Elections Bill

Anthony Browne Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Cat Smith]

It appears to be all happening in Wycombe. I believe that I was there for the hon. Gentleman’s speech, and I know he takes a keen interest in this issue, so he will know well that where there are widespread examples of voter personation, which is a serious crime, it should be tackled. That is why the law is different in Northern Ireland, where there was a culture of organised crime and gangs stealing hundreds of votes through personation at polling stations; that was legislated against. There is no evidence of that in England, Scotland and Wales, so legislation is not needed. Where there are examples of voter personation, it is right and proper that it is tackled, but as there are not such examples, the Bill is just legislation that puts up another barrier to legitimate voters’ ability to vote.

In the voter trial areas, which were in just a handful of local authorities, we know that 700 voters at local elections who were turned away did not return to use their vote. Given the tiny numbers of accusations of voter personation and the huge numbers of people who were turned away because they did not have ID, we know that the Bill will disproportionately disenfranchise legitimate voters.

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Thank you for your generosity and time. You said clearly that you think the proposal to introduce voter ID is an attempt to rig elections. Is that why the Labour party requires voter ID to vote in local party gatherings and has a long history of that? Have you attempted to rig your own elections?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. Really, the hon. Gentleman is experienced enough to know that he should not use the word “you”, which refers to me.

[Anthony Browne]

I apologise.

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[Clive Lewis]

That is a fair point. Let me retort with an alternative statistic for you. There were 34 allegations of impersonation in the 2019 general election, out of 58 million votes. I took out my calculator and that works out that there was 0.0000058% fraud in the last election.

The Government have produced a piece of legislation straight out of the far-right playbook from the United States to look for a problem that does not exist. This tactic is drawn straight from the authoritarian playbook of racist American legislators. Their voter suppression laws have been and are being used to reinstate Jim Crow-era mass disenfranchisement via the back door. The Southern Poverty Law Centre, which has commented on such legislation, says:

“The real reason these laws are passed is to suppress the vote, and that is in fact what happens.”

We have a crisis of democracy precisely because established institutions have failed to represent the public as a whole—failed to challenge economic self-interest in favour of the common good. The truth, as this Government know, is that their ideology of destructive and unequal growth, fuelled by oil and gas, is not shared by the British public. Even the super-wealthy see the uninhabitable world this system is creating. They choose to flee to private islands or hide out in vast compounds in the depths of New Zealand and elsewhere. This Bill, along with the protest ban and the attacks on the independent judiciary and human rights, is a buttress against the public. Authoritarian control is being shored up because this Government know they cannot win public consent freely and fairly for policies that will continue to impose poverty on an ever-greater number of people so that wealth can be extracted for a few. [Interruption.] You sit there looking incredulous, yet that is what your politics and your policies do, day in day and day out.

[Anthony Browne]

I wonder whether the hon. Member is aware that actually voter ID is very common in other countries. You said that it is a racist policy to bring back Jim Crow laws from the US. Are you aware that the world’s most successful multi-racial democracy, Canada, uses voter ID, as well as highly respected democracies such as Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Italy and France? They all use voter ID.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. Before the hon. Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) answers that, can I please remind everybody, on all sides, not to refer to “you”, because that is me, and I have no views on this matter, as you know?

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[Alberto Costa (South Leicestershire) (Con)]

Let me directly address the comments just made by the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) by warmly welcoming the Government’s proposals in the Bill, particularly those aimed at finally enshrining in law the rights of certain EU citizens to vote in local elections in England and Northern Ireland, elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly and police and crime commissioner elections in England and Wales.

As Members will recall, I, along with some others, have long championed the rights of UK citizens living in the EU and EU citizens living here in the UK. Safeguarding those rights has been an essential promise in our leaving the EU. In the UK, there are millions of EU citizens who have made it their home, contributing to our economy, wellbeing and culture. Likewise, there are over a million British citizens contributing to the economic wellbeing of the EU countries that they now call home.

Following the motion on citizens’ rights that I put before the House in February 2019, the House reaffirmed its determination to protect the rights of citizens affected by the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. It was the only occasion, as far as I can recall, when the House was absolutely unanimous on a major Brexit issue. I am very proud of having helped to protect the rights of millions of innocent people.

This Bill builds upon those commitments by ensuring that EU citizens with settled status will continue to hold the franchise for local elections in England, elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly and elections of police and crime commissioners in England and Wales. The Bill will provide EU citizens with the necessary protections and peace of mind by ensuring that their voices continue to be heard at local and regional levels in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

[Anthony Browne]

I very much praise my hon. Friend for the work he did on protecting the rights of EU citizens. I think the whole House was grateful to him for that. I support the view on reciprocity. Does he think that the UK Government should encourage other EU countries to enable British citizens who live there to vote?

[Alberto Costa]

I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent intervention. That is exactly the ask that I have for Government Ministers this evening.

For EU citizens who may have arrived and settled after the implementation period’s completion—that is, from 1 January this year—I would like to welcome the additional steps this Government have taken in the form of bilateral arrangements with several EU member states, to which my hon. Friend has just alluded. Agreements are already in place with Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg and Poland. They mean that citizens of those nations who may have arrived after the transition period will also be afforded the right to vote in our local elections, and similarly, reciprocal arrangements will apply to British citizens resident in those countries. That goes beyond the obligations envisioned by the EU in the withdrawal agreement, and the Government are to be commended for their choice to enter into bilateral arrangements with those individual EU member state countries, ensuring that wherever possible we enhance the rights of UK citizens living in those countries as well as the citizens of those countries living here.

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[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

The first time I went to a polling booth, I brought some ID with me. I assumed that surely I would need to prove who I am, so I was stunned when I was told, “Actually, no, you don’t need to show any ID.” I remember little 18-year-old me thinking that democracy is our most valuable asset, yet anyone can vote in someone else’s name without anybody checking.

It is often said that justice not only needs to be done but needs to be seen to be done, and the same could be said of democracy. Democracy not only needs to be fair; it needs to be seen to be fair. We have to accept that we have a problem in this country. At the last election, a constituent came to me after he went to vote but found that somebody had already voted in his name. There was nothing he could do. His vote was stolen. Would Opposition Members say to him, “Well, actually, the Government should not do anything to stop your vote being stolen in future”?

It is often said, and many Opposition Members have been saying it, that the rate of voter fraud in the UK is very low, but how would we know? By definition, it is a hidden crime. Reported cases are low, but we do not know the actual rate. The truth is that, without safeguards, bad practice drives out good practice, or it can do. Like MPs’ expenses or phone hacking by journalists, if people do bad things and others see them get away with it unpunished, those people will think they can also do it.

I worked for the Prime Minister when he was Mayor of London. I was not as directly involved in Tower Hamlets as some of my hon. Friends, but I knew many of the politicians. The electoral fraud happening there was an open secret for years, totally undermining local democracy. I wondered why nothing was done about it, and I was very frustrated.

[Alberto Costa]

Does my hon. Friend agree that Peter Golds, an excellent Tory councillor, has done so much to highlight that very issue?

[Anthony Browne]

Absolutely. Peter Golds is one of the politicians I talked to at the time, and he has done excellent work in trying to restore trust in democracy in Tower Hamlets. Ridiculously, it was not until 2014 that the courts annulled the election; we should never have been able to get into that situation. There are endless stories in the media about voter fraud. Confidence in the integrity of democracy is being eroded, and there is a clear solution. The Electoral Commission said, after its research, that two thirds of voters say they would have more confidence in the security of the voting system if there was a requirement to show voter ID. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) has said, the OSCE, which normally bothers itself about the emerging democracies in eastern Europe, said after the 2010 UK elections that

“serious consideration should be given to introducing a more robust mechanism for identification of voters.”

I agree with that.

I also agree with Opposition Members that this must not lead to the disenfranchisement of voters. However, as we have heard, 99% of voters already have a photo ID of some sort and those who do not can get free photo ID from their local council. Labour introduced voter ID in Northern Ireland in 2003 and there is no evidence of disenfranchisement there. As I mentioned, many of the leading and most respected democracies in the world have already got voter ID—Norway, Sweden, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria have it. We are in many ways an outlier in Europe. Voters are losing confidence in democracy in Britain and we have a duty to ensure that democracy is both fair and seen to be fair. We must introduce voter ID, and I commend this Bill to the House.