Elections Bill

Baroness Barker Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, electoral law is perhaps a somewhat arcane topic, but it often defines a society because it tells us who are regarded as being citizens with power in a particular society. Electoral law can also define a Government. The Government of Earl Grey in 1830 was known as a reforming Government. It brought in the Great Reform Act 1832, which extended the franchise. I wonder what, in years to come, people will make of this legislation brought in by this Government, contrary to much of the evidence and research quoted extensively tonight.

I will confine myself to two points in this short speech. Much of what the noble Lord, Lord True, said could be described as, “This is the Government making great efforts to extend our democracy.” I have spent quite a bit of time, with the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Ashley Abbotts, looking at citizenship and civic engagement. Back in 2017 and 2018, we looked extensively at the work done by government to extend citizenship education in schools. We have recently looked at it again, and, in truth, we do very little to ensure that children leave school with the most basic knowledge of how to participate as active citizens in this country. We have a low basis of teacher training, and we have no cross-governmental responsibility for ensuring that we have professional teachers qualified to teach this.

While we are quite happy to pay lip-service in legislation such as this, we are unwilling to look at what we need to do to equip our citizens to participate fully, not just in terms of their personal social development but to acknowledge how they play an active part in the decision-making of society.

My second point is about voter ID and voter registration. There is a correlation between those of us who are members of minority groups and who have often had problems and been questioned about our identity and the equanimity, or lack of it, with which we approach the Bill. It is not until you are a member of a visible minority that you really get to understand just how easy it is to fall outside the norms of society. I want to take this opportunity to talk on behalf particularly of non-binary and trans people. They have no other representation in our Parliament. They are a group of people who are quite often—daily—vilified and misrepresented in our country, but they are citizens. They have expressed great reservations about ID. I think that trans and non-binary citizens should be required along with everybody else to prove their identity, but it is up to the Government to make sure that the systems of proof of identity are not based on prejudice or narrow, conventional ideas about what proper voters look like.

Therefore, I want to ask the Minister the following question. This piece of legislation had very little discussion and scrutiny before it came to this House. Will his Government undertake to talk to representatives of all sorts of minority communities about how the legislation will be implemented and what sort of training there will be for the officials who have to implement it, to make sure that it is not discriminatory in the way that is feared?

In this day and age, when commercial companies that truly understand the importance of being able to diversify access to their goods and services can do so in ways that maintain integrity of systems of ID, it is not beyond the wit of a Government to do that. As it stands, this legislation is nowhere near anything that could be considered inclusive. This Government really could do much better.