Elections Bill

Aaron Bell Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Mr Deputy Speaker, it is the second time you have done that to me; the first time was my maiden speech.

I welcome this essential Bill. What I want is a fair vote for everyone, and that is why I was very pleased to lead the first Adjournment debate of this Parliament on 19 December 2019. Further to the speech of the hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis), I am clear that in Wycombe, the victims of electoral malpractice are ethnic minorities. Overwhelmingly, it is ethnic minorities whose votes are stolen, in some cases very deliberately.

First, I want to welcome some provisions and then, if I have time, I will say where the Bill could go further. On postal votes, proxy votes and voter ID, I welcome the provisions in the Bill, but I particularly want to emphasise, because I suspect no one else will, the importance in the undue influence measure of provisions about spiritual injury and spiritual pressure. I have thousands of British Muslim supporters in Wycombe, and I know from my friends and supporters that they were accused in the most strident and offensive terms, which I will not repeat, of being apostate, because they declined to vote for the Muslim candidate. That is an absolutely outrageous way to polarise our politics. If I did it as a Christian, there would rightly be national outrage, so I am pleased to see that provision in the Bill.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, and I draw his attention to the words of the judge in the Tower Hamlets case, who made the same point. He said:

“The real losers in this case are the citizens of Tower Hamlets and, in particular, the Bangladeshi community. Their natural and laudable sense of solidarity has been cynically perverted into a sense of isolation and victimhood, and their devotion to their religion has been manipulated—all for the aggrandisement of Mr Rahman.”

That is the reality of these sorts of fraud cases.

[Mr Baker]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I am clear that in speaking in support of the Bill I am standing overwhelmingly for my ethnic minority voters in Wycombe. I am absolutely clear about that in my mind. I am clear that they are the most strident supporters I have on this matter in my constituency.

I will not repeat the matters that I raised on 19 December, because that took several times longer than the time I have remaining, so I will point out five areas where the Bill could go further. The first is that many people are incorrectly listed on the electoral roll, entitling them to vote. Many of the issues are already illegal, but there is a strong argument that if the electoral roll was much more tightly governed, the opportunity for criminality, and particularly the misuse of postal votes, would be reduced.

There needs to be a national check for uniqueness, but without a national database. I am grateful to the Electoral Commission for meeting me; I have shown it a technique that could be used with a kind of digital fingerprint to guarantee uniqueness. We need to ensure that people only vote once in the UK. I have seen a WhatsApp message where somebody said, “I have voted in Birmingham; I am now coming to Wycombe to vote against Baker.” I do not mind people voting against me if they are so convicted, as it were, but I do mind them voting twice.

The second point is that people register to vote at an address where they do not reside. I could take Members to a small Edwardian three-bedroom house in Wycombe where 12 electors are registered to vote. We absolutely know that they do not reside there. It is very important that people register to vote only where they reside. It is also important that people do not end up abusing the postal vote system by applying for a postal vote on someone’s behalf and then casting it without their knowledge. We also can give examples of where that can be done, although I do not have time now.

Thirdly, there are instances where foreign nationals here legally in the UK—very welcome they are, too—and with a national insurance number are not entitled to vote. We have examples of some people of Turkish nationality and some EU nationals. In some cases, people just do not know that they are not entitled to vote in a national election. We need to ensure that we tell them. I could give anecdotes of people who find they have inadvertently voted and wished they had not, because they had no intention of breaking the law, so we need to educate them.

Fourthly, I realise and accept that at this stage the Minister almost certainly cannot do anything about the national uniqueness of the electoral roll—I put that on the record so that we can come back to it—but this is an area where I think he could go further. When someone wishes to make an objection to someone’s name being on the roll at a particular address, the name of the objector must be disclosed. That is a reasonable principle of justice to ensure that the accused knows the name of their accuser. The point for me is about when their name is disclosed. It seems that just as an accused person is revealed when they are charged—not when they are arrested—so it could be the case that a person challenging the electoral roll is named publicly only at the moment when someone is charged so that that person knows who their accuser is for the purposes of the criminal justice system and the accuser does not end up exposed to intimidation for challenging registrations on the electoral roll. I make that case because such challenges need to be made and there is a problem with people either not making them or making them and subsequently feeling they were or could have been intimidated.

Finally, the Minister needs to do much more to educate voters about what the law is. For example, I am sorry to say that we cannot assume that just because a postal vote is completed by an elector in their own home, it has been completed freely. I know of one lady from an ethnic minority community who asked to cancel her postal vote because it had been taken from her and given to a candidate. I personally reported that candidate to the police. That is just one example concerning the treatment of women, which is not equal everywhere. In particular, I fear that women are not being given the opportunity to cast their vote freely. However they choose to vote, they should have their choice. In so far as it is up to me, I am not having this country go back to the pre-suffragette era in which women’s votes were abused. That requires us to be realistic and understand that some women cast their votes at home under duress.

I welcome the Bill and am grateful to the Minister, who will have my full support. Let us not listen to some of the nonsense we have heard today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

As many colleagues have said, confidence in our electoral system and the ballot is crucial. Members may not be aware, but we experienced a very troubling incident in 2017 in Newcastle-under-Lyme. It was a case of incompetence, rather than fraud. In the general election of 2017—I was not a candidate then—approximately a thousand people in Newcastle-under-Lyme were disenfranchised. Approximately 500 students who tried to register when the snap election was called were not registered in time, and approximately 500 people who sought postal votes because they were going to be on holiday did not get their postal votes. This was incompetence, not fraud, but an investigation was carried out. It did not go to an election court.

The Association of Electoral Administrators produced a report on the failings of the council at the time, and the strength of feeling among the voters who missed out on their votes was very strong. One constituent of mine, who applied for a postal vote and did not receive it, wrote a letter to the chief executive of the council:

“For me a vote is not merely a mark on a paper; it symbolises my inalienable right to choose who shall govern me and set the tenor of my life for the next five years. This right and privilege has been won for us over many generations by brave and dedicated men and women and is a precious gift. That I have been robbed of it by some administrative incompetence is an insult to their legacy and a grave disservice to me.”

That is how he felt about being robbed by incompetence, but we have heard today of many cases where people have been robbed of their votes by fraud.

We have heard anecdotal evidence from individual Members. My hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne) gave us a case, and my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) described very troubling cases. We have heard Government Members who directly experienced what happened in Tower Hamlets in 2014, including my hon. Friends the Members for Gedling (Tom Randall) and for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher). People had their votes stolen. We all want people to vote—I completely subscribe to what my constituent said—but we want them to vote once, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe said—and the Bill will ensure that happens. It will make sure that people cast their votes once and once only, and not under the duress that we have seen far too often.

I do not have time to go over some of the other cases, such as the Slough case or the Birmingham case, which was described as “a banana republic”. The judge in the Slough case at the election court in March 2008 noted:

“Recent legislation has addressed and largely solved the problem in Northern Ireland but there has been a flat refusal to introduce similar measures in mainland Britain.”

Finally, over 13 years later, we are introducing those measures that were called for under a Labour Government way back in 2008. I welcome what the Minister said in her speech.

People need ID to collect a parcel, to use a concessionary bus pass and even to attend Labour party meetings, as others have said. People need ID to vote in Northern Ireland—legislation introduced by Labour. As for the issue of why people should be disenfranchised by not having ID, we have addressed that point in the Bill—there will be free ID for everybody. We will make sure that people know how to access that ID.

I do not have time to go into the other elements of the Bill that I support. I hope to be able to engage with the Minister as the Bill progresses through Committee and on Report. I wholeheartedly support this legislation.