Voter Identification Regulations 2022

Lord Strathclyde Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, from the moment that the Government’s plan for voter ID was first introduced, these Benches have made it clear that we see it as unnecessary. We believe that voting in Britain is both safe and secure, yet this policy is being introduced at a cost of many millions of pounds and, more importantly, could prevent millions of people exercising their right to vote.

On this basis, we opposed the proposal in the Elections Bill and, just yesterday, Labour Members of Parliament voted against these regulations in the other place. So I will not focus my contribution today on the principle of voter ID, and I will not rehash arguments already made—but I will reiterate our opposition to the policy as a whole.

I want the House to consider what happens next, if the concerns of the Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators are realised. There is now a strong possibility that the lack of awareness and preparation will mean that many of the 2 million voters without the right ID will lose their right to vote. The impact of that on our democracy could be extremely dangerous.

It is on this basis that I have tabled a Motion to establish a new Select Committee to consider the impact of the regulations on the May elections. The committee would be tasked with conducting a post-implementation assessment of the policy, based on an impartial examination of evidence. An evidence-based approach to policy-making is all that we are asking for, so I welcome the fact that the Minister has now agreed to commission an independent report to consider the implementation of the policy and I extend my thanks to the Minister and her office for their approach to the negotiations we have had.

This builds on further concessions the Minister made during the passage of what became the Elections Act, which bound the Government to review the relevant sections. I am pleased that the Minister will now go further and ensure that the report is drafted independently. I welcome the further fact that the Minister has approached the Constitution Committee and that colleagues have approached the House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, with a view that they will consider the evidence.

However, notwithstanding these significant concessions made by the Minister, I want to reiterate the strength of feeling on these Benches, and I hope that the Minister can provide clarification on a number of further points. If she is able to offer these assurances in her response to this debate, I will consider not pressing our Motion.

On voter cards and other ID, it is now less than six months until this policy is introduced in May, when people across most of England will have the opportunity to vote. Yet there has still been no public awareness campaign launched, and there is no reason to believe that all those who do not own the necessary ID will be aware that they cannot vote without it. Just yesterday, the Financial Times reported that the Cabinet Office has found that 42% of people with no photo ID are unlikely to apply for one. Given that we are in a cost of living crisis, this is hardly surprising; after all, a passport costs £85 and a driving licence is £43. Will the Minister remain open to expanding the list of ID if the independent report provides evidence to support this?

The proposal for a free voter card was of course intended to help address this, but the application process has not materialised, and even at the best of times, many people struggle to access local authorities because of their limited opening hours. As a result, it is likely that many people who may not have the time or capacity to travel to a local authority and deal with the lengthy application process may just not bother, and therefore lose their vote. Can I therefore ask the Minister to commit to work with local authorities to ensure that the voter card is open to applications as soon as reasonably possible, and that it operates as swiftly and smoothly as possible? Can I also ask the Minister to assure me that the Government will take steps, together with local authorities, to monitor applications and any relevant issues, and also ensure that voters are aware that the document is free?

In addition, the Association of Electoral Administrators —the body that represents local authority electoral registration officers responsible for delivering elections—is now raising serious concerns about the huge administrative burden that will be placed on already overstretched local authorities. With the new responsibilities placed on the staff of polling stations, there is also a possibility of long queues and overburdened staff. Will the Minister commit to engaging with representatives of those working at polling stations to ensure they are fully prepared for the rollout? Specifically, will the Government monitor any instances of polling stations closing prematurely when there are still electors in the queue?

The Minister will recall that, when the Government piloted mandatory voter ID in a handful of local authorities during the 2018 local elections in England, more than 1,000 voters were turned away for not having the correct form of ID; of these, around 350 voters did not return to vote. Then in 2019, about 2,000 people were initially refused a ballot paper, of which roughly 750 did not return with ID and therefore did not partake in the election.

I do understand the points that the Minister has made regarding Northern Ireland, but I am sure she will also accept that the scale across England creates much more of a challenge. Without any real public awareness, guidance, and time for preparation, I am not confident that this challenge will be met before May. Nevertheless, I welcome the fact that the Minister has agreed to an independent report into the impact that this may have on the upcoming local elections. I hope the Minister can now provide the additional clarification necessary to avoid a Division on this Motion.

I also want to make it clear that our concerns remain over the implementation of this policy, and we will return to this during, and after, the rollout of the May elections. I look forward to seeing the independent report, and I truly hope that it will not be possible to find evidence of widespread disenfranchisement in May, but if these concerns are indeed realised, then the Minister should expect that we will be calling for the policy to then be withdrawn.

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

My Lords, it was very interesting to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, pray in aid the Motion passed by this House in 1994 on the application of fatal Motions in this House. Of course, this House has a power to use fatal Motions, but, as with so many powers of this House, it is not used by convention. I cannot think, off the top of my head, of an occasion when it should be used. I am convinced that the noble Baroness did not really make the case for it, because all the arguments she used—which were perfectly valid arguments—should have been used, and probably were used, during the passage of the Bill earlier this year. That was the time when your Lordships’ House should have stopped that part of the legislation coming into force, rather than dealing with it now. As I understand it, it was a manifesto commitment. Even if it were not, we have been discussing it in both Houses of Parliament for the last seven or eight years, going back to when my noble friend Lord Pickles was Secretary of State; he launched a review and an investigation in 2015 into how local government held elections.

Furthermore, the regulations, while they are only coming into force now, have been discussed for many months, and good local authorities will no doubt have taken steps to organise themselves. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, spoke very reasonably in her speech, and, if it does not embarrass her for me to say this, I agreed with much of it. However, I also felt that my noble friend the Minister had dealt with a lot of the arguments earlier, and perhaps she can go a little further now.

The point I want to raise with the noble Baroness is on the suggestion in her regret amendment to the Motion that there should be a Select Committee of this House to examine these regulations post legislation. I wanted to confirm my understanding with both the noble Baroness and my noble friend the Minister that there is nothing to stop the House from conducting such an inquiry, but, rather than putting it in a regret amendment to the Motion before the House today, it would be entirely right to make a case to the Liaison Committee, which I have no doubt would be supported by the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition and the noble Lord the leader of the Liberal Democrats.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, during the passage of the Bill, I raised the likely impact of the photo identification requirement on people living in poverty. I remind the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, that the word “photo” was not in the manifesto.

While I welcome the Government’s focus on those with protected characteristics, the Bill is not sufficient to assess adequately the impact on all marginalised groups, given the Government’s refusal to enact the socioeconomic duty in the Equality Act. I will not repeat the arguments I made previously, but my fears, far from being allayed, are all the greater given how little time there is between the laying of the regulations and the May local elections, the inadequacy of which has been underlined by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, the Electoral Commission, the Local Government Association and others.

I will raise just two main issues, the first of which concerns consultation. The Explanatory Memorandum states:

“Significant consultation has been carried out with … stakeholders”,


including “civil society organisations”. Both in Committee and on Report, I asked specifically about consultation with organisations working with people in poverty and with those who can bring the expertise of their experience of poverty to bear on the matter.

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[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, the noble Lord opposite—he is not a Minister, I think he used to be something in the Government—has got a real cheek to talk to this House about honouring conventions when his Government colleagues have trampled over dozens of them. They put in a masquerade of a Budget, which then tanked the economy. They have introduced a new Prime Minister every few weeks—another incompetent Prime Minister, I might point out—and have generally behaved like savages at a feast with taxpayers’ money. He should really not stand up and defend the sort of thing he just has when his Government colleagues do not do it anyway. This House, to some extent, is self-regulating and can make its own decisions.

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

My Lords, it might be worth saying that I was only commenting on the passage of the Motion that the House had carried in 1994 and I certainly do not oppose that position. I then explained the conventions by which we exist when we look at fatal Motions—none of the stuff mentioned by the noble Baroness.

[Lord Brownlow of Shurlock Row (Con)]

My Lords, I will be brief. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, who was in her place a moment ago, and others, this year I sat on a Select Committee of post-legislative scrutiny for the Children and Families Act 2014. One of our findings was that it was quite inadequate to be doing that review eight years after the legislation was implemented. While I support the SIs today—and I have some sympathy with the initial comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman—I urge the Minister and the Government to stick to the timetable of the review that was outlined in her opening statement.

United Kingdom: The Union

Lord Strathclyde Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, in this debate. It is an important debate, and one that takes place from time to time because it is right we should look at the stresses and strains that exist within our constitution and within the different parts of the United Kingdom.

I join the noble Lord in looking forward to the speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn, and his valedictory few words; no doubt that will entertain all of us, and I am very keen to hear it.

We have had nearly 25 years of devolution—enough time for us to get used to it and for it bed down with our constitutional arrangements. But as the noble Lord has just pointed out, we have not done so. The stresses and strains are only too visible and too complicated, and it is clear that it will take considerably more time for them to bed down into a workable proposition.

The noble Lord mentioned his Act of Union Bill, which I regard as a good draft that we can all spend a great deal of time discussing. It is something that Governments should take seriously, because it points to a different intellectual approach to the governance of the country, rather than the one we have now. However, it is extremely hard to pursue that kind of debate politically when, in Scotland at any rate, we have a political party in power which is trying to tear up the United Kingdom as we speak and has so recently pledged itself to having a referendum in the next 12 months.

I will concentrate on Scotland, because I know and understand Scotland better than other parts of the United Kingdom, but some of what I will say has a read-across to the other parts. I will start with the need for co-operation, flagged up very much in the title of the Select Committee’s report. Co-operation seems to me fundamental to the workings of the British constitution, more so than mutual self-respect, which it goes without saying is important.

On co-operation—talking to each other and not doing things deliberately to undermine each other—I will give a very simple and personal example. As we overcame Covid through the use of vaccines, I went to my local GP and received two vaccines, several months apart. I received a certificate in the shape of a letter and then, miraculously, an app appeared on my phone. That was all very well and is an experience shared by most Peers. When it came to the third vaccination, the booster, I was spending a bit more time in London. I walked past a walk-in centre and, seeing no queue, I had it done quickly here. I explained that I was from Scotland and had a Scottish app, and they said, “That shouldn’t be a problem. I’m sure they’re all talking to each other.” No, they were not. There was no hint of co-operation at all and it took another two and a half months to get my Scottish app to recognise that I had already been boosted in England.

Translated many thousands of times, this all undermines the union we are talking about in very practical ways that are very visible to people in Scotland. The census was done differently in Scotland from the rest of the United Kingdom—how utterly daft. The whole point of a census is that it is all done together, yet in Scotland we decided to do it rather differently and have been unable to achieve the kind of results achieved in the rest of the United Kingdom. The price of non-cooperation is unnecessary, expensive and bureaucratic processes, letting down people and affecting how they live. People are crying out for co-operation and that is what we should champion as much as possible.

People such as me who opposed devolution did so because we feared that there would be centralisation in Scotland. I am afraid to say that that is exactly what has happened. Local authorities have had their powers taken away to Edinburgh and the central belt dominates. None of this has done much good for the people of Scotland. Other parts of the United Kingdom can perhaps recognise what has happened.

I should say something about the SNP at this point. The noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, mentioned the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. I have said in the past and say so again today that it would be good for us to have a member of the SNP here. I know the SNP generally have a view that they should not send people here, but I wonder if it is not time for our Prime Minister to seek to do that. It is a voice that we do not hear in the House, but one that we really should have.

I therefore very much welcome the steps taken by the office of the Secretary of State for Scotland to try to fund local authority projects directly, looking at special instances where central money can be spent more wisely, so that devolution would mean real devolution down to local institutions.

There is another outstanding issue, that of tertiary education. If you are a Scottish student, it is very hard to be educated anywhere but in a Scottish university because of the way the funding works. In other words, Scottish students are excluded from the rest of the United Kingdom. This is not a sensible way of going forward. I do not offer a solution to that today, but central government should look at ways for students throughout the United Kingdom to be dealt with fairly.

My time is up. I very much hope that this debate will be taken seriously by the Government and that they will look at ways to strengthen the union.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)]

My Lords, this has been an excellent debate and we should all be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, not only for initiating the debate but for the work he has done in bringing forward practical suggestions as to how we might carry out reform. He has also triggered clear enthusiasm in this House for it to take initiatives which might propel thoughtful measures of reform to secure the future workings of the United Kingdom. I think we would all commend that, but I hope that we can find some way of organising a committee that will take it forward. I speak as someone who was a member of the Scottish Constitutional Convention for quite a few years, and I honestly believe that the Scotland Act—imperfect as it was—was infinitely better because of the convention than the previous example of the Labour Government’s attempt to do it without such background work. I believe that it was an extremely good initiative.

We are all grateful for the contributions of the right reverend Prelate during his two years here and in his valedictory address, which was short and sweet, but very much to the point. We wish him well in his future.

The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, made one particular point of detail which I need to take him up on: it is not true that Scottish students cannot study outside Scotland. In fact, it is worse than that: many Scottish students must study outside Scotland, because, although tuition fees are free, the number of places have been capped by the Scottish Government so that the vast majority of Scottish students cannot get into Scottish universities and, indeed, have to move. My own son has chosen to move; he is matriculating at a London university this coming year, having been disappointed about his participation in the Scottish system—

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for making my point considerably better than I did earlier on.

[Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)]

It was a valid point, nevertheless.

It is also important that the dimension of England is addressed. We recognise that England is very much the largest component of the union, but it is also very diverse. The shortcomings of governance in England are real, and part of the tensions we are talking about, but a federalism based on English regions is not something that anyone really believes is the way forward.

I am sorry to say this, but it is clear that the union is in no way safe in the hands of this Government under their dysfunctional, incoherent and—frankly—careless leadership—or rather lack of it. As I have said, we all know that a tidy federal solution to the governance of the United Kingdom is not easy to achieve, even if there were a will for it, which there is not. However, that does not excuse us for not striving for a relationship among the component parts of the UK based on consensus, mutual respect, fair shares and, as has been said repeatedly, co-operation—all ultimately reinforced by a legal constitutional settlement and dispute resolution mechanism.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Norton, that it is not about more power; it is about attitude and engagement. However, there must be a backstop with some kind of recourse and dispute resolution mechanism, because we have seen how the UK Government behave without one in relation to the devolved Administrations. I for one, privately, did not think that the vow at the end of the referendum in 2016 was necessary or helpful. I agree that lots of people were voting to stay in the United Kingdom as it was, without necessarily requiring change.

It is also an inescapable fact that the glue—the word used, I think, by the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane—provided by the EU helped in regard to agreed rules and to secure the Good Friday agreement; after all, the EU is one of its guarantors. It also gave the devolved Administrations and the UK Government a degree of clarity and security. That has all been swept away by the return of EU powers to the UK. I am not trying to reverse that, but it has been aggravated by a ham-handed application, for example, of the internal market Act and, to a lesser extent, the Subsidy Control Act.

I am also a member of the Common Frameworks Scrutiny Committee, which is about to agree its final report. When first set out, it appeared that common frameworks offered the way to achieve the kind of partnership within the UK that would build confidence, and they still could. However, it is clear that they are in danger of being downgraded into a simple process rather than being rather more substantial policy agreements allowing for divergence.

Thanks to the excellent report by the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, we have new inter-government agreement, set out this year, which appears to offer a positive way forward, but, again, it depends on the will of the UK Government to apply it in spirit as well as in letter. It depends on that, and the UK Government, as always, have the upper hand. Frankly, the qualities needed are sadly lacking, and when they are not applied, there is no redress. But—and it is a big but—the strains on the union are not all one-way. The agreement signed by the Prime Minister to give appearance to his claim to get Brexit done was flawed at the outset, in terms of Northern Ireland in particular.

The Government’s own website made that clear. On the day during the election campaign when the Prime Minister was categorically denying that there would be extra bureaucracy between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the website showed exactly how much bureaucracy there would be. That was the price for no border on the island of Ireland, and the Government and the Prime Minister knew that. The intransigence of the DUP and the belligerence of the UK Government have aggravated a situation which could be substantially alleviated by an agreement, so the governance of Northern Ireland is stalled and the Good Friday agreement is at risk. I may be biased, but there is one glimmer of hope in this situation, which is the stagnation of support for the two more extreme parties and the strengthening of the middle ground in the form of Alliance—I must point out that it is the Liberal Democrats’ sister party.

It is true that in Wales we have an Administration who clearly want devolution to work—it is important that we acknowledge that—but are frustrated by the attitude of the UK Government to the extent of taking legal action. They have set up their own constitutional committee, and I hope it will come forward with positive proposals designed to secure devolution, not independence. However, if the Government cannot carry opinion in Wales, what hope do they have elsewhere?

Respect needs to be a two-way process. The DUP’s refusal to go back into government lets down the majority of people in Northern Ireland, who require a Government to take decisions. In Scotland, the SNP has shown scant regard for public opinion. Twice in a democratic vote, the people of Scotland have, in effect, supported the devolution settlement which has evolved, yet the SNP has shown no interest in making devolution work. Of course, as has been said, the nationalists campaign for independence, and that is their right, but Scotland has not voted for independence, and by undermining and trashing devolution and United Kingdom co-operation, the SNP is betraying the people of Scotland and letting them down.

The SNP claims it has a mandate for independence, but that is not the case. When the question was asked, independence was rejected, and opinion appears to be settled at about the same level. The coalition with the Greens has a majority and both parties support independence, but it is questionable whether that is really a mandate. The SNP appears to be a champion of first past the post at the moment and has questioned the legitimacy of pro-UK MSPs who are elected from the list, seemingly missing the irony that the Greens are entirely elected from the list. Is the Scottish Green Party a surrogate nationalist party or an environmental campaign party? Either way, its mandate is very unclear.

This raises another strain on the United Kingdom in the shape of an outdated, flawed and less than representative voting system. The SNP secured 3.88% of the UK vote in 2019 and 9% of the seats. The Conservatives secured 43.63% of the vote and 56% of the seats. Labour fell only six seats short of that vote share, and, yes, the Liberal Democrats, with 11% of the vote, secured less than 2% of the seats. This is important because it means that, with its sister party the Alliance, a UK-wide political grouping with three times as many votes as the SNP is severely squeezed in its participation in UK parliamentary business in the House of Commons, and that distorts the balance of the House of Commons, in which SNP MPs, on 45% of the Scottish vote, secured 81% of the Scottish seats. That is neither proportionate nor healthy.

In conclusion, I want to ask the SNP and its followers: “Do you speak Belgian?” I know noble Lords will appreciate the subtlety of that question. The SNP is suggesting to the people of Scotland that they have more in common with a country that has three languages, none of which is English or Belgian, than they do with their fellow citizens elsewhere in the UK. To reinforce this to nationalists, all things British are demeaned and vilified. That is easy when talking about the current Prime Minister, but when applied to values across our culture, it is insidious, nasty, divisive and unjustified.

The by-election today could well demonstrate that the character of the government of the United Kingdom is heading for a change. Destroying a centuries-old arrangement that has served us well, for all its strains, should not depend on the short-term vicissitudes of changing political colours. Politics should be more than demonising your opponents. The SNP has denied the obvious benefits of being part of the UK, and however compromised those are currently, it needs to recognise that a majority still wants the United Kingdom to thrive.