Draft Police and Crime Commissioner Elections (Amendment) Order 2022 Draft Assistance with Voting for Persons with Disabilities (Amendments) Regulations 2022

Alex Norris Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2022 General Committees

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Cummins.

The two measures before us relate to extending provisions from the Elections Act to the rules regarding police and crime commissioner elections and also assistance with voting for people with disabilities. Let me say from the outset that the Opposition strongly opposed the Elections Act at all stages before it became law a few months ago. It was a bad Bill then, and it is bad law now. Rather than opening up our democracy, it has created barriers to participation, while further weakening it to dodgy finance.

Our serious concerns with the legislation have been shared by civil society and the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee in its excellent report on the Bill, when it said that the Bill ought to have been paused. That has been added to by yesterday’s revelations that the Government have not even assessed the security implications of the most prominent part of the legislation, voter ID provision, which is yet another discreditable element to this story. We look forward to the chance to revisit that soon—I think it is coming before us soon.

Happily, however, Members of all parties agreed with the provisions that the Act made in relation to notional expenditure. Following the 2018 Supreme Court judgment that there was no requirement that benefits in kind or notional expenditure would have to be authorised by the candidate or their election agent, the rules regulating that area of election law were a point of confusion and required clarification. It is safe to say there were serious concerns that candidates and their agents could unwittingly be liable for any transgressions that they had no knowledge of and had never authorised, but from which they were judged to have benefited. It was therefore right to tidy up the law in relation to notional expenditure in the Elections Act, and the Opposition did not stand in the way of those measures when the Act was before Parliament. In the same spirit, we will not stand in the way of applying the same provisions to the elections of police and crime commissioners, so that the full benefit of the change to the law can be implemented and operational across all elements.

On the second measure, regarding assistance with voting for persons with disabilities, I praise the work done in the other place by my colleagues Baroness Hayman and Lord Khan, who worked very hard to make sure that it was included in the Elections Act. We raised this issue in Committee and during consideration of the remaining stages of the Act, and stakeholders expressed their concerns about the initial proposals. As I said on Report, we are grateful that the Government have listened to those concerns and worked with advocacy groups to reach a solution, which is what I believe we have in front of us. The Opposition therefore fully support the measure, which will ensure that the regulations can be felt widely across all elections, but like many interested in this space, we will keep a close eye on things to make sure that its practical application works. The collective vision is that all polling stations should have the right equipment, so that people can access their democratic right regardless of the challenges they live with, and we would be very interested to see how that works.

I hope the Minister is able to indicate how he and his colleagues will monitor this issue to make sure that the approach proceeds as intended. Will there be a report after the first iteration? That would be a proportionate way of working out whether it is working. Have the Government committed in the engagement with stakeholders that this will be an ongoing process? That virtuous feedback loop will be a key part of making sure that the legislation works. Finally, there is a funding implication for the Minister’s welcome commitment in the Elections Act and today about making the equipment available, so can he make an on-the-record commitment that that will be met and that local authorities will not be expected to find the money in other ways?