Elections Bill

Debate between Lord Stunell and Lord Adonis

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

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I shall dial down the rhetoric a little here. First, I want to pick up what the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, said with great conviction —that it was beyond the wildest imagination that this could be a deliberate attempt at voter suppression. The Minister made the same point in responding to an earlier group. The Committee owes it to both of them to take that in good faith. So I shall move on and say that I also take in good faith what the Minister has said at least twice during our proceedings, which is that he rejects the concept of the precautionary principle. I shall make an assumption, based on a fair amount of evidence—although that is not collected from these debates in particular—that he is also against the gold-plating of legislation.

I shall speak particularly to Amendment 80, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts. All the other amendments in the group have great merit and require careful consideration by the Minister, but Amendment 80 is what has attracted my attention for further comment. Incidentally, I was originally going to say that I did not believe it encompassed parliamentary passes—but I notice that item (q) in the list is “a workplace ID card”, so possibly we may qualify under that. It would be ironic, would it not, if a busy Member of Parliament seeking re-election, dashing to the polling station at 9.55 pm on realising that they had failed to vote, was turned away because their parliamentary pass was not sufficient identity to get into the building? I see that I am going to be intervened on by another noble Lord, who, like me, has a pass that does not qualify him to vote—but that is a separate issue.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

The point is that the MP would be turned away, because that pass does not mean that someone can turn up and vote. The pass is an accepted document with which someone could apply for a photo electoral ID card. If the noble Lord tries to turn up at the polling station at 9.55 pm with his parliamentary pass he will get very short shrift, because the Government will not regard it as a secure document.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

The noble Lord makes an interesting point. At the 2017 election, when I was present at the normal polling station that I attend, I had some difficulty in preventing the polling clerk issuing me with a ballot paper. He was not deterred by the fact that I was disqualified by virtue of my membership of this House. I assure your Lordships that I rejected his tendered ballot paper—“tendered” with a small “t”, obviously.

The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, made a powerful point on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, and his report. He referenced the Pickles report recommendation 8, and further parts of the report have also been read into the record in this debate. Recommendation 8 said that there was no need to be over-elaborate, and utility bills would do. My two years of junior ministerial office were in the then Department for Communities and Local Government, whose Secretary of State was the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, and I am pretty sure that, unless the noble Lord has changed his tack very considerably, he will remain fundamentally opposed to gold-plating. He was an enthusiastic pursuer of the red tape challenge, which was designed to reduce the amount of legislation and regulation, and I do not even have to consider whether he would regard the spending of £180 million on fulfilling his report as a sensible use of public money, or proportionate. I do not even have to imagine whether he regards the present arrangements as over-elaborate. I am sure that in due course the noble Lord will speak for himself. No doubt he is wisely keeping out of the way at the moment, but at some point, when his memoirs are published, we shall get to the truth.

The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, talked about which demographic would be hit the most. We can debate that, but there is clearly a proxy, which has been mentioned already. Some parts of the population do not have bank accounts. I would just say to the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, that for them, adding a credit or debit card to the list would not help. People who do not have bank accounts, and therefore do not have bank cards, are people who are very likely to be unable to produce evidence of other things either. But they nearly all have utility bills, and that seems to be a route that the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, recommended to the Government when he drew up his report.

The Minister should remember his own first principle, which is “No precautionary principle: don’t do anything unless there’s evidence to show it is needed”. There is no evidence to show that this is needed. His next principle is “Don’t gold-plate”—and he should remember the red tape challenge. The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, has provided the Government with the solution they are looking for, which would allow them to say to whoever they have to give an account to, “We’ve fulfilled our manifesto pledge, and we have a scheme that doesn’t strip out electors and reduce their propensity to come along and vote”. I support all the amendments in the group, but Amendment 80 ought to be the foundation stone for the Government to do a diplomatic and nuanced U-turn.

Elections Bill

Debate between Lord Stunell and Lord Adonis

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

I will elaborate on the noble Lord’s point. There is a difference here, in the ordinary reading of the words, between pressure and intimidation. I took the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, to be referring to intimidation, which is clearly something that we want to guard against. But what constitutes spiritual pressure? As noble Lords have just said, would a sermon in a church constitute pressure? A reasonable person might think that it would; after all, it is not serving much of a purpose if there is no pressure. This is a lay man speaking, but I think there is a difference between pressure and intimidation. We want to guard against intimidation, but we absolutely do not want to curb freedom of religious speech.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

This is unexpectedly lively, but the focus really is on new sub-paragraph (3)(e). I think most of us would say that there is, if you like, a simple lay person’s interpretation of new sub-paragraph (3)(a), (b), (c), (d) and, for that matter, the catch-all of new sub-paragraph (3)(f), which is

“any other act designed to intimidate a person”.

In the light of new sub-paragraph (3)(f), it may be that the difficulties of new sub-paragraph (3)(e) are best avoided by their omission, because if such spiritual injury was demonstrated, it would come under new sub-paragraph (3)(f).

I just point out that the preceding activities have “using or threatening”, “damaging or threatening”, “causing or threatening”, but new sub-paragraph (3)(e) has “causing spiritual injury”; not “threatening” to cause spiritual injury. Obviously, it depends on one’s personal understanding of what spiritual injury might consist of, but the threat is surely going to be offered far more often than the reality will be delivered, if I may put it in those terms, although it does not mean that it is not effective. There are some problems in the straightforward interpretation of what new sub-paragraph (3)(e) really says, why it does not say “threatening” to cause, as does new sub-paragraph (3)(c) and (d), for instance, and why it is necessary, separate from the catch-all of new sub-paragraph (3)(f):

“doing any other act designed to intimidate a person”.

I want to bring a little bit of local colour to new sub-paragraph (4)(e). In 1992, I stood for the Liberal Democrats in Hazel Grove. On the Sunday before polling day, every Catholic church in the constituency had a letter read out from the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, which clearly expressed the view that a vote for me would be a major spiritual error. I failed to win that seat by 923 votes. I do not attribute the result to that letter, but noble Lords will understand that I had a sense of grievance for some time afterwards that this letter had been read out.

This brings me to my second critique of new sub-paragraph (4)(e)—it is a little bit in the eye of the beholder. If that provision had been there in 1992, I would have gone straight to the returning officer to say that this was a clear case. It would be an invitation for people to complain about things which were in fact simply within the bounds of free speech, fair comment, and so on—even if it was unfair in the opinion of the recipient.

There is a double problem. First, what is “spiritual injury”? Secondly, do we mean causing it, or threatening to cause it? Do we think that the injury is to the voter who is deterred from voting for a candidate, or to the candidate by virtue of the voter not supporting them? I suggest that we are not very clear what we are trying to pin down. The Minister might like to carefully consider what the disbenefit would be of removing new sub-paragraph (4)(e) and simply relying on new sub-paragraph (4)(f) to deal with cases where “spiritual injury”—or threats of it—was part of the reason there had been intimidation.