on unnecessary compulsory photo ID. If it is a question of money, they could save a lot on electoral registration by making the process as automatic as possible, cutting down the cost of paper forms and personal canvassers. They could deal with it on databases. But they do not seem to want to save money if that might allow more of our citizens, especially young people, to be able to vote.

Voter identification has been piloted in only a handful of local authorities—and only in local elections. But local elections often have only half the turnout of general elections, so I fear that the number of staff required at polling stations may have to be doubled if they are to check each voter’s ID, especially if it is photo ID. The staff may need a lot more training and support. Perhaps, as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said, there will be many more arguments in polling stations and more staff needed to resolve them. As he said, there will also have to be a lot of very costly public information about the changes to what the noble Lord, Lord True, often refers to as our “tried and tested” system.

He seems to like our tried and tested system when he opposes any changes that may not favour his party, but he seems quite ready to change the tried and tested system at polling stations, even at great cost, when no such radical change is at all necessary. Perhaps placing a few more police officers on duty at some polling stations might be a cheaper and much more cost-effective way of reassuring people that the voting process is safe, if that needs to be done. Certainly, we do not need compulsory photo ID.