Electoral Fraud

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho

Wednesday 29th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My noble friend is much missed at the Dispatch Box when questions are asked about electoral matters. We plan to go ahead in 2018 with a number of pilots to test voter identification. This is a recommendation made several times by the Electoral Commission: that when you vote, there should be some evidence that you are you say you are. We plan to pilot that next year and hope that some of the local authorities which have been identified as being at risk will apply to be part of that pilot.

[Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho (CB)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware of the work that Estonia has done with the two-step verification process, which it has used with electronic and online voting, dramatically reducing fraud? Someone has to show that they have voted but can also check that the vote is their vote—it is an unusual system. With a population of just 3 million, it seems to me that this would be an effective pilot system, similar to use in a local election?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness. I am not familiar with the electoral system in Estonia. When we pilot a number of projects next year, we will be looking at various means by which the voter can identify themselves at the polling station. This might be a bus pass, a bank card or an NUS card, but in order not to exclude those who do not have those forms of identification, we are also looking at non-photographic identification. I will see that the helpful information that the noble Baroness has given us about proceedings in Estonia is fed into the options.