Renters (Reform) Bill

Angela Rayner Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 23rd October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to open this debate on behalf of the Opposition. I start by saying that we on these Benches will not oppose the Bill today—that may be more than can be said for some on the Benches behind the Secretary of State. After nearly five years of foot dragging, it appears that they need to be appeased with yet more delays. We disagree. Renters are at the sharp edge of the current housing crisis and urgently need the protections and support in the Bill—protections that, unfortunately, are just too late for many renters struggling right now in this cost of living crisis. But as they say, better late than never.

I welcome the Bill. In fact, I welcome much of what the Secretary of State said in his opening remarks. We have been calling for such measures for some years. We will be pleased to finally see the abolition of section 21, whenever that actually comes. Labour also welcome the simplification of tenancies, which will give renters more flexibility and rights. It is right that periodic tenancies should become the norm, meaning that renters can give two months’ notice and get out of a tenancy at any point.

We further welcome the creation of a new ombudsman; that has the potential to be an essential part of the redress system. For too long, renters have lacked basic power and control over one of the fundamentals of life: their home. Tenants have struggled to challenge unfair treatment without undergoing lengthy and expensive court proceedings. If this ombudsman is given the proper teeth and resources, they will have an important role to play in levelling the playing field. I think the Secretary of State agrees.

We are pleased that the Tory rebrand of Labour’s proposed landlords register has made it into the Bill, too. The register is good for landlords and tenants. Finally, it is good to see the Government build in provisions to make it easier for renters to have pets. As I am sure the Prime Minister agrees, pets are an important part of the family, just as long as we remember not to let them off the lead illegally.

After four and a half years of foot-dragging, there can be no more dither and delay in ending no-fault evictions. The Secretary of State made strong points in his opening remarks, but I am afraid that he did not see the faces behind him—I can see why he has spent years arguing with the landlords on his Back Benches. Tenants across the country have been wrongfully evicted, kicked out of their homes and made homeless. In fact, since his Government first announced the end of no-fault evictions back in April 2019, a total of 71,310 households have been kicked out on to the street. That is more than 70,000 families put at risk of homelessness since this Government first proposed to protect them. Every single day another person suffers the same fate. According to Shelter, private renters over the age of 55 are served a section 21 eviction notice every 16 minutes. It has taken the Government four and a half years to reach the Second Reading of the Bill.

[Mr Perkins]

The Secretary of State was at pains to stress that the majority of landlords are good ones. It is almost like saying that there has been a delay to murder legislation because most people do not kill people. The reality is that we need legislation because there are some bad landlords, and the imbalance between renters and landlords is huge. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, although it is welcome that we have finally got to Second Reading, many people have been let down by how long it has taken? It is now the responsibility of us all to get the legislation moving as quickly as we can.

[Angela Rayner]

I agree. I hope I can bring the House together when I say that it is right that we get moving on this issue. The Secretary of State has made it clear that the Government will move on it, but I am concerned about potential delays. I will come to those points in more detail.

[Jim Shannon]

There may well be consensus in the House—I hope there is; we will see how it goes later on. A major issue that comes to my attention and that of many others is mould, condensation and damp in houses, about which tenants tell me regularly. Does the right hon. Lady feel that the Bill can satisfactorily address that to ensure the health and safety of tenants and their families?

[Angela Rayner]

We need legislation for decent homes alongside these provisions. I hope that we can get into that, and how we can protect people, in Committee. As the Secretary of State acknowledged, at the moment many families face a situation of inadequate housing, which goes beyond the scope of the Bill. I think we all agree that that needs to be addressed as soon as possible.

[Caroline Lucas]

On decent home standards, would the right hon. Lady support the integration of Awaab’s law into the Bill? We are talking about delays, but my concern is that if those provisions do not make it into the Bill right now, our constituents, including some of mine in Brighton, will still be living in absolutely atrocious accommodation, with water streaming down their walls, mould and kids getting ill.

[Angela Rayner]

If we can address that in the Bill, we should push for it, but we should also push to ensure that, whether in social housing or private rentals, people should have confidence that their homes are safe. Homes should be a safe place, but at the moment, that is not the case for too many.

Huge swathes of renters have been left paying a heavy price for the Government’s inaction on section 21. This is real for people such as the Brady family, who live in Wiltshire and have experienced two no-fault evictions in the past two years. Mr Brady is a gardener and Mrs Brady works full time. After being forced out of their home, where they had lived for 15 years, they have resorted to living in their van. The family are able to bid on council houses when they become available, but so far, everything has been at least an hour away from where they live. Mr Brady said:

“There is a housing crisis and there are reasons behind it—you can use whatever excuses you want but it is a political decision. It was a political decision not to build enough houses, it was a political decision to sell off the social housing stock.”

Those are not my words but the words of a man who would still have a roof over his head if the Government had not dragged their feet.

I feel that more delay is inevitable. Conservative Members threatened in the newspapers this weekend to choose their self-interest over the national interest by opposing or delaying the Bill. They do not want to see these changes enacted. Then, on Friday evening, the Department snuck out the suggestion that section 21 changes are dependent on court improvements, which could take years to complete. Today we discovered—not from an announcement to the press, to Parliament or to the public, but from a leak—that that is indeed the core part of a grubby private deal that the Secretary of State has struck behind closed doors with his own Back Benchers. So the Government who broke our justice system are now using their own failure as an excuse to break their own promises.

Just how long will it take? Can the Secretary of State promise that the Government will meet the pledge they made at the last general election, which he mentioned, before the next general election? Renters simply cannot afford any more excuses or delays; he must provide clarity on that. [Interruption.] I know that he is a confident Secretary of State—he says so from a sedentary position—and I have confidence in his abilities, but people who are facing section 21 notices cannot afford any more dither and delay. He will get support from those on the Labour Benches in enacting this legislation to protect families who need protection.

We think that the Bill is a good starting point. We fear that a number of loopholes have been left in it, however. One such loophole is the commencement clause, which leaves Ministers the power to decide when—or, perhaps, whether—to actually bring an end to section 21. But that is not the only loophole. I hope that the Minister will engage with us constructively in Committee to close all those loopholes and strengthen the Bill in a range of areas.

For example, the new grounds for and protections from evictions are a welcome step, but the details on those grounds remain vague. On evictions, there remains a loophole by which renters are protected only for the first six months of their tenancy if their landlord decides to sell the property or move back in. That time limit needs to be increased as part of the Bill to give renters proper protection.

On section 21, it is not just a question of when the law is implemented but of how. Every household threatened with homelessness by a section 21 notice has the right to assistance from their local council to prevent them from becoming homeless, but the Bill removes that right to immediate help. That loophole could lead to a huge spike in homelessness and must be closed.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. I am grateful to her for highlighting that point; I have come across such cases, and it is an absolutely appalling situation. Often young families are thrust out of their homes with very little notice, and local authorities struggle to cope. At the moment, many such cases that I have come across involve people being moved to B&Bs out of the area.

[Angela Rayner]

I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting that concern. To be fair to the Secretary of State, he acknowledged the challenges in his remarks—not just the housing challenges but all the challenges faced by families. People are scared and live insecure lives because of the devastation and ripple effect of the challenges they face.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is right to highlight the human cost of those evictions, but there is also a financial cost to councils. Bristol City Council pays exorbitant amounts to put people into emergency and temporary accommodation, which it should not have to do, so does she agree that, on top of helping people by ensuring that they do not have to go through the pain of eviction, the Government have a financial interest in resolving the issue?

[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree. I also think that, as the Secretary of State mentioned, most private landlords want to do the right thing and are a good part of our housing mix. They should therefore welcome the fact that we are doing our best to ensure that their good name is upheld and that they are not stained by the tiny minority who do not do the right thing, who are the reason why these protections are so overdue.

We are also concerned that the changes to antisocial behaviour grounds are, as they stand, ambiguous and open to abuse. Mental health needs and domestic abuse are sometimes reported as antisocial behaviour, so that definition must be made more pragmatic and focused on genuine antisocial behaviour. The Secretary of State made reference to this issue, and I heard what he said; I look forward to working with him in Committee to address it, because it is important.

The Bill is also silent on the issue of economic evictions. While it strengthens the law to ensure landlords can only increase rents once a year, which is welcome, the mechanism for tenants to contest excessive rent hikes is not strong enough, giving people little real protection against so-called economic evictions.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Is there not a particular problem with the evidence that the rent tribunals will look at? The proposal is that they will look at the average market rents, but the local housing allowance is set at only 30% of the local average, meaning that rents could increase above the LHA and no one would be able to complain about it.

[Angela Rayner]

It is absolutely right that we get into these challenges, because I do not think people feel that the current situation provides redress for the challenges they face. I hope that in Committee, the Secretary of State will listen to points made by Members across the House to ensure that people get the redress and support that they need, and that we strengthen tenants’ rights in this area.

[Mr Betts]

The Bill does not really deal with the issue of affordability at all. One of the big issues is the freezing of the local housing allowance: some 90% of properties in the private rented sector are not affordable with the amount of LHA that is payable. The Select Committee recommended that we go back to the 30% figure, as was previously the case, so could we push for that to happen? Currently, many people simply cannot afford anything at all in the private rented sector.

[Angela Rayner]

We have to get into that issue, but we also have to deal with the root cause, which is that we do not have enough adequate social housing in this country. We do not have enough housing, and that is because of 13 years of the Tories’ failure to build the housing that we need and to challenge Members on their Back Benches. The Prime Minister has failed to challenge those on his Back Benches who have delayed house building in this country when we need it so desperately.

The Secretary of State mentioned the hon. Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) and the White Paper, but I am disappointed that many of the proposals in the Government’s White Paper have since been dropped. The Secretary of State said that he is open-minded, and I am glad about that, because the Bill is silent on proposals to make blanket bans on renting to families with children or those in receipt of benefits illegal. That sort of unacceptable practice must be stamped out, and I hope he will work with us to make sure the Bill does so. In the White Paper, the Government also promised to introduce the decent homes standard to give renters safer, better-value homes and remove the blight of poor-quality homes in local communities. That standard is missing from the Bill, but I did hear what the Secretary of State said in his opening remarks. I gently say to him that we cannot miss an opportunity to give private renters the protection—the long-term security and better rights and conditions—that they deserve.

[Wera Hobhouse]

To ensure that tenants have that safety, does the right hon. Lady agree that we need a new regulator for all private rentals with the power to subject landlords to regular inspections?

[Angela Rayner]

The Bill talks about the ombudsman. We need to make sure that landlords understand their obligations, and where they do not, we need to ensure that there is redress. As I mentioned earlier, that ombudsman must have real teeth, and I hope the Secretary of State understands that. While I respect the landlords who are in the Chamber and those who are listening to this debate—I know many of them do a good job and are trying their best—we have to have a minimum standard. We cannot have circumstances, as we have seen in Greater Manchester, where children are living in very poor conditions. It is really important that we have regulation and, where people are in accommodation that falls below those standards, we have redress.

After four years, the clock is ticking. There can be no more delay, but the Government’s track record does not instil much confidence. On the Tories’ watch, mortgage bills and rents are soaring, fewer people are able to buy their own home, and over 1 million people are stuck on social housing waiting lists. Those problems are only going to get worse because the Prime Minister could not stand up to his Back Benchers on house building targets. Now it appears that once again, he is caving in to them, rather than keeping his promises to the British people.

This Bill is an important step forward, supporting renters at the sharp edge of the cost of living crisis, so Labour will work constructively throughout its passage. We will not be the cause of delay—I hope the Secretary of State can say the same about his Back Benchers. If they cannot act in the national interest and support a renters’ reform Bill worthy of its name, let me make clear that our offer is to do so instead, because over the course of our proceedings today, 33 renters will have been put at risk of homelessness because they were issued with a section 21 notice and 11 will have got a visit from the bailiffs evicting them. Every single one of those people will be faced with anxiety about the future—anxiety about having to pay eye-watering moving costs and about whether they will be made completely homeless. They cannot afford to wait for the Prime Minister to find a backbone and stand up to his party. They cannot afford to wait for the Secretary of State to buy off his Back Benchers, and they cannot afford to wait yet more years for this Government to keep the promises they made to them.

We stand ready to work in the national interest, and will do so with anyone else who is prepared to join us. I urge the House not to waste this chance.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

It will be obvious to the House that a great many people want to catch my eye. We have a long time—we have three hours ahead—but I want to be fair in the way that that is divided up, so we will begin with a time limit of seven minutes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Angela Rayner Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to face the right hon. Gentleman for our first questions. I hope he enjoyed his party conference, cancelling a meat tax that nobody had planned, abolishing seven bins that do not exist and announcing that they would build a series of transport links that already do exist—not so much conference season as panto season. I shall keep my question to a problem that definitely does exist. One million families are waiting for social housing. How can he justify handing back to the Treasury billions of pounds that are desperately needed to tackle the housing crisis?

[Michael Gove]

It is because we spend our money effectively. The affordable homes programme—the £11.5 billion investment that we are making—will lead, and has led, to investment in social and affordable housing across the country. The right hon. Lady has a challenge when it comes to credibility on social housing. She secured the deputy leadership of her party by saying that the Labour party should be building 100,000 social homes every year, and yet its current target is zero. Why did she retreat?

[Angela Rayner]

The right hon. Gentleman just comes out with flannel—I think he is auditioning for panto season this afternoon. He can dress it up however he likes, but the truth is that he could not spend this vital funding quickly enough in the middle of a housing crisis. It is clear that the Prime Minister shares his disregard for struggling families. In his hour-long speech in Manchester, the Prime Minister did not mention housing a single time—not once—but the Housing Minister did tell conference that renters are not all weed-smoking gangsters, which I am sure the right hon. Gentleman knows all about, as he mentioned gangsters earlier today. Can the Secretary of State assure us that, despite the tone of those remarks, the Renters (Reform) Bill will not be scrapped before the King’s Speech?

[Michael Gove]

Yes, we are bringing reform to the rental market, but I note that at her own party conference the right hon. Lady shared with the public not just her policies but her recipe for a cocktail called Venom, which apparently contains a bottle of vodka, a bottle of Southern Comfort, 10 Blue WKDs and a litre of orange juice. We know what the real lethal cocktail from the Labour party is: a mix of unfunded spending commitments, massive borrowing, greenbelt development and hypocrisy on housing.

Birmingham City Council

Angela Rayner Excerpts

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for the advance copy of his statement today. It has been a while since we faced each other: 804 days, to be exact. A lot has changed since then. We are on our third Prime Minister, our fourth Chancellor and, of course, our sixth different Minister for Housing. They have crashed the economy, families face the worst cost of living for a generation, and mortgage rates have increased nearly fivefold since our last meeting. But one thing has not changed: local government has been pushed to the brink. Birmingham is just the biggest, latest example.

This is a deeply worrying time for people in the city. The issues facing the council are difficult and complex, and administrations of all three major political parties have grappled with them in the years since they emerged. Since May, the new leadership in Birmingham have been working urgently on this issue and have been clear that they will take responsibility for tackling the problems facing their city, but they can only make that progress if the Secretary of State treats them as partners, and not as a political football.

I welcome the comments the Secretary of State has laid out today in regard to the action and support he will give Birmingham, but can he assure us that the commissioners will work with the city’s elected representatives and leadership to tackle these problems together? Is his Department considering a similar approach to other struggling councils? Will his officials be taking a deep dive into the areas he mentioned in his statement?

In Birmingham’s case, the Secretary of State mentioned the large equal pay settlement as the straw that broke the camel’s back, but he also told us that governance and service delivery concerns were raised by three independent sources: the local government and social ombudsman, the housing ombudsman and the Department for Education’s commissioner for special educational needs and disability. That came after Lord Kerslake’s review, which found that successive administrations had failed the city. Yet he provided no support until the section 114 notice. Why does it take that for the Government to take action on this scale?

Like the rest of the country, Birmingham is facing the shock of spiralling inflation and battling a cost of living crisis, but in the face of all of this, the Government stripped away its reserves. Can the Secretary of State confirm that that amounts to £1 billion taken from the pockets of local communities over the last decade? He surely cannot deny that Birmingham has experienced some of the most severe cuts of the last 13 years, and he must recall that it was this Prime Minister who boasted of changing the funding formulas to take money away from deprived urban areas. Now, faced with an eye-watering equal pay claim, with which the leadership are rightly dealing, Birmingham has been pushed over the edge.

As the Secretary of State admitted, this is by no means a single case. Local authorities across the country are struggling, and, after 13 years, he cannot seriously say that it is all their own fault. Perhaps he can confirm that only one council issued a section 114 notice before his party took office in 2010, and that since then eight councils have issued notices, with warnings that another 26 are at risk of bankruptcy over the next two years. Can he tell us why so many local authorities of all political stripes have already issued section 114 notices on his watch? This is not a one-off, so what work is his Department doing to support local authorities that are warning of financial distress now?

The truth is this crisis in local government has been caused by the Conservatives’ wrecking ball. With every swing, another local council is pushed to the brink and another local community falls over the edge. That is the difference between us. A Labour Government would oversee sustainable, long-term funding for councils, and we would work with local authorities and push power, wealth and opportunity out of Westminster. The Secretary of State finished his statement by talking about upholding the good name of local government. Surely we can all agree that central Government have real questions to answer. Will the Secretary of State finally grasp the nettle and take responsibility, or is his message to local councils today that this is just the start of more misery to come?

[Michael Gove]

It is a great pleasure to be reunited with the right hon. Lady; those 800 days apart seemed much longer. We have certain things in common—both of us have been trade union organisers in the past—but she has been much more successful in internal party elections than I have ever been, so I do have a lot to learn from her. Nevertheless, I must politely remind her that while in my statement I was, I hope, careful and scrupulous in making clear that responsibility goes back quite some time in Birmingham, and responsibility does need to be shared between elected members and officials, I did not mention anything specifically or explicitly party political, because I believe it is vital that we work together across parties and across political traditions to deal with this issue.

Given that the right hon. Lady did mention the party politics of this, I think it important for us to recognise that the intervention in Birmingham, and our interventions in Sandwell and Liverpool, have all been interventions in Labour-led local authorities in which comprehensive mismanagement extended back over years. It is simply not good enough to say that Birmingham has not received the support that it needed. Birmingham has a core spending power of £1,202.4 million. That is a 10.6% increase in the last year, and a 31.8% increase since 2015-16.

Labour local authorities have been supported with funding, and also supported with the help of West Midlands Combined Authority. There is a striking factor in the west midlands: why is it that Labour Sandwell and Birmingham are failing, while the Conservative leadership of Andy Street has seen the delivery of record investment and record house building? If people want to draw political lessons from what we have seen in Birmingham, the message is very clear: if you want effective and efficient local government, trust in Conservative leadership, particularly at a time when we need to recognise that a fundamental problem afflicting Birmingham’s finances is an equal-pay problem exacerbated by the actions of trade unions—trade unions which, in many cases, are funding Front-Bench spokesmen for the Labour party. It is vital that Labour politicians use their influence to ensure that we can work together to deal with the problems that that great city faces.

Council Tax

Angela Rayner Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

I would like to say that it is a pleasure to speak in this debate, but frankly, I am sad that we have reached this point. It is a stain on Britain’s democratic history that, if the Government have their way with these regulations, we will take a historic step away from making our democracy more open and accessible and towards closing it down, shutting people out and making it harder to vote.

Opposition Members have been clear from the start that this legislation is a wasted opportunity. It is a step backwards at a time when so many improvements are needed to widen participation in our democracy and to make it fit for the 21st century. The regulations arise from a slapdash, short-sighted and politically motivated act that turns the clock back on democratic progress. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) for his work throughout the stages of the Elections Act 2022, highlighting the dangers of mandatory photo ID, which we are debating today. I thank him for helping to secure this debate on the Floor of the House when Ministers would no doubt have preferred to sneak it through upstairs.

The basic fact is that voter ID is not only a backwards step for democracy, but completely pointless. It is a solution in search of a problem. Ministers claim it will combat voter fraud, but voter personation—the voter fraud which voter ID apparently targets—is vanishingly rare. Over the last 10 years, there have been about 243 million votes cast in elections, and how many people have been convicted of voter fraud? Four. That is 0.00000005%. I am under no illusion that the Government are in the slightest bit interested in genuinely tackling fraud. The Tories’ Minister responsible for fraud summarised it when he resigned at the Dispatch Box, saying that the Government had

“no knowledge of, or little interest in, the consequences of fraud to our economy or society.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 24 January 2022; Vol. 818, c. 20.]

While the Government focus on measures like these regulations, serious fraud, where criminals target vulnerable people with scams to steal bank details, is running rife under this Government. Our economy loses around £190 billion every year to fraud—more than the UK spends on health and defence combined. People are being left terrorised by scammers pretending to be their banks, mobile networks or family members, but instead of actually tackling that, the Government are using parliamentary time to tackle the virtually non-existent crime of voter personation, costing millions of pounds in taxpayers’ money to boot.

[Justin Tomlinson]

Will the right hon. Member explain why, if the system is so bad, it is used in Labour selections?

[Angela Rayner]

I have just explained why this is such a tiny, not even significant, minuscule issue that the Government are trying to make hay over, when, in fact, we have fraud that results in people being terrorised by scammers pretending to be their banks. Millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money is being wasted on this Bill instead of dealing with the fraud that the hon. Member’s constituents have to face every single day, which is not being tackled. He needs to tackle that.

Perhaps the Minister lives in a bizarre alternative reality where, across the country, people are attempting to impersonate their neighbours to steal their votes, but meanwhile, in this universe, you are more likely to be hit by lightning 54 times than fall victim to voter personation fraud. So let us get back to the reality that we face. The British public face a cost of living crisis, freezing temperatures, with people too scared to put their heating on, and cancelled Christmases, with working parents unable to afford festive treats. And this Conservative Government are planning to spend £180 million of taxpayers’ money to introduce a completely pointless and eye-wateringly expensive change.

[Aaron Bell]

We heard evidence from the police in the Bill Committee. They thought that the measures on voter ID and the extra measures that we are taking to avoid intimidation would make the Act really useful for them on polling day, so that they can get on with the job that we want them to do—that is, to keep our communities safe—and not have to spend as much time dealing with cases of personation at polling stations.

[Angela Rayner]

I say to the hon. Member: show us the evidence. Where is the evidence of that? We have not seen the evidence, but we do know that people are choosing between heating and eating this winter. We do know that crime is on the rise and that people just do not see the police on the beat any more. We do know that people are targeted by online fraud every single day of the week, with no protection and no action by their Government.

I ask the Minister: why will he not spend his time and energy tackling the huge array of issues that face the British people instead of flushing away yet more hard-earned taxpayers’ cash on this pointless measure? I might be able to hazard a guess. I notice that the regulations allow 60-plus, but not 18-plus, Oyster cards—why is that? I notice that OAP bus passes will be valid, yet students IDs will not—why is that? I notice that some 4.2 million voters do not have a photo ID allowed by these regulations, yet the Government demand that we plough on—why is that?

The Minister said that voter ID does not discriminate, but I am afraid that the evidence does not quite stack up. When the Minister’s colleague, a former Cabinet Office Minister—the right hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith)—said that

“the evidence of our pilots shows that there is no impact on any particular demographic group from this policy.”—[Official Report, 11 June 2020; Vol. 677, c. 394.]—

the answer was based on the Electoral Commission’s evaluations of the 2018 and 2019 voter ID pilots. However, in its most recent report, the commission said that it had no way of measuring the effect of voter ID on minority communities. It said:

“Polling station staff were not asked to collect demographic data about the people who did not come back, owing to the practical challenges involved in carrying out that data collection exercise”.

Let us take a look into the pilots more closely. Pilots for voter ID took place in just 10 local authority areas in England. In all elections that took place in 2019, there was one conviction and one police caution for using someone else’s vote at a polling station, but during the pilots, 2,000 people were turned away because they did not come to the polling station with ID. More than 750 of those did not return with ID to cast their vote. How can the Minister stand there and tell us that these measures will not make it harder for people to vote? Perhaps they are less keen on having the Government chosen by the voters than having the voters chosen by the Government.

I come on to the Government’s so-called “free elector IDs”. Not only are they unworkable, they are hugely expensive for already overstretched local authorities. Council leaders have warned the Government that voter ID risks damaging access to democracy and must be delayed. They say that there is simply not enough time to deal with all the risks that will be created by the new system. I wonder what the Minister has to say to the Conservative chair of the Local Government Association, James Jamieson, who said that voter ID must be delayed because:

“It is a fundamental part of the democratic process that elections can run smoothly and effectively where every citizen is able to exercise their right to vote.”

What does the Minister have to say to the leader of his party’s councillors?

The language and politics around voter ID used by this Government is frankly dangerous. Does the Minister not trust the voters of this country to continue to cast their ballots securely, as they have done for generations? Does he really believe that voting is not safe and secure in Britain? Ministers should be promoting confidence in our elections, not spreading baseless scare stories that threaten our democracy.

Finally, the Minister will be aware of an amendment tabled in the other place by my noble Friends on the Labour Front Bench to establish a Select Committee to conduct an assessment of the impact of the voter ID regulations on turnout in the local elections next May. If the Minister is so confident that the regulations will not create barriers to people voting, surely he cannot object to that pragmatic, common-sense proposal. Surely he has absolutely nothing to be afraid of.

I urge Members across the House, when they enter the voting Lobbies this evening, to think about our constituents who have the right to vote and may have done so for decades, but will be turned away for the first time in May. It is for that fundamental reason that these backward, unworkable and anti-democratic regulations must be stopped in their tracks.