Elections Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to take part in this hugely rich and informative debate that has so comprehensively torn to shreds the Bill and the methods by which it arrived in your Lordships’ House. It seems unfair to pick out one speech among so many brilliant ones, but I will highlight the contribution of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, on such a crucial issue. On the global stage, should a nation emerging from dictatorship produce a constitution with an electoral commission under government direction, we would waggle our fingers and say, “Have another go”. I must warn the noble and learned Lord that I intend to ensure that his speech gets as wide a circulation as possible. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, may warn him about the potential consequences of that.

That leaves me with a challenge for I adhere to the principle of trying never to rise in your Lordships’ House unless I have something different and substantive to add. I begin with a statement that may come as a shock. I thank the Minister and the Government for this Bill and welcome its arrival in this House. I welcome it because, in bringing up all these issues—as the Government have found with Clause 9 of the Nationality and Borders Bill—and seeking to make disastrously bad elements of our current outdated, undemocratic, dysfunctional systems worse, while seeking to follow the Trumpian path of populist destruction, it provides us with a wonderful opportunity to show how much we need to radically transform our current system.

Those of us who understand that the people meant what they said in 2016, that they wanted to take back control—control of the planning in their communities, including protecting green spaces; control of their lives through decent jobs with a real living wage; control of Parliament, with a Parliament that actually reflects the view of the people, not just the 44% of those who voted handing over 100% of the power to Boris Johnson—now have a great opportunity. This is a stage to present all those proposals for making the UK a democracy.

This is rather like a bear that has dipped its paws into a bee’s nest and hopes to run away with some honey before its residents can muster a response. Yes, my use of that simile is deliberate, given the issues I raised earlier in Oral Questions over the Prime Minister’s inconsistent responses to my honourable friend Caroline Lucas’s questions in the other place about the Russia report. The Government are going to find that they have raised a swarm of opposition, and one that is determined to rebuild this hive into something stronger, smarter and more efficient, fit for the 21st century. This afternoon I saw the giant billboard from the Democracy Defence Coalition, involving groups including Unlock Democracy and Make Votes Matter, setting out all the things we can use this Bill to make better. Noble Lords who are in Millbank House and who looked out of the window will have seen it, too.

I am going to take a couple of minutes to create a portrait of what we could do to create a decent modern constitution for the UK. First, because they are the future and the generation that will live it, we should have votes at 16. We have them in Scotland and Wales; why should England’s young people miss out? I talk to a lot of 16 and 17 year-olds. They are at least as well informed as the average 60 year-old, and they are experts on being a 16 year-old today in a way that no one who speaks for them in either Chamber can be—and certainly, I am afraid, those in your Lordships’ House are not.

Next there is automatic voter registration. I follow the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, on this. Many noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Moore, in his maiden speech—and I must welcome him to the House as a fellow former newspaper editor—noted the gradual expansion of the franchise over history. The final logical step, making sure that everyone actually has a vote, is automatic voter registration, so you do not have to jump through those mysterious hoops. So many people naturally think, if they are on the council tax roll or enrolled in a university, living in official accommodation, that the state knows where they are and who they are. The voices who we must hear most, those struggling in poverty, suffering discrimination and exclusion from society, are the ones who are least likely to be able to navigate the current system. That is obviously the absolute reverse step of voter ID, which is restricting the franchise, going backwards. There is no way the Government can justify this voter suppression tactic, taken straight from the US far right. When only 30% of registered voters turn out in council elections and less than 70% in general elections, there is no justification for acting to reduce the turn out even further.

As the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, said, we need a proportional system for electing both the Commons and the Lords. We share the current first past the post system with Belarus. That is not really a recommendation, is it? The Minister in his introduction suggested that PR was too difficult. I say that it is first past the post that is extraordinarily difficult for voters. They have to guess how everyone else in their constituency is going to vote and try and adjust their vote accordingly, very often voting for the party they hate second most to stop the party they hate most getting in. We also need to see decentralisation, power taken out of here and put back into communities.

I finish by circling back to those Russian bears. We have to talk about political fund raising. We need extremely tight restrictions on individual and company donations to parties and campaigns. A maximum of £500 sounds about right. The Green Party in 2015 was a pioneer in crowd-funding political campaigns. Many thousands of people threw hard earned £5, £10, £20 to support our efforts. Combined with state funding for politics, that is how we get the politics of the people rather than a politics of the plutocrats.

The Minister said he wanted a system fit for the modern age. I am happy to work with people around your Lordships’ House to send the Bill out of this House looking exactly like that. It is a great opportunity.

Elections Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Thursday 10th March 2022 Lords Chamber

The question that I have upmost in my mind is: why have the Government felt it necessary to take this power? The answer may be the one that the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, gave; they feel that the Electoral Commission did not behave properly on the Brexit debate. It will be interesting if the Minister explains that that is the reason. But even if the Electoral Commission fell short of what was expected of it at that time, the right way to deal with that is not by the Government taking powers to direct it. That is why these clauses are very worrying and I hope they will be omitted from the Bill.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, the processes of your Lordships’ House are enclosed in layers of impenetrable language, punctuated by archaic ritual and layered in complex paperwork that can confuse even the veterans among us. For International Women’s Day I have been exhorting the young people of Britain, particularly young girls, to watch the House of Lords—with some trepidation because it is not easy to understand if you just switch on Lords TV.

Many noble Lords will have noticed, in the great increase in our piles of letters and emails in our inboxes, that the House of Lords is—this is responding particularly to the comment of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox—a place where democracy is being defended. Several noble Lords have said, “Oh well, we don’t have to worry about this Government having the power of control over the Electoral Commission; it’s some other putative Government we are concerned about.” However, when I look at the police Bill, the judicial review Bill, the Nationality and Borders Bill and many others, and I look at my postbag of people saying they are concerned, I know that the public are asking us to represent them, and we have to worry about this Government as well as any potential future Government.

As a further piece of evidence, noble Lords may have seen, a week or so back, the Democracy Defence Coalition’s giant van and billboard parked—deliberately—outside Millbank House, where many of us have offices. That organisation represents hundreds of thousands of people who are concerned about this Bill. The top line in their list was concern about the independence of the Electoral Commission, which is what these amendments seek to address—particularly Amendment 4A.

Coming to the detail of this, I entirely understand the impulse from the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, to try to put some controls and limits in. But the only way forward is to get these clauses out of the Bill. More than that, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and others, that this Bill is an absolute mess. As others have said, the number of government amendments makes that very clear. We must not be proceeding with this Bill as an absolute minimum at the moment.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, for tabling these amendments and setting an example for all of us in Committee to present our amendments with such brevity in such a concise nature. I declare my interests in the register which are relevant to this Bill.

The noble Baroness’s amendments do their utmost—if these two clauses are to remain part of the Bill—to keep the Electoral Commission as independent as possible from government interference. It might be worth looking at a dictionary definition of independence. It is: the ability to go about one’s business without being helped, hindered or influenced by others. The Minister may say that this is trying to help the Electoral Commission. Independence means that you stay out of the function of that commission.

In response to the noble Baronesses, Lady Noakes and Lady Fox, we have to be very clear what the amendments are trying to omit. The role of the Electoral Commission is not to carry out the priorities of the Government. Yet we see in new Section 4A(2)(b):

“The statement is a statement prepared by the Secretary of State”—


a Cabinet Minister—

“that sets out … the role and responsibilities of the Commission in enabling Her Majesty’s government to meet those priorities.”

The role of the Electoral Commission is not to meet the priorities of Her Majesty’s Government, it is to ensure free and fair elections for all parties—not at the behest of one political party. That is why these amendments, if the clauses stand part of the Bill, are important.

At Second Reading I said to the Minister that when the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and I are together, there must be fundamental flaws in the Bill. With what the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has just said, I feel like calling him my noble friend on this particular issue. His powerful words—as upsetting as they are to some noble Lords—are absolutely correct. At this time, when people are fighting for the basics of freedom and democracy, it is wrong that we are having to debate a Bill which tries to put the Electoral Commission’s strategy and priorities in alignment with those of Her Majesty’s Government—a political party. Those are not the free and fair elections which are the basis of a strong, functioning democracy.

It is for those reasons that if at a later stage your Lordships decide to see Clauses 14 and 15 stand part of the Bill, these amendments at least try to bring back a semblance of independence and take away the role of government. That is why these Benches support the noble Baroness’s amendments as drafted.

Elections Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Tuesday 15th March 2022 Lords Chamber

An Answer to a Written Question of mine yesterday suggested that the Government were intent on increasing these limits by the rate of inflation since 2000, or by about 79%. I fear that this clause, as it stands, would make it much easier for a party able to spend around £36 million on a general election, as opposed to around £20 million at present, to direct that expenditure towards the purchasing, in effect, of marginal constituencies. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to speak in favour of this clause not standing part of the Bill. I should declare an interest that, as a Green, I am well used to always being on the wrong side of the unfair financial advantage the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, referred to. We obviously have an arms race in spending and politics paid for by the people who pump the money in. I have what might be considered a radical amendment later in this Bill to suggest that we put a very tight limit on donations. It starts from the other end of these things, saying that the quality of our politics is not benefiting from money being pumped in. This clause stand part notice suggests that we do not allow an escalation of the concentration of money even further.

Moving away from the interests of parties that do not have that sort of money—I am sure that many people who have done practical politics will know the reality of this—very often you have a street, down which is the boundary of a constituency or a council ward, and the people on one side are in a hotly contested marginal constituency and those on the other are in a safe seat. Neighbours talk to each other; one says, “I’ve got so many election leaflets coming through my door, my recycling bin is totally overflowing”, and one from the other side of the street says, “Oh, is there an election on? I didn’t know.” Think about what kind of disrepute that brings our politics into, when massive amounts of resources are concentrated in a small number of seats. People can see that this is not right or balanced, or a national political contest.

The idea of allowing notional expenditure just to roll on takes us to a very bad place, so I back the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, on this.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, we have already explored what the exact meaning of “encouraged” is. I thought the answer was going be a lemon, but it is guidance, apparently, which is not very encouraging. I am hopeful that the courts in the event will be just as robust in their interpretation of “encouraged” as they were in respect of coach trips to Thanet, so that this clause in practice will not make the change in the law the Minister hopes for. It may become a dead letter, even. More exactly, it will become not a dead letter but a further cause of confusion, with no reduction in jeopardy for agents and candidates who rely on it. But for the purposes of this debate, let us take it at face value.

In our debate last week on Clause 17, I referred to that clause as an exercise in “wing-clipping” the Electoral Commission. By the Minister’s own account, as he told your Lordships, in practice, those proposed changes made no real difference to anything. He obviously intended to give us some reassurance that those changes meant nothing at all, but I surmise that when he reports back to CCHQ he will make it sound a far more impressive change. Now we have Clause 18, which I also think is going to be found facing both ways. In reality, it is an attempt to satisfy the bloodlust of some right-wing Tory MPs who had rather a close shave in 2015. The Minister’s intention is that if this clause goes on the statute book next time, they will get away scot free. For that matter, we will all get away scot free, able to do exactly as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, has just spelled out. I actually think that in responding to this debate he will attempt to sell it to us as something far less important or serious: “It is simply a margin note to clarify the commonly accepted understanding of current law. Nothing to see here; let us move on to the next clause.”

It is worth exploring what the law says now and how it will be different if this clause stands. My noble friend Lord Rennard spelled this out very clearly. In a general election, there are two financial constraints, one at constituency level and one at national level. The constituency spending level is, comparatively speaking, tight, and the national level is, comparatively speaking, generous—and about to become even more generous, apparently. That second constraint—the maximum figure a party can spend outside constituencies—goes into a national campaign. Even the Conservative Party, with all its large donors from various nationalities and provenances, has actually found it hard to spend up to the national limits; and no other party has come anywhere close. So there is an obvious temptation to use some of that spending power in supporting constituency campaigns, which may be pressing hard up against their expense ceiling.

Of course, big cheques cannot simply be handed over by a national party campaign to the local one. It would be too visible. But goods and services in kind are much harder to keep in focus from outside. Even so, existing election law requires the constituency agent to give a fair account of any goods and services received below cost, and that that difference should be taken into account as a donation in lieu. In practice, help has to be a little more nuanced and a little more distanced from the agent. That was the nub of the fracas in Thanet. The election court saw through the Conservatives’ sleight of hand, so now we have Clause 18.

I call Clause 18 the “get out of jail free” clause. No notional spending by a party in a constituency will count unless the local agent or responsible person has “directed, authorised or encouraged” that spending. It probably does not work, although the dialogue between the party and the agent would be an interesting one to hear, would it not? “Hi Mr Agent, just a quick call from national HQ to let you know we are sending in a couple of teams to work alongside your people for the next couple of weeks. No big deal, it won’t cost you a penny. Now, don’t say a word, I don’t need any encouragement from you. It is just that your seat polling figures are slipping, so we think you need some help.” Was there any authorisation or encouragement? No, he did not encourage anybody. He did not open his lips.

Elections Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her intervention. She and I clearly recognise that there is a problem and there are different problems and you can tackle them in different ways. I happen to believe that photo ID is a way of tackling the issue.

Unfortunately, the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, is not present. I was present on the Select Committee when he gave evidence. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, was also present but, unfortunately, he clearly is not able to be here today. The noble Lord, Lord Woolley, dealt with issues way beyond the question of voter registration and voter ID when he gave evidence to the Select Committee. It was an incredibly powerful submission then and it was last week in his contribution here. He was essentially talking about alienation from society in a much broader sense, and I recognise that. I live in the ward which I think has the largest proportion of voters of west African origin of any ward in the country—Camberwell Green. In Camberwell Green, if you want to collect a package from the Post Office—and I did last week—you are required to produce one of six items of ID, four of which are photo ID, two of which are not and one of those I do not think anybody would use in this day and age. In terms of general—

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for giving way. He spoke about the alienation of voters and earlier he spoke about the validity of the process. Does he agree that concern about that validity of the process surely reflects the fact that people look at the composition of the other place—or, indeed, this place—and feel like it does not represent them? They maybe even know that 44% of votes went to the Tories and they got 100% of the power in the other place. People’s deep feeling of alienation and lack of validity does not relate to voter ID; it is much more deep-seated.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I agree with the noble Baroness, but I am not sure that it is specifically or solely related to this particular Bill. There are much broader issues on paths down which I will not go at this stage. I see it on a daily basis. I see it from where I came this afternoon to be in this Chamber.

There have been references to the question of personation and the quantities of that. The police have not pursued personation in some cases. I refer here to Richard Mawrey QC’s judgment in the petitions in relation to Tower Hamlets. He refers to a former Labour councillor, Mr Kabir Ahmed, and I quote from paragraph 326 in his report:

“Applying the statutory test of residence set out above, I am quite satisfied that 326a Bethnal Green Road was not such a ‘residence’ as would entitle Mr Ahmed to be registered to vote from that address”.


That is part of the judgment of an elections court. The police did not pursue it. I am not arguing that there are large numbers of cases, but there are far more cases than are being cited. The police, for a number of different reasons, do not pursue them.

Equally, as I cited in passing at Second Reading, the Electoral Commission makes it difficult to access electoral rolls. If you are going to be able to produce proof of false registration—that is, personation—you have to refer to past electoral rolls. However, the Electoral Commission has quite specifically said that EROs

“should not provide access to any register other than the current register”,

so that makes it very difficult indeed for people to prove personation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

The world has changed very considerably in the past half a century.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Would the noble Baroness concede that this House and the other place have changed very little in the 100 years since women got the vote in the way we operate at Westminster?

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

That is an entirely irrelevant observation, if I may say so.

I have heard many noble Lords say that this is a solution to a problem that does not exist, but I believe that that is looking at this through the wrong end of the telescope. I invite noble Lords to read my noble friend Lord Pickles’s report on election fraud, which was published after the disgraceful events at Tower Hamlets. He found that there were risks of electoral fraud in our current system. The fact that relatively few people have been convicted of election fraud is not the point. It is clear that there are real risks; we owe it to the electorate to minimise those risks.

I am astonished that noble Lords can oppose the simple concept of voter ID. As my noble friend Lord Hayward said, voter ID is required if you go to a Royal Mail depot, or indeed the Post Office, to collect a parcel. Let me give a more mundane example: last Friday, I collected a birthday cake from a supermarket and was required to show some ID. It is just part of the way we carry on our lives now. We require ID for all kinds of things. From my perspective, requiring voter ID is a reform that is long overdue.

It is also obvious that, if you go down the route of voter ID, the most secure way of proving identity is photo ID. That is why the Labour Party has required it at some of its conferences—unless the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, is going to countermand that, that is what I believe to be the case. If we go to a meeting at the MoD or the Bank of England, we have to show photo ID, because it is part of the way we live our lives now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak in support of these clauses not standing part of the Bill. I do so primarily for the reasons we debated on Thursday, and I will not go over all those again in terms of the differential impact on marginalised groups. In particular, I spoke about people in poverty, and about Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, that this is not about those groups not understanding paperwork and so forth. As my noble friend said, there are all sorts of reasons why marginalised groups may find it harder to vote. If the noble Baroness reads that debate she will see that the very work that goes into getting by in poverty can itself act as a barrier to sorting out alternative ID cards.

We have talked a lot about trust. One of the Government’s arguments—it has been put today—is that the measure is essential to increase trust in the electoral system. However, the Electoral Commission public opinion tracker found that when asked what would increase voter satisfaction, twice as many people replied proportional representation—which we shall discuss on Wednesday—as said increased security against fraud. Worse—here I do agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley—there is a real danger that the Government themselves are eroding trust by suggesting that fraud is a problem that could be addressed by these provisions. The more it is said that there is a problem of fraud, the more the general electorate are likely to think that there is a problem of fraud. The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee warns that this could damage trust between the individual and the state. It was also pretty scathing about the quality of the evidence put forward to justify the move, saying that it was “simply not good enough”.

Various concerns have been raised about the evidence provided by the pilots that the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, talked about—such as, in particular, that none was carried out in a large urban metropolis, and that we know nothing about the people who were turned away because they lacked the requisite identification and did not return. Nobody bothered to find out what happened to them.

As we heard on Thursday—there has been mention of this today too—one line of defence is that voter ID is used in most EU countries. When it was pointed out that some form of general ID is mandatory in most of those countries, the Minister said that this was neither here nor there. Actually, it is very much here and there. Whatever people think about it, if they have to carry ID around with them anyway, there is no great difficulty in taking it to the polling station. If people are not carrying it around with them anyway, that is a lot more difficult.

Both the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights have raised questions about the Government’s claim that the measures are proportionate—a test they need to meet to comply with the European Convention on Human Rights. On the one hand, as we have heard, there is very little evidence of fraud—even allowing for the fact that it is difficult to produce such evidence. On the other hand, there is pretty overwhelming evidence that the measures are likely to have a disproportionate impact on marginalised voters and potential voters. But of course we do not know—because, as I have said, the Government have not done the research. Far from being essential to the protection of our democracy, as the Minister in the Commons claimed, these provisions are a threat to inclusive democracy and citizenship.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett. I agree with everything she said.

I offer Green support for Clause 1 not standing part. We would have attached a signature to the opposition to the clause had there been space. I am well aware that we have already had a very long debate, so I will make three key points that have not quite been made elsewhere, and echo the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, in introducing the group, on the power of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, last week. Anyone who wants to see it will find it on my Twitter account, handily captioned and shared. I urge people to share it because it deserves a wide audience.

The first of my three points builds on the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, who suggested that people were saying there might be a sinister plot with the Republicans. There does not have to be a sinister plot for people to copy what they see happen in other parts of the world. Indeed, the inspiration for voter ID, which I believe is voter suppression, comes from the other side of the pond. I quote the American Civil Liberties Union, because if that is where the inspiration comes from it is instructive to see the context:

“Voting should be as easy and accessible as possible … But … more than 400 anti-voter bills have been introduced in 48 states … The result is a severely compromised democracy that doesn’t reflect the will of the people. Our democracy works best when all eligible voters can participate and have their voices heard.”


That is a message from America, but it is one we should also listen to here.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

Does the noble Baroness not understand that voting systems in the US are a state matter? The problem is not what she says it is; it is that every state has a different methodology. That is what leads to confusion and difficulties, particularly in some states which adopt particularly regressive and repressive measures. The point she is making about photo ID is nothing to do with that.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I disagree with the noble Lord, in the sense that I am talking about the rhetoric, and the context and reason for this, whether it is happening on a state-by-state basis or nationally. What is behind it is in my second quote, from Max Feldman at the Brennan Center for Justice, who says that

“claims of widespread fraud are nothing more than old wine in new bottles. President Trump and his allies have long claimed, without evidence, that different aspects of our elections are infected with voter fraud. Before mail voting, they pushed similar false narratives about noncitizen voting, voter impersonation, and double voting”.

To pick up the noble Lord’s point about people’s concerns about the voting system, these days we see a great deal of sharing and cross-fertilisation of concerns on social media. Rhetoric spread by powerful, well-funded forces will have an impact on people’s views, as we have seen in other contexts.

The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, suggested that people were coming perilously close to suggesting that the purpose behind voter ID was voter suppression. I am not going to come “perilously close” to it; I believe that that is the case.

The second point I want to make concerns history. I do not believe that we are guaranteed to gradually progress positively into the future, but look at the trends. In 1832 and 1867, the Great Reform Acts spread the right to vote among men. In 1918 and 1928, women got the right to vote. In 1969, and implemented in 1970, the voting age was reduced from 21 to 18. That is all heading in the direction of greater engagement. In Oral Questions earlier we saw some fairly severe attacks on democracy and devolution in the UK, but Scotland and Wales have gone further down this road, with votes at 16. Democracy has been on a long-term trend of engaging more people. We have to ask why we are suddenly heading in the opposite direction with voter ID.

My final point is a practical one. Most of this discussion has focused on the estimated 2 million people who do not have any ID. I do not think we have talked enough about the people who do not have ID on them at the point where they go to vote. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, pointed out, none of the pilots was in a large urban area.

I was in a large urban area—Sheffield—telling on a polling station in one of the years when the pilots were being conducted. I saw a large number of people who had seen the reports and thought that they had to have ID.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

The noble Baroness is citing where the pilots took place. Earlier on, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, did not seem to be aware that pilots had taken place. Was it not the case that a number of local councils refused to participate in the pilots? It is not that those places were chosen by the Government; it is that those were the places which were allowed to participate by the local authorities.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I respectfully respond to the noble Lord that, whether it was the choice of the local authorities or not, it harms the quality of the evidence before us.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

If I may intervene, I knew where the pilots had taken place, but they were not nearly proportionate to the scale of the reforms being introduced. We do not know anything about their likely impact on voter turnout or the administrative issues that will be raised by the nationwide introduction of this reform. The very small, selective pilots were not even in representative areas. The issue of piloting is still very much there. If this is to be a nationwide reform—we are talking about parliamentary elections—this should be piloted in many constituencies before we move in this direction.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

That is a fundamental point. They were piloted in local elections. The scale of the pilots has not been nearly proportionate to the scale of the proposed reform.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I thank both noble Lords, who have contributed greatly to my argument.

I come back to the question of people who own voter ID but do not happen to have it on them and to the experience of Sheffield on this particular occasion. One of the people I spoke to was a man who came speed-walking up to me, puffing slightly, and said: “Huh, do I have to have voter ID?” I said, “No, it is all right; you do not need it here.” He said, “Okay”, and dashed into the polling station.

What if I had had to say yes to that man? He was obviously having a very busy day, as many of us do—some people have to maintain two or three jobs to put food on the table and keep a roof over their head, and some people have caring responsibilities. Voting is on a Thursday, which is a working day for very many people. All these are reasons why voting can be difficult to access. Maybe a little window has opened up in your day—say you are a care worker who moves between different houses, and suddenly you have an opportunity to go past the polling station but you do not have your passport on you. Say you are a student, not living at home; perhaps you have left your passport with your parents for safekeeping because you do not travel overseas very often. You go to vote where your student residence is. Did you remember from when you heard two months ago that an election was coming? Maybe you did not even know that an election was coming, and two months ago you left your passport at home.

We have not looked enough at the facts. It is not just about people who do not own this ID. People do not have to. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, made a very powerful point that the European case studies do not match up. If you live in a country where a police officer or other official can stop you at any time and ask where your ID is, you will always have your ID on you. That is not the case in the UK.

My concluding point covers this group of amendments and many others. A lot of this Bill and the direction of the Government suggests that we have a problem with voters in the UK. I do not think we have any problem with the voters; we have huge problems with our failed political system.

Elections Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 137 and 138, to which I have added my name, and oppose Amendment 143. Last November, the eminent professor of politics at Cambridge University, David Runciman, published an extended article arguing that children should be allowed to vote from the age of six. He cited a new book by John Wall which makes the case for no lower age limit on voting rights in the name of true democracy, and which addresses objections such as those based on competency. Wall suggests that parents and guardians should be able to cast proxy votes until such time as a child feels ready to vote on their own behalf. Runciman argued that

“if societies want to be truly democratic, they need to overcome their engrained biases and embrace the whole human community”.

I cite these examples not to make that argument but to show how modest and unradical the growing call for votes at 16 is. It is a step already taken by our sister Parliaments in Holyrood and Cardiff. Nevertheless, I acknowledge there is not a consensus in favour, as was clear from the evidence presented to the Select Committee on Citizenship and Civic Engagement, of which I was a member and which was chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts.

Indeed, children and young people themselves are not unanimously in support, as I discovered in research I undertook into young people’s transitions to citizenship some years ago. The main reason given against the idea in that research and elsewhere was that the young people did not feel they had sufficient knowledge and understanding of politics to vote wisely. To my mind, the very fact they think that indicates a greater thoughtfulness about voting than some adults show.

That underlines the importance, as has already been mentioned, of citizenship education. As we said in our Select Committee report,

“Citizenship education is a crucial piece of the puzzle for thinking about the age at which people can vote.”


We noted that

“The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child recommended that if the UK should choose to lower its voting age it should ensure it is supported by ‘active citizenship and human rights education’.”


Unfortunately, the committee found the state of citizenship education to be pretty woeful, and I do not have reason to believe that it has improved much, if at all. But that is not a reason for not extending the vote to 16 year-olds; rather, it is an argument for giving much higher priority to decent citizenship education, as recommended by the committee.

There are instrumental arguments in favour of extending the franchise to 16. With decent citizenship education, 16 and 17-year-olds could be much better prepared for voting than older voters. They could be more likely to vote and then to keep voting as they get older. If they had the vote and used it, politicians might pay more attention to their needs and concerns, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, has argued.

For me, the overwhelming argument is that so many in this age group are already acting as citizens and have been taking the lead on crucial issues such as the climate emergency. In the study I carried out, those who wanted a reduction in the voting age felt that without it they were not being listened to or respected, and that the vote would help them feel that they belonged and that they had a say as full and proper citizens

In the same vein, the Select Committee on Citizenship and Civic Engagement heard from the young people we met that the lack of the vote was “a sore point”. Even if votes at 16 are not young people’s top priority, they pointed out to us that

“the Make Your Mark campaign coordinated by the UK Youth Parliament included … votes at 16 one of their core campaigns”,

voted for by over 950,000 young people. What better way to recognise these young people as full citizens than to extend the vote to them?

It is because of the implications for citizenship that I oppose Amendment 143, as tying the vote to employment and income tax status would create two classes of citizenship. In doing so, it would be divisive and exclusionary, which is the very opposite of what citizenship should be about and what we want to achieve by extending the franchise. From a practical point of view, it would be subject to annual decisions about the level of the tax threshold so young people on low incomes could find their right to vote fluctuating like a yo-yo, which is not conducive to them turning out to vote.

In the Commons, two Oral Questions on votes at 16 were met with a one-word answer: “No.” I have no doubt these amendments will be rejected also, but I hope not in similar peremptory fashion. I hope that the Minister will first give serious consideration to the case made, which is gaining more and more support.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I follow the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, and the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, with pleasure. I will speak to Amendments 137 and 138, to which I have attached my name. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Lister—I am sorry we have not heard from the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, and are yet to hear his case—I oppose Amendment 143 on the basis that it assumes that contribution to society can somehow be measured by income. In fact, we know that many of the people who contribute most to our society, whether they be carers—there are many young carers in our society—or people involved in the community, are huge parts of their community without receiving any income for that.

I will speak chiefly to Amendments 137 and 138. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, in introducing this, reflected on the previous group being very English in its debate. That is particularly relevant to this group, as Scotland and Wales have votes at 16—the former having had it since 2015—with full cross-party support, including enthusiastic support from the former Scottish Tory leader and now Member of your Lordships’ House, the noble Baroness, Lady Davidson. It is a pity she is not with us today; I hope she might join us to share her thoughts on this on Report because that would be interesting and informative.

The success of the policy north of the English border has been very obvious, with very high turnout among 16 and 17 year-olds—a higher turnout than for 18 to 24 year-olds, with 75% voting and 97% saying they would vote in future elections. It is also worth noting that research shows they got their information from a wider range of sources than voters of older age groups. There is very strong evidence that people who vote in their first possible election are far more likely to keep voting. We have lost generations of people who have not voted in their first election. If we have votes at 16 and 17, we can see from the Scottish example that people are more likely to vote and keep voting.

I often speak to young people in formal and informal settings. I will insert a little advert here, for Members of your Lordships’ House who are not involved in it, for the Learn with the Lords programme, which is a great way to have contact with young people from a wide range of audiences.

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[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I am afraid that I am going to strike a discordant note because I invite my noble friend to reject these amendments, and certainly Amendments 137 and 138. I follow what the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said about Amendment 143. It is an interesting idea but highly complex and probably not practical.

The Committee will recognise that I am committed to a vibrant civil society. I have spoken about it, I have moved amendments about it, and I think that it is a very important part of our democratic system, because it maximises people’s ability to participate, collectively or individually.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, who is not in his place, referred to lowering the voting age in order to increase citizenship education, which seemed to be the wrong way around; citizenship education would lead to improved understanding of what voting is all about. I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. That was a central theme of our cross-party review on citizenship for civic engagement. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Collins, as a member of the Liaison Committee, for having backed the idea of a follow-up, since when we have gone sideways, if not backwards. I am pleased to be able to say to him and the noble Baroness that the revised report will be published on Monday and out in the wider world on Tuesday, to probably no effect whatever but at least we will have some benchmarks.

During the committee, we had two issues from which the chairman has scars. The first was about British values. What were they, or were there any? The second was the voting age.

I shall quote a couple of sentences from our report, because they summarise some of the issues that lie behind these two amendments and which mean that I personally do not support them. Paragraph 319 of the report states:

“However, the issue has divided our witnesses. There is no consensus on whether the age should be lowered to 16 or whether it should remain at 18. Proponents of the change listed being able to marry and become a member of the armed forces as a reason for considering that 16 year olds are sufficiently responsible to vote. However this raises questions of whether it is right for people to be trusted as responsible enough to vote whilst not being responsible enough to ‘buy a beer or cigarettes or even drive to their friends or buy a firework’”.


That was what Professor Jon Tonge, professor of politics at the University of Liverpool, said in evidence to us. He and Dr Mycock have been doing some more research on this whole area. As the noble Baroness said, there was obviously a fierce discussion about the pressure for democratic backing for the change. Professor Tonge told our committee that he thought young people were almost evenly divided, though he said that some of that data was quite old.

The noble Baroness referred to the Make Your Mark campaign, but I am not sure she gave the full picture of what we were told. To quote from paragraph 321,

“the Make Your Mark campaign coordinated by the UK Youth Parliament included the votes of over 950,000 young people”,

which the noble Baroness referred to,

“who had voted to make votes at 16 one of their core campaigns.”

However, an analysis of the votes done by our staff showed that

“it received 101,041 votes”—

only one in nine—

“and came 5th out of 10 topics. This suggests that young people care more about other topics than about votes at 16.”

Interestingly, the topic that received the most votes was “A curriculum to prepare us for life”, which in turn suggests support for a radical overhaul of the whole area of citizenship education and involvement. As Professor Tonge said:

“You would not let people go out on the road and drive a car without giving them some lessons first, yet we expect them—particularly if we lower the voting age to 16—to go out and vote without giving them any training in what our political systems are about. It seems perverse.”


To summarise, my view is that unless the case for making a fundamental change is overwhelmingly made, we should not make the change. I do not think that case has been overwhelmingly made. It certainly was not made before our committee and that is why I hope my noble friend will reject these amendments.

I shall dare to trespass on the Committee’s time for a further moment, ending with not a discordant but a sour note. In the debate on voter ID in the last meeting of the Committee, my noble friend on the Front Bench took a lot of heavy punishment about how it was being introduced to try to benefit the Conservative Party. He rejected that, rightly in my view. Would I be wrong to say that there might be some advantages for other parties in the House in young people voting and that that may be why it is being so enthusiastically supported?

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Would the noble Lord agree that young people look at what their interests are? Maybe if the Conservative Party did more to represent the interests of young people, more of them would vote for it.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

I am not saying anything about that. I am just saying that I do not think the case has been made for the change. Where we go from there is another matter.

Elections Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendment, to which I have added my name and which has been so well introduced by the noble Lord. The House of Commons Library briefing note on prisoners’ votes details the sorry tale, as has the noble Lord, of how the issue has been kicked into the long grass without a satisfactory resolution, following the ECHR ruling that an indiscriminate ban on all serving prisoners contravened the European Convention on Human Rights and subsequent calls from the Council of Europe. The result has been, in the words of one expert commentator, “minimalist compliance”. When it comes to prisoners’ votes, it is a question of “out of sight, out of mind”, just as prisoners themselves are.

The recent prisons White Paper included, in a section on the purposes of prisons, the need to

“promote rehabilitation and reform to reduce reoffending.”

It would be facile to suggest that, of itself, giving short-term prisoners the vote would lead to rehabilitation. But to withhold the right to vote from them, together with some of the things said by Ministers when it was a live issue—the noble Lord quoted David Cameron on the subject, in particular—indicates a punitive rather than a rehabilitative view of the role of prisons. On Thursday, my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti argued powerfully for the right to vote as a fundamental civil and political right. It is a basic right of citizenship. To withhold this right from short-term prisoners is in effect to say that they are not citizens. As the noble Lord said, it has been described as a state of civic death, one which affects black and minority ethnic groups disproportionately, according to the Prison Reform Trust.

Of course, as Governments of all hues like to emphasise, citizenship is about responsibilities as well as rights. My noble friend described it as an “ethical duty”. What better way to instil a sense of civic responsibility in prisoners than to encourage them to see themselves as fellow citizens with a stake in the country and the right and responsibility to express their views through the vote. As Conservative MP Peter Bottomley once argued,

“Ex-offenders and ex-prisoners should be active, responsible citizens. Voting in prison can be a useful first step to engaging in society.”


The Electoral Commission has in the past considered the practicalities involved and concluded that they are perfectly feasible. As has been said, the UK is one of only a handful of European countries which automatically disenfranchises sentenced prisoners. All the amendment would do is extend the vote to those sentenced to 12 months or less, which is a very modest step, but one it is high time we took. It may not be popular, but few people will have heard the case for it, given that most politicians have been so against it. In the name of citizenship and fundamental rights, it is time that a Government had the courage to take this modest step.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is again my great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, and agree with everything she has said. I offer Green Party support for Amendment 139. As the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, said in introducing the amendment, this is a long-term situation where the UK has not complied with its human rights obligations. This is an occasion where I am not going to hold this Government solely responsible; the Labour Government had five years to remedy the situation and the coalition Government had five years to fix it, yet here we still are.

The Green Party policy, as is the case in many things, would go rather further than the amendment. Our policy is that all prisoners should have the right to vote except where the sentencing judge, taking into account the nature of the offence, decides to make the loss of the vote explicitly part of the penalty. The obvious cases where that might happen would be in a case of electoral fraud, for example, or perhaps where an oligarch who has used some of their ill-gotten gains to attempt to buy a political party or a certain political outcome.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said, the question is what prisons are for when it comes to more standard types of offences. Are we cutting people off from society, further reinforcing social exclusion and distancing them from the norms and values that we are hoping they will absorb before they go out into society? After all, nearly everyone who is in prison will eventually go out into society. Are we actively trying to rehabilitate people and equip them for a life outside prison?

Voting is a fundamental part of our society. The blanket denial that says that once you are in jail you cannot vote is a way of saying, “We’re not going to do anything to improve the world that helped to put you into this place”. We know the situation of so many people in prison and the huge disadvantage and inequality that is a background to people who are there. So the amendment does not go far enough but it is an important first step.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, on the amendment, and the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, on moving it. As always, I thank my noble friend Lady Lister of Burtersett. I am sorry that I am outwith my party’s position on this but there are hawks and doves in both main parties when it comes to penal reform, and indeed when it comes to the law-and-order arms race that I believe has been a problem in our country for too many years—perhaps for my whole adult life.

I remember Lord Hurd addressing the Conservative Party conference when I was a relatively small person—even smaller than I am now. Those were the days when all party conferences were televised in total—can you imagine?—and it was a time when people were calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty. He, as a Conservative Home Secretary, faced that audience down and explained to them why that was a terrible thing. Later in my life and career I had the privilege to congratulate him on that moment, which he remembered, and it was something he could be proud of.

I believe this change will come because I am an optimist about the course of progress in world events. It may well be a Conservative Home Secretary and Government who do the “Nixon in China” thing, but whoever does it, I think they should. I will not cite the European Court of Human Rights, as some would groan and expect me to do. I do not pray in aid its judgments; I pray in aid basic principle and practical logic.

I agree with the points that the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, made about the purposes of incarceration. We accept that some people in extremis need to be incarcerated for certain offences for the reasons of retribution, rehabilitation, public protection and deterrence, but none of those four traditional justifications for incarceration after criminal conviction explains why, on a blanket basis, you would take away someone’s vote—particularly people, as in this modest amendment, who will be out very soon and who we want to reintegrate and rehabilitate as best we can. Frankly, we want politicians, activists and voters to be a little bit more concerned about those people whom we are still subjecting to this Victorian notion of civic death.

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Moved by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

141: After Clause 11, insert the following new Clause—
“Automatic voter registration
(1) Registration officers must take all reasonable steps to ensure that all persons eligible to register to vote in elections in the United Kingdom are so registered.(2) The Secretary of State must by regulations require public bodies to provide information to registration officers to enable them to fulfil their duty under subsection (1).(3) Regulations under subsection (2) must apply to the following public bodies—(a) HM Revenue and Customs;(b) the Department for Work and Pensions;(c) the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency;(d) the National Health Service, NHS Wales and NHS Scotland;(e) schools and further and higher education institutions;(f) local authorities;(g) HM Passport Office;(h) police forces;(i) the TV Licensing Authority;(j) Job Centre Plus;(k) the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Local Communities;(l) the Department for Transport;(m) the Department for Health and Social Care;(n) the Home Office; and(o) the Ministry of Justice.(4) Regulations under subsection (2) may also apply to other public bodies. (5) Registration officers must—(a) use the information provided by the public bodies listed in regulations under subsection (2) to register otherwise unregistered persons on the appropriate electoral register or registers, or(b) if the information provided does not contain all information necessary to register a person who may be eligible, contact that person for the purpose of obtaining the required information to establish whether they are eligible to register and, if so, register them on the appropriate electoral register or registers.(6) If a registration officer has registered a person under subsection (5), the officer must notify that person within 30 days and give that person an opportunity to correct any incorrect information.(7) Where a person is registered under subsection (5), that person must be omitted from the edited register unless that person notifies the registration officer to the contrary.(8) Nothing in this section affects entitlement to register to vote anonymously.(9) The Secretary of State may issue guidance to registration officers on fulfilling their duties under this section.”Member’s explanatory statement
This new Clause would require registration officers to enter eligible voters on the register, and provide for them to receive the necessary information from a number of public bodies.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, we had not pre-planned who would speak but, having attached my name to this amendment and being one of the two people here to do so, I will speak, with some unexpectedness, in favour of it.

Amendment 141 introduces a carefully planned and worked-through plan—as noble Lords can see—for automatic voter registration. It is a great pity that, given the time of this debate, the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, is not able to be with us, but I hope that we might return to this on Report. It would be particularly interesting to hear from both the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, and the noble Lord, Lord Woolley. Many of the issues that the noble Lord addresses in this amendment were similarly addressed in his speech on voter ID and the importance of allowing the engagement of everybody in our electoral process. I urge people who have not read or heard that speech to catch up with it because it is an important one.

To put the case for why we need automatic voter registration, when I was reflecting on this, I thought it sounded like the sort of thing that we would normally do in Grand Committee in the Moses Room, looking at some detailed statutory instrument and going through the dusty tomes. But this is of course far from a bureaucratic detail. Rather, to bring in automatic voter registration would be the long-delayed completion of a democratic progression of a couple of centuries, right through the 19th-century reform Acts and the 20th-century women’s suffrage. It is a vital step in ensuring that everyone who is eligible to vote actually has that vote available to them. The fact is that people do not have that practical opportunity now.

As I said at Second Reading, just because the Government are trying to slash away what little democracy we have in this country with many elements of this Bill, it does not mean that we cannot use this opportunity to set out a way forward to reform and repair our archaic and dysfunctional UK constitution. For there are what is known in shorthand as the “missing millions”— people who are eligible to vote but not registered for the right. An Electoral Commission study from 2019 suggested that their numbers exceed 9 million, while more than 5 million people are incorrectly registered. Those millions are not some random sample of the population. It is the young and those in private rental accommodation, many of whom have to move often, who are massively underrepresented on the rolls and by our so-called democracy. This ties into the debate that we were having earlier about votes for 16 and 17 year-olds. Those people are least likely to vote Conservative.

This amendment, therefore, is about not just people’s individual rights but ensuring that our electoral results reflect the views of the people. The background to this is individual electoral registration, which was introduced in 2014. It cleaned up the messes—I am sure that I am far from the only Member of your Lordships’ House who has knocked on the door of a very small flat at which there are apparently 16 people registered, and it is not a case of fraud but various people have moved in and out and names have been added without any being removed. However, it also cleaned out millions of people who should have been on those rolls, particularly young people and students at university.

This is a really important point and I hope that the Minister might be able to address it. It is not even easy to check whether you are registered correctly. The Electoral Commission website says—this is the only information it provides—

“contact the electoral services team at your local council”.

That is how you go about checking whether you are on the electoral roll. It is a far from simple, easy process. Can the Minister say whether the Government plan any improvements on that simple step so that people can check whether they are registered?

To briefly address the details of this amendment, automatic voter registration need not be complicated or introduce a large bureaucratic burden. Schools and colleges could register young people as attainers—those about to become voters—and university students could be registered by their universities. Changing the address on your driving licence, which is something everyone is legally obliged to do, registering for council tax, or having contact with the Department for Work and Pensions are all things that could feed into the electoral roll—they are how the Government know where people are.

I will make one final point, because I am sure other people will have many other things to say on this important amendment. Of course, automatic voter registration will not guarantee that people turn out to vote. Already, typically, fewer than 70% of people on the roll turn out for general elections, and often 30% or fewer in council elections. But giving people the opportunity by making sure their name is on the rolls as it should be without them having to go to extraordinary efforts has to be essential to make any claim of calling this country a democracy. I beg to move.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, as it is to add my name to this amendment also in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Woolley of Woodford, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Warsi. I do not need to repeat the compelling points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, but I will just say this. We all know that to have the option of voting is a fundamental right, just as to pay tax when it is owed is a fundamental duty. The Government worked very hard, as they should, at ensuring that when people reach the age of 18, they are automatically registered for tax purposes. I really believe in taxation, obviously. They are right to do it, and it ought to be increasingly easy to do that in our automated world. If the Government can do that, why on earth would they not do the equivalent thing when people reach whatever the age of majority is—we argued about that—to ensure that people are registered.

We have had the arguments about voter ID, which is ID when you turn up and choose to vote. No doubt, we will come back to those, but this is an earlier step. If the Government are really serious, as they tell us they are, about not disfranchising people and making sure they have this possibility of exercising their right, why would they not at least ensure they are automatically registered, with all the information and all the tools available to the state? If I may say so to the Minister: if the Government would listen on this issue and be prepared to have discussions, it might go some way to ameliorating concerns about potential voter suppression in relation to ID when people to turn up to vote at the polling station.

This is an infinitely sensible proposal, infinitely possible to achieve. A quarter of the way into the 21st century, with all the wit and wisdom we have at our disposal, and all the resources the Government have, if we are really serious about ensuring people are not disfranchised, they should be automatically registered when they reach voting age.

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[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

No, my Lords, but you have to register to vote in this country, and going into a polling station and just saying that you have a passport but you have not registered cannot allow you to vote.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, this has been a very interesting and informative debate and I thank the Minister for her answers, and thank all noble Lords who have participated.

To pick up some points from the Minister, she suggested that it was not difficult or time-consuming to register. Perhaps this is not something that most people in your Lordships’ House do very often, but moving house is up there just below divorce and death in terms of people’s level of stress. Moving house is something that many people in our society, particularly younger and poorer people, find themselves doing regularly at six- or 12-month intervals—and now we are going to make this extra thing that they have to remember when there are so many other things they are worrying about. Perhaps when people are younger, the first or second time they move they do it religiously, but by the time they get to the sixth, or the eighth or the 10th time that they move, and they have so many things to worry about, it is unsurprising that they do not. It is difficult, when it is mixed in with that whole difficult experience.

The Minister made the point about people owning their own registration and that they might get registered accidentally when they should not be. Of course, the form that automatic registration could very easily take would be to change your driving licence address in the box and then respond to the questions about whether you were eligible to vote, providing any extra information that might be needed. I shall have to go away and look at this, but all the information that you have to provide for a driving licence would be sufficient, I should have thought, for voting. I shall go away and look at that.

The noble Lord, Lord Collins, brought up an interesting point about complications around EU citizens, which we will come to—but again that could be answered by a tick-box arrangement.

One key point has come out of this debate, well highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, but also by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti. This is a balance to voter ID. I do not agree with voter ID but, if you are going to have it, as the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, said, and you turn up with your paperwork, and you are still told, although you have your passport, that you are not really a proper citizen because you have not ticked a box on a website, that is going to create some real anger.

I am not sure that the Minister really addressed the important points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, who so often in your Lordships’ House is a champion for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people, and many other excluded groups in our society. For all kinds of reasons, it is so much more difficult for those citizens, and we should be going to extraordinary efforts to make sure that their voice is able to be heard.

I pick up also the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, about the Government’s own impact assessment. If this is the aim of the Bill, it is very hard to see why the Government should not be taking these steps.

I make the final point that I raised a question with the Minister that was not answered—whether the Government are looking to make it easier to check whether you are correctly registered. You may have moved two or three years ago in a mad flurry—maybe your relationship had just broken down and that was why you moved—then there is an election coming, and you think, “Did I register to vote or not in that difficult period?” You would then have to know what council you are in and find its electoral services and send them an email or ring them up—and we all know what ringing a council up is like. Are the Government doing anything to improve that? If the Minister cannot answer that now, perhaps she could write to me about that, and perhaps she could commit to that before I withdraw the amendment.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I will.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I think from the discussion it is very obvious we are going to return to this on Report, but for the moment I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 141 withdrawn.

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Moved by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

144E: After Clause 11, insert the following new Clause—
“Qualification for standing in local authority elections: temporary housing exception
In section 79(1) of the Local Government Act 1972 (qualifications for election and holding office as member of local authority), at the end insert “; or“(f) he or she may have otherwise qualified under any combination of paragraphs (a) to (e) if he or she had not been provided temporary housing outside of the area by the local authority.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would protect the right of people in temporary housing to stand for election where the local authority provides temporary housing outside of the local authority area.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I move and speak to Amendment 144E, which noble Lords will have noticed appears in the name of my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, but operating on our normal lark and owl rota, this one falls to me at the owl end of the evening.

We have just been talking about some major issues around the Bill and our whole electoral system. Here, we are doing something that some might regard as a more traditional aspect of your Lordships’ House: the scrutiny, modest measures, cleaning and tidying and curing of small injustices. Amendment 144E amends Section 79(1) of the Local Government Act 1972, addressing the situation where people have been placed by their local council into temporary housing outside the area for which they wish to stand for election.

We know that housing is now a huge issue. Many people are struggling to find housing, many people are being displaced and many local councils are struggling to find housing. The amendment comes from the case of a person who contacted our office who wants to stand in the forthcoming local elections and, through absolutely no fault of their own, under the current rules have been made ineligible to stand because they have been placed in temporary housing outside the local authority area.

It is obvious that this is not an isolated case. It is a factor of the current qualifications for standing in local elections. It is a case of instant disqualification. Someone may have been in an area for decades and be really embedded in that area, part of that community and have something to offer it but, because of the lack of housing—perhaps a failure of the local authority—they are suddenly unable to stand and to contribute. Of course, this can affect any candidate, regardless of their party or their social or economic situation. Perhaps they have been evicted because a landlord is selling the home they have been living in, perhaps they are fleeing domestic abuse. There is a whole host of other reasons why people might need temporary accommodation. They may have been planning stand in the forthcoming election for years, but the placement outside the borough scuppers all their hard work.

This is a small, modest amendment that would affect only a very small number of people, but it would address a basic injustice. I hope that I will get broad support across the Committee for the amendment and the Government might feel able to move modestly on it. I beg to move.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to this amendment, which would protect the rights of people in temporary housing to stand for election where the local authority provides temporary housing outside the local authority area. At any given point, close to 100,000 households live in temporary accommodation, according to quarterly statistics published by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, is right to draw attention to their right to participate in the democratic process, and I fully support the intention behind her amendment. We on these Benches fully support the points she made. Those who live in temporary accommodation are often most in need of their voice being heard, especially at local authority level. The suggestion that they would be prevented from standing for the relevant local authority due to the fact that their temporary accommodation is located outside the boundary is absurd. I hope the Minister will accept the case behind the amendment and work with the noble Baroness to find a solution to the problem.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for the amendment. Although admirable in its intent, it introduces an unwelcome subjective element into the current objective criteria that specify qualifications for election as a member of a local authority. It presupposes that an individual, if moved by their local authority into temporary accommodation out of the area where they are standing for election, would otherwise satisfy the qualification criteria had they not been moved by their local authority.

The qualification criteria for local elected office must be beyond doubt. The amendment as drafted would remove the demonstration of consistent connection with an area that the current criteria rightly demand. The amendment would introduce a subjective qualification that the individual believes that they would otherwise categorically have remained eligible within the existing criteria, but this is not objective; it could be neither proved nor disproved. It would be unreasonable for the local electorate to be asked to consider voting for someone who may no longer have a strong connection with the local area nor any demonstrable proof that they would otherwise have maintained that contact.

There are other criteria for standing in local elections, and I think it is important that anyone in this situation looks at those—specifically, that they have been a local government elector for the last 12 months and that they have during the last 12 months preceding that day occupied as owner or tenant any land or other premises in that area. If they work in that area then they can stand for local election, or if they have resided there for the whole of those 12 months before they were moved just before the election. Also, there is the case that they are a member of a parish or community council. There are other points for people to consider.

We have looked at this and will give it further thought, because it is an interesting concept that has not come up before. We do not make any promises, but we will look at it. At this moment, though, the Government cannot accept the amendment and I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw it. Maybe we can have further conversations.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, that was a very short but productive group. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Khan of Burnley, for his offer of support.

I note that, with 100,000 households affected, we are not just talking about a few people; there is a significant group here. To respond to the Minister, we often think about people being moved long distances from an area, but it could literally be to the other side of the road—that would still technically be out of the area. However, I very much thank the Minister for her constructive response. I will not go through it line by line now, but I would very much like to work with her to see how we can address this issue.

I just make the point that, if you had resided there for the whole 12 months—maybe you were moved into temporary accommodation the day before—there are obviously areas there that do not help. With regard to working, again, people may volunteer in the area but maybe what they spend much of their time doing is not work in terms of that qualification. However, I very much take encouragement and I hope to work with the Minister in future to see what we can do with this. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 144E withdrawn.

Moved by

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle]

144F: After Clause 11, insert the following new Clause—
“Return of election deposits where a candidate's party elects at least one MP
(1) Rule 53 of Schedule 1 to RPA 1983 (forfeiture of deposit) is amended as follows.(2) After paragraph (3) insert—“(3A) Where a candidate has been authorised to use a party description under rule 6A of these rules, the deposit shall be returned as soon as practicable after any candidate using the same party description is elected in any constituency at that general election.”(3) In paragraph (4) after “paragraph (3)” insert “and (3A)”.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would return the election deposits to all general election candidates whose registered party elects at least one MP.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise again to speak to amendments in my name, starting with Amendment 144F, which moves us back to a larger scale. It would amend the part of the Representation of the People Act 1983 that deals with deposit forfeiture to return election deposits to all general election candidates whose registered party achieves at least one MP. Those Members of your Lordships’ House who are still paying acute attention at this hour of the evening might have noticed that I have to declare an interest at this point.

The “one MP” point is not chosen randomly or for self-interest. It surprises many voters when they find out that to stand in a general election you have to pay a £500 deposit. Maybe many say, “A one-off payment of £500 is not that large a sum of money”; it is for many people in many communities, but maybe it does not seem that much. However, put that at a national scale: to take the example of the Green Party in the 2019 election, 465 lost deposits cost us £232,500, the best part of a quarter of a million pounds. I am aware that for some political parties that might look more or less like change down the back of the sofa, but to us it is a massive sum of money, a sum that in our case is largely raised by crowdfunding at a local level, people putting their £10 or £20 in to support local democracy.

What we have is a very odd situation—here I come to why the “one MP” criterion is in the amendment—because, in our system, we have what is known as Short money. It was introduced in the Commons in 1975 and is available to all Opposition parties that either secured two seats or one seat and more than 150,000 votes at the previous general election. It is payable to qualifying parties as £18,400 for every seat won at the last election, plus £36 for every 200 votes gained by the party. When people say to me, “I think my vote is being wasted because it didn’t elect someone”, it is always worth pointing out that it does have an impact in terms of Short money.

In the context of this amendment, we have a situation where with one hand the state deliberately gives money to parties that have won at least one seat and got a certain number of votes but, with the other, takes it away in terms of the election deposits. This is, in effect, a tax on democracy. If we look at the comparison with many other democracies around the world—on earlier groups we were talking about comparisons in many ways and how we appear to fall short compared with other democracies—it is interesting that many other democracies in Europe and other parts of the world fund the operations of their political parties on a regular basis, not just in parliament but in terms of funding research and election campaigns. They acknowledge that, if we do not all collectively fund politics, the people who do fund it are the ones who then get the politics that they have paid for. We are now in a situation where we are getting politics paid for by a relatively small number of people, and election deposits make that far worse.

I will be interested to hear from the Government what their current justification for election deposits are, but I expect that they might say the £500 deposit discourages frivolous running for office and joke candidates—at which point I would invite them to look at any list of candidates standing in any general election or high-profile by-election, as it does not really seem to do the job.

If the Government do not like Amendment 144F and the immediate step to end this tax on democracy, I have the alternative Amendment 212F, which is a simpler and less immediate action. It calls for a review of election deposits and the exploration of alternatives. If the Government were to acknowledge that there is an issue here that deserves to be explored and should be considered, Amendment 212F is a way of getting to that by taking a longer and more considered view of how we might approach this situation and end this barrier to democracy. As we were discussing on an earlier group, the Government said in their impact assessment of this Bill that their aim is to improve access to democracy. Taking away the deposits could be one important step for that. I beg to move.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness has come up with a very cunning plan and I have to say that, as a Liberal Democrat, I can see its merits immediately. I just say one thing to her, which is that it is usually a mistake to put all your dice on one number. There is about £250,000 at stake if that seat were, by any mischance, to be lost. That may be a good reason for me to be more enthusiastic about her second amendment than her first, which might be a case of being careful what you wish for.

Nevertheless, she has raised some important issues which are clearly relevant to all political parties other than the big two—it has to be said that the big two also waste money on lost deposits, although I am sure they do not think of it as being wasted so much as an investment for the future. That said, it is an interesting argument to link this to the payment of Short money from parliamentary funds to support those political parties which are represented in the other place. It will be interesting to see whether the Minister is in any way tempted to assist small parties with a £250,000 bounty, as compared to the very much bigger sums of money which he and his colleagues can summon up on demand when a general election arises.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I am afraid that, having been able to be reasonably accommodating on the previous amendment, I cannot meet the noble Baroness on this one for very similar reasons to those argued by the noble Lord opposite. The reality is that candidates have to provide a deposit of £500, which is lost if they get less than 5% of the vote. It is designed, as the noble Lord said, to ensure that, normally, only those who are serious about seeking public office will put themselves forward for election. However, it does not seem to have deterred Lord Buckethead over the years I have been following elections, although I suspect the figure under the bucket may have changed—he has been around a long time.

As the noble Lord, Lord Collins, said, candidates at parliamentary elections are entitled to have an item of election material sent to electors free of charge by the Royal Mail. Paying the deposit gives candidates access to over £20,000 of public money for this purpose in a typical case. This is a factor in the level of deposit required from candidates.

The noble Baroness proposes that, at a general election where a candidate standing wins one seat for a party, all other candidates standing for that party would be entitled to have their deposit returned regardless of the level of vote they receive. At a general election, there are a series of individual contests in individual constituencies across the country, as the Green Party knows very well from its successes. We submit that it would be a significant change for a result in one constituency to have any impact on contests in others. You can have very different results down the road; that is germane to a general election. While candidates can be members of parties, they stand for election on an individual basis and the law views them as such in terms of deposits.

As the noble Baroness sees it, this would help her party, which secured a little more than 2.5% of the vote nationally. The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, said it might help other parties. However, the reality is that, as she acknowledged, the Greens were not so popular, because they lost their deposit in 465 constituencies, which was up from 456 lost deposits in the previous election—they actually lost more. This amendment would require, as the noble Baroness acknowledged, nearly £250,000 of taxpayers’ money to be returned to Green candidates who had been rejected by taxpayers at the polls.

We would also need to consider very carefully the implication the proposal would have in individual constituencies. It could unfairly and, in my submission, inequitably disadvantage single, local independent candidates—we all know them, people who have strong issues in a local constituency, who put themselves on the line. They may get more of a share in a particular constituency than this national party, and then find someone they had beaten gets their deposit back, but they do not. A level playing field for elections is essential for our democratic processes, so I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Collins, that this would need a lot more consideration before we could go near this. The Government constantly review electoral activity, but I regret to say that we cannot support this change, and I urge the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, to withdraw this amendment.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords who have participated in this short debate and thank the Minister for his response. I would perhaps question the classification of general elections as measures of popularity; they are reflections of popularity, since people have to deal with the first past the post voting system. If we look at the last election, it might have been taken as a measure of popularity where votes more or less matched seats, and people knew that their votes counted. It was the last European election where the Green Party got 11% of the vote and finished ahead of the Conservative Party in that particular measure of popularity under a different voting system.

I wish to pick up on a couple of points. Both the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, picked up the point about the one seat issue. I take their points, but the fact is that, with Short money, there is already a legal situation that says one seat means you will be regarded as a national party. I am interested in the Minister’s comments, with his strong stress on each seat being an individual contest, which does not really seem to be the way the Conservative Party has been fighting recent elections, or the way recent elections have been treated by the media.

On the Minister’s point about disadvantaging single local candidates, around the country at a local council level we are seeing groups of candidates representing their local area—I am thinking of Herefordshire, but there are other areas where significant groups of councillors have come together as representatives of their local area, and they might want to run in a number of seats where they represent the council, and that is a very large sum of money.

The noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, said it is not a barrier to participation because you get your money back if you get sufficient support, but that implies you are able essentially to gamble £500. While there are many people in our society who can say, “Well, here is £500—I will get it back or I will not”, there are an awful lot of people for whom that is not a financially viable situation, who do not have access to that £500 to start off with.

I think this has been the start of a conversation. I took encouragement from the comment by the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, that the idea of a review might be of interest to the Labour Party. I think that is something that I might look to take forward in the future, and I hope we might be able to work on that. This has been very much the start of a conversation which has a long way to run, but at least it has been started. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 144F withdrawn.

Elections Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Monday 28th March 2022 Lords Chamber

I have two final points to make. First, as I said, I can see the arguments for widening the franchise in cases of reciprocal rights being given by another country. That is an argument to which we shall come in more detail in Amendment 154 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, in support of which I expect to speak. Finally, some noble Lord—probably the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, or the noble Lord, Lord Grocott—will say that my remarks run completely counter to the provisions of Clause 12 extending the right of British citizens anywhere in the world indefinitely to vote in UK elections. Such an accusation would be correct. I think the Government have misjudged this issue, to put it no higher, and that our manifesto commitment was a plain mistake. For someone to be able to emigrate to Australia or retire to Jamaica and have continued participation in UK elections over tens of years seems plain wrong, as the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said. What can a person know about life in Britain after an absence of 20 or more years? Why should they have an equal say to a person who has lived here and contributed to the life of this country throughout that period? However, the fact that this is an ill-advised policy does not mean that we should add another ill-advised policy to it, and I am afraid that I regard the policy proposed in Amendment 152 as just that.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I offer Green support for the general trend of these amendments. I also join the rest of the House in wishing the noble Lord, Lord True, a quick recovery. I very much agree with the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, and disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson. If someone is here contributing to society and is a part of this community—maybe that is only for 20 or 30 years and maybe they will eventually go back to the country they came from, to care for their elderly parents or another reason—they should have a say. They have chosen to make this their home and we should recognise that with the vote.

It is really interesting if we look at the overall context of the Bill—and I very much agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, about the general sense of confusion and the lack of a real sense of clear direction—that where there is a sense of direction, it is utterly the wrong direction. As we were talking about with voter ID and offering a positive alternative of automatic voter registration, we have seen a trend over centuries for more and more people to have the right to vote. Yet, what we have done right now with the Brexit situation and with the rules as they currently are with the Bill without these amendments is that fewer and fewer people are having the right to have a say. That is a diminution of what democracy we actually have.

I very much agree with the comment from the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, that if you are able to vote, you should be able to stand. There is a really interesting case study related to that of the kind of tangles that electoral law can get itself into. Between 1918 and 1928, there were certain groups of women who could stand but not vote. The Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act 1918—with 27 words, it is the shortest law on the statute book—created a rather strange tangle where women were able to stand, and indeed some women did stand, when they could not vote for themselves. That really is an illustration of how you can get yourself into a mess when things are not properly thought through.

I have some very specific questions. I am aware that the Minister has kind of been landed with this, so I entirely understand if he might wish to write to me later. One of the things that perhaps many of us in your Lordships’ House do not think about very much is that there is another reason to be on the electoral roll beyond voting: being on the electoral roll is good for your credit rating and improves your access to credit. I will confess, it is something I have used many times on the doorstep to encourage people to go on the electoral roll. One of the things we will do with this current change is to make access to credit more difficult for some people, such as EU citizens who do not qualify for the vote. As we are seeing with all these complications, I wonder whether the Government have really looked at this situation and considered whether it is appropriate to allow that to continue when we are randomly taking that right away from people.

We have already heard very clearly laid out from a range of noble Lords, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, all the complicating factors about whether you are allowed to be on the electoral roll or not. Are the Government confident that they have given full and clear instructions to all the local authorities in the land to ensure that they are able to implement this effectively? Are people on the roll rightly when they should be? With local elections coming up, I am sure all of us, except perhaps the Cross-Benchers, know people who are out now knocking on doors and talking to voters and potential voters. Is there a place where the Government have set this all out very clearly so political campaigners out encouraging people to get involved can find out who is eligible to vote and who is not? That would be a very useful practical resource to have.

This is something that has just occurred to me as we have been going through the debate: I imagine that to vote when you do not have the right to vote is an offence. Are the Government going to provide directions to acknowledge that some people, with the best will in the world and no ill intention, will end up voting in this coming and future elections when they do not have the right? I think people in that situation should be protected, given the complexities that we have all just heard outlined.

I will briefly make two other specific points. On an earlier group, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, I think, noted how Scotland has given refugees the right to vote. Given the situation that we see in a world with more and more refugees, and as we will, I hope, welcome more refugees here, I wonder whether the Government have considered that.

I declare my position as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong. Of course, BNO passport holders have the right to vote, but their children will not—so it could literally be that someone who was born in Hong Kong on a certain day has the right to vote, but a person born there one day later does not. So have the Government considered the situation of the children of BNO passport holders who have come here with their parents now? The Government have said that they are looking to allow, from September, the children of BNO passport holders to come on their own—so might that not be another group to consider?

Since I have just introduced several other layers of complexity, is not the obvious situation to base this right to vote on residence? If people have made themselves part of the community and contributed to it, that should be the basis of the right to vote.

[Lord Dodds of Duncairn (DUP)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 156 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Suttie and Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick. I too extend my best wishes to the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord True, for a speedy recovery.

This amendment is specifically to do with Northern Ireland, and its basis rests on an interpretation of Article 2 of the Northern Ireland protocol to the withdrawal agreement. The ability to stand for election and vote of EU citizens who were resident at the end of the transition period—or the implementation period, as it was called—on 31 December 2020 is clearly preserved. There is no argument about that; it is set out and is the legal position. So we are talking here about EU citizens who arrived in the UK—or Northern Ireland—after that. I understand that this is a probing amendment, but it is worth pointing out that EU citizens who have arrived since 1 January 2021 will move to a position whereby voting and candidacy rights are granted where there is an agreement with the European Union member state that they came from—they are preserved on a bilateral basis. That is the normal accepted position.

There has been a reliance on an interpretation of Article 2 of the protocol, and a lot of claims are made, appealing to not just the letter but the spirit of the Northern Ireland protocol, with all sorts of extravagant positions that would otherwise not be deemed to be rational or even democratic. People talk about taxation with no representation, and laws are now made over vast swathes of the economy of Northern Ireland, despite no Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, for which elections will take place on 5 May, or of this or the other House being able to have any say or vote on them. People are running for election to the Assembly in Northern Ireland to make laws for Northern Ireland, yet, in vast swathes of the economy, they have no powers whatever—those laws are imposed on them by the European Union on a dynamic basis, in over 300 areas of law. In a modern 21st-century democracy, that raises severe problems about the democratic deficit.

I return to this particular amendment. Article 2 of the protocol confers no right on Northern Ireland citizens to have voting rights in an EU member state in which they choose to reside. Therefore, it would seem bizarre to argue that it confers rights on EU citizens to vote in Northern Ireland district elections—that seems totally incongruous and spurious, and it is a wrong-headed argument. For that reason, I would obviously oppose that amendment if it is pressed.

Elections Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Monday 28th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

I absolutely agree with that.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, this has been a hugely interesting and terribly important debate. I am now going to take what you might describe as the traditional Green role of going much further than anyone has gone before in seeking to deliver what the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, called for in introducing this group: free and fair elections. That is what I think we are all aiming for. Before I do that, I think perhaps I should—given the direction the debate in group one today took—declare in retrospect my position as vice-president of the LGA, and apologise for not doing that earlier.

Given the hour, I am going to restrict myself to commenting on Amendments 212A and 212B, which appear in my name. They do bear some relationship to Amendment 212DA in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, which goes in a similar direction but in a more limited way. Like many noble Lords, I am drawing particularly on the 13th report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life entitled Political Party Finance: Ending the Big Donor Culture—which is what my amendment seeks to do.

Amendment 212A amends the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act to set a donation cap of £500 from any individual donor or corporation to each party or candidate, either with a single donation or cumulatively by multiple donations through a calendar year. Clause 1(2) specifically excludes trade unions from that cap, which I think deserves some explanation. One of the Green Party’s policies for a sustainable society states:

“Donations from democratic membership organisations (such as trade unions) provide a useful method for ordinary people to pool resources in order to exert influence”.


It could be argued that there may be other organisations similar to that—I think of the RSPB, perhaps, as an example—that might choose, as a group, to give a larger donation. But the practical reality is that most of those are charities, and our charity law means that is not practically going to be an issue.

I would like to acknowledge that there is potential flaw in the way this amendment is written—and it certainly needs some more work—in that it does allow a donor to give £500 to potentially every single candidate, which would obviously come to a very large sum of money, which is not the intention of the amendment. This was done because the donation rules apply separately to parties and to individual candidates—but this is something I will work on in terms of this amendment.

With that proviso, this is an amendment that could truly revolutionise our elections. Indeed, it could go a long way to making the United Kingdom a democracy. Currently, very large donations are a major factor, perhaps a deciding factor, in our elections and other votes. The dictionary definition of an oligarchy is “a small group of people having control of a country or organisation”. I might add “party”. There is a strong case for saying that that fits the UK better than the definition of a democracy. Perhaps that has always been the case, but certainly now, since we have a situation where technology allows huge online spending to reach voters in a targeted way—far more than anyone using up their shoe leather to knock on doors and deliver leaflets possibly could.

I am not really expecting the Government to say, “Yes, we want to transform our elections and make them wonderfully democratic and set a £500 maximum donation limit in a year”. But I have a real question which I would very much appreciate an answer to from the Minister. I note that, responding to the Committee on Standards in Public Life report in 2011, the then coalition Government said:

“The amount any one individual, organisation or institution can give in political donations should be limited.”


So I ask the Minister: do the Government accept that there should be a limit, whatever that limit is, on how much one organisation or individual can give? Should it really be the case, as it is now, that there is no limit?

I note that a political party’s spending is capped at £30,000 for each constituency that it contests in a general election. So if a party stood a candidate in each of 650 UK constituencies, its maximum spend would total £19.5 million. Indeed, I am indebted to the Library for some very rapid research this afternoon. The figures have not yet been fully published, but it would appear that the Conservatives spent not very far off £16.5 million in the 2019 election and about the same in 2017, according to the published figures.

That might seem to be a kind of limit. One donor could fund an entire general election campaign. But, of course, that spending covers only the regulated period and only the regulated spending, which is far from everything that political parties spend. Funding outside election periods would, so far as I can see, be utterly unlimited.

If you think I am talking in terms of theoretical possibilities here, you might want to look across the channel to the United States of America whose political direction, for many ills, we very often follow. A useful report produced last year by Issue One, a non-partisan group that seeks to reduce the influence of money in politics, totalled some of the contributions from what it called “megadonors”—multiple Wall Street billionaires and investors, a Facebook cofounder, a shipping magnate and an heir to a family fortune dating back more than a century. If you look at those figures, you see that at the top of the list is Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, who spent $1.3 billion, which is about £1 billion. Of that, $1 billion went towards his own failed campaign for president in 2020.

This is a pattern that we are increasingly seeing around the world, where money can buy you the politics you want—or at least you can make a very effort at it. It seems that the natural conclusion is to buy yourself, or the party created or reshaped in your own image, office. In my native land, the United Australia Party has said that in the forthcoming federal election it plans to spend more than it did in 2019, when the figure topped 80 million Australian dollars, which is about £45 million. It was previously known as Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party and the Palmer United Party, and it was formed and overwhelmingly funded by the mining magnate Clive Palmer.

I would be very interested in anyone’s answer to the question of why people should be able to buy the politics they want and why people can make serious efforts to buy control of the whole country. That is what is happening and we have nothing in our law to stop it. A lot of our discussion in this group has focused on foreign money in politics and we have heard many powerful accounts of why that should be so. For example, the wife of President Putin’s former deputy Finance Minister, a British citizen acting legally, has donated almost £2 million to the Conservative Party since 2012, making her the largest female donor in history, but if we focus on foreign donors, that only partially addresses this issue.

Why should anybody, whatever their residence, status or citizenship history, be able to buy our politics? If they are a businessperson or an inheritor of family wealth, surely they are likely to influence politics in the direction of maintaining that wealth. Why should they be able to do that? I am sure there is many a nurse tonight, struggling hard to do his best for his patients in the NHS, who would love to influence our politics to improve its resourcing. A farmer might have very strong thoughts about the direction of UK trade policy and its impact on food, health and environmental standards. A family carer, struggling along on an allowance of £87 a week, might have strong views on the adequacy of that. Why should their voice be any less than anyone else’s?

I was discussing this amendment with a Member of your Lordships’ House who I will not identify, because it was a private conversation. They exclaimed in a tone that I think could best be described as horror, “But we couldn’t run an election on that!”—noble Lords might guess that they were not from the Green Party. I invite your Lordships’ House to consider a different kind of election, one based on passion, ideas, commitment and genuine engagement with the public, rather than a continual bombardment of slogans—which would probably consist of three words—endlessly, from every media source, as a replacement for actual politics and policies.

I understand that there are some ways of reaching voters that quite reasonably cost money, such as leaflet or video production, so I agree that Amendment 212A implies state funding for political parties. We collectively get the politics that we fund. If we all paid for politics, it would be our politics—what a refreshing idea. I think we will get to those points in the ninth group, with the very interesting amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, so I will leave my comments on that till then.

Amendment 212B is rather more technical. There will be people in your Lordships’ House who know a great deal more about this than I do, and I would be very interested in any comments. This amendment would revive Section 68 of PPERA, requiring declaration of multiple small donations by an individual which total £5,000 or more in any year. The figure of £5,000 is what was used in Section 68 of PPERA originally. I have tabled this amendment because, when I had some experts look at the donation rules for Amendment 212A, we realised that Section 68 of PPERA had been repealed, but neither our team, nor the House of Lords Library, could find any justification recorded for the repeal. It does not seem to have been discussed in any parliamentary debates.

It ought to be revived because of the online nature of many political donations now. It is possible and easy to make many small donations that could total a very large figure. This perhaps sounds theoretical, but a person could donate £1 billion by making 1 billion donations of £1. None of those donations would have to be declared to the Electoral Commission and none of the verification that is done with larger donations would have to be made. That is obviously wrong. Questions have been asked about recent election donations. I will not go into those, but I have identified a clear risk here. Indeed, both of my amendments identify very clear risks that have to be addressed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Howe (Con)]

I do not contradict the noble Lord in any respect as to what he said about trade unions. I say again that I cast no aspersions on trade unions or their practices at all. I am simply saying that it seems unfair and undemocratic to have this distinction made in the way the noble Baroness seeks to do in her amendment.

Fundraising is a legitimate part of the democratic process. There is no cap on political donations because parties, candidates and other types of campaigner have strict limits on what they can spend on regulated campaign activities during elections.

The other amendment in the noble Baroness’s name—

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Before the Minister goes on to the next amendment, I asked whether he agreed that there should be any limit. If we imagine an election campaign, one party’s spending limit is about £20 million. Does the Minister think it appropriate that one person can donate £20 million for an entire election campaign? What does he think that would do to our democracy?

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, there are two issues there: one is the question that the noble Baroness seems to be asking, which is whether there should be a limit on donations, and the other is whether there should be a limit on spending. There is a limit on spending in general elections, as she well knows. If she is asking whether I think there should be a cap on donations, I have to say that I do not.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Sorry, perhaps I was not clear. To put it another way, should there be a maximum percentage that one person can donate to one party’s campaign? If a campaign is funded to the maximum spending limit by one person, it is one person’s campaign. Does the Minister think that would be appropriate?

[Earl Howe (Con)]

That is a highly hypothetical question. I would be happy to give it consideration. For the moment I have to say that the answer is no, but I will reflect on it.

The other amendment in the noble Baroness’s name, Amendment 212B, seeks to place new obligations on donors to report donations to the Electoral Commission where the aggregate total for the year is over £5,000. Yes, there should be transparency around any significant amount of money funding parties and election campaigns, but that does not mean putting the burden on donors. It is for political parties and candidates—the recipients of the donations, who are familiar with the rules—to keep accounting records and report donations over the relevant thresholds to the Electoral Commission. Placing any unnecessarily bureaucratic responsibility on donors such as individual citizens could lead to a chilling effect and discourage people from making donations.

Amendment 212DA, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, seeks to cap donations to political parties at £10,000 per calendar year. Perhaps inadvertently, it would require that every penny in a collection box be recorded and attributed to someone, effectively spelling an end to small donations. Even more significantly, the Government cannot, on principle, support caps on donations as this would only lead to taxpayers footing the bill for the inevitable funding shortfall. There is absolutely no public support for expanding the level of public funding already available to political parties. Public funds should be focused on delivering world-class public services and levelling up communities across our country.

The noble Lord asked about the recommendations in the report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life. The Government responded to the report published by the CSPL on regulating election finance in September last year. The Elections Bill already contains measures that closely link to recommendations made in that report, such as the new requirement on political parties to declare their assets and liabilities over £500 on registration, and a restriction of third- party campaigning to UK-based or otherwise eligible campaigners. However, as the Government response stated, the recommendations in the report deserve full consideration, and more work must be done to consider the implications and practicalities, which, I hope the noble Lord will acknowledge, are very considerable.

In conclusion, controls on electoral funding and transparency of electoral funding are a key cornerstone of the UK’s electoral system and contribute to a healthy democracy. UK electoral law sets out a stringent regime of donations controls to ensure that only those with a legitimate interest in UK elections can make political donations and that political donations are transparent. The Government absolutely recognise the risk posed by those who wish to evade the rules on donations. That is why there are existing provisions which explicitly prohibit money being funnelled through permissible donors by impermissible donors, and why it is an offence for donors and campaigners to purposefully evade the rules.

It is right that voters and organisations with a legitimate interest in UK elections be able to donate to political parties, candidates and campaigns. Our democracy is strengthened by people donating to campaigns that they believe in. I am, of course, aware that stories about political donations are never far from the newspapers, but rather than being indicative of a broken system, I firmly believe that this is a sign of the system working. The checks that parties and other campaigners are required to carry out and the reports published by the Electoral Commission allow the press and the public to scrutinise political donations. It is very important to balance the need for parties and other campaigners to generate funds against the cost of actually carrying out checks on donations to ensure they come from permissible sources. The current rules are proportionate and achieve that balance. I hope that, on that basis, noble Lords will feel able not to move their amendments when they are reached, and that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, feels able to withdraw her amendment.

Elections Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Report stage
Wednesday 6th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerslake (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment and give it my full support. We did much of the heavy lifting on this issue in Committee, so I will keep my comments to four points.

First, contrary to the original assertion, this is not in the 2019 manifesto, and it cannot be regarded as a manifesto commitment. That is in contrast to the issue of voter ID, which was in the manifesto and my opinion was that it would be inappropriate to knock it out completely, even though I personally might have liked to. This is different, and I think the Lords is fully entitled to remove it from the Bill.

Secondly, I refer to the point made by others that this has had no meaningful consultation. In Committee we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, exactly how the mayors themselves feel about this; they are pretty angry about what is going on here. I have lost count of the number of people who did not know that this was happening. This is not the way to make major constitutional change. Let us be clear about it: it affects every voter in this country. There was no consultation on this, in contrast to the painstaking consultation that went on when the supplementary vote was established for the London mayor. It is important that we do not take these cavalier decisions without proper consultation. The key point is that this should not be part of the Bill.

Others have already touched on my third point. Whatever your view is on proportional representation for elections—this is not about that issue, as I made clear in Committee—there is a good case for supplementary votes in mayoral elections and those for police and crime commissioners. I say this because it is much more likely to give the successful candidate what I would call a majority mandate. They will, on the whole and in almost every circumstance, have more than 50% of first or second votes. That is crucial for roles that carry enormous power and responsibility for large amounts of resources. It is quite different from the debate you have about local or central elections; it makes sense for mayoral elections, and we should hold to the current system, which was introduced for good reason.

My fourth point is that the issue of difficulties with the supplementary vote system are very limited, and the case has not been made. As has already been said, in so far as there are issues with the last mayoral elections, the predominant issues were about the number of candidates and the design of the form. You do not change your entire electoral system on the strength of a badly designed form. To put it bluntly, this change is not with the flow of this Bill; it was introduced late into the Bill, it has not had proper consultation and we should remove it. If the Government want to pursue this, they should bring it forward in subsequent legislation.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I have attached my name to the amendment that Clause 12 not stand part of the Bill. I will speak briefly to it. It is a great pleasure to follow the previous three speakers, who have already covered most of the ground.

The noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, made a short assertion about this not being part of the Conservative manifesto in 2019. It is worth reading his wonderful tour de force through the Conservative manifesto from our Committee debate because it sets it out in chapter and verse. To match that, I will read out one sentence from the PACAC report:

“Regardless of the benefits or disadvantages of the changes made by the Bill to the electoral system for those offices, the manner in which the proposed legislative change was brought about is unsatisfactory. Making changes such as this after the Bill has been introduced and debated at Second Reading is disrespectful to the House.”


That was the independent conclusion about the process in the other place. It was not a manifesto commitment. Independent oversight suggests that the way in which it was done was not appropriate.

My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb spoke for us in Committee on this point. It is also worth saying that the Government set great store by the 2011 referendum in suggesting that people somehow or other voted for first past the post. That was 11 years ago. I speak to a lot of voters who are used to voting for whom they see as the second worst candidate to stop the worst candidate getting in under first past the post. There were only two choices on the ballot paper in the 2011 referendum—neither was proportional representation. “#AVisnotPR” sums it up nicely. We really do not have any idea of the people’s view as to what our voting system should be. We should have a people’s constitutional convention. If the public were polled and asked, “Do you think our politics are broken?”, I think you would find a massive consensus. My answer to how we find a way forward is to go to the people and work out what they want. It is clear that what the Government have put before us in Clause 12 has no democratic legitimacy. Your Lordships’ House should remove it.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, the case is there. We rehearsed it extensively in Committee. At the time, we heard some very interesting arguments put forward by the Minister. I hope that he has had chance to revise his views and that we shall hear shortly that he will accept the amendment. I do not want to prolong this, so I shall leave it there.

Elections Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Report stage
Wednesday 6th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, a couple of minutes after I thought I might have to rise to move the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, and others, I rise to support it. With between 6 million and 9 million people missing from electoral registers or incorrectly registered, something is clearly wrong.

Surveys by the Electoral Commission show that 60% of people think, incorrectly, that the registration process happens automatically and that they do not need to do anything. Registering is not just about the right to vote; it is about making yourself available for jury service and being able to obtain credit. The Government maintain that there should be an opt-in principle to the right to vote, but there is no opt-in principle for healthcare, education or support from the emergency services, nor do the Government expect you to opt in to paying tax, so you should not have to opt in to the right to vote.

Automatic voter registration would cut the cost of existing registration processes and reduce red tape and bureaucracy, all things which the Government would normally say that they want to support. Introducing it would free up resources to focus on those who are still unregistered, which is also something the Government say that they want to do, but are they worried that the wrong people may then be able to vote? That is not a very democratic principle, but it is one trumpeted by Republicans in the United States.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I had the pleasure of introducing this amendment in Committee and I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, who has been the proponent of this throughout, was able to be here on Report and provide such a powerful introduction. I raised one practical point previously: how hard it is for people to check if they are on the roll. The Minister said she was going to write to me about that, and I look forward to her letter.

The noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, is not in her place now, but in Committee she stressed the way in which automatic voter registration would be helpful to poor and marginalised communities, particularly Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. We should keep that in mind, and also the words in Committee of the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, who noted that the impact assessment is to ensure that those who are entitled to vote should always be able to use that right—that is the Government’s stated aim for the Bill.

After those brief words, I will repeat three words said by the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, in his introduction: “seize this opportunity”. I think he was speaking then to voters, but that it is a great message to leave with your Lordships’ House: seize this opportunity for democracy.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to say three things. First, I am pleased to see the Minister back in his place and I hope he has recovered. Secondly, I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, has made another journey from Cambridge to be with us tonight. Thirdly, I agree with him that we should make history and I urge the House to vote for this amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie of Downpatrick, and to agree with the case she has so clearly outlined for Amendment 44A. However, I will speak briefly to Amendment 44 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, to which I have attached my name. He has already presented this very clearly; I just want to stress that it is talking about local government elections. It is talking about decisions about how your bins are collected and by whom; what happens with the local social care that you or your relatives might need to use; a local library that you and your children might rely on; or, where you are still lucky enough to have local democratic control, a local school. Surely if you have made yourself part of that community and you are relying on those services and contributing to that community, you should have a say over it. That is the case here.

There is also a practical case at this time. There will be a huge level of difficulty and confusion for voters, canvassers and people campaigning for local officials with the cut-off date of the end of the transition period, settled status and different situations for different EU member countries. It will all get very complicated and messy.

I have one final observation for tonight, while expressing my opposition to Amendment 43 moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington. If you look at the debates as we have progressed through Report today, it is really striking that there is a clear division in this House that runs around the Government Benches, with everyone else, including the Cross-Benchers, on the other side. Every measure defended or promoted from the Government Benches, whether by Front-Benchers or Back-Benchers, seeks to see or will have the impact of fewer people voting. All the amendments moved from this side try to get more people involved and voting. That is a really interesting division to see in your Lordships’ House.

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise extremely briefly to support my noble friend Lady Ritchie’s amendment, to which I have added my name.

Constitutional issues are never easy in Northern Ireland—nothing is ever simple—and this lies in that category too. We live, as it happens, in very troubled times in Northern Ireland. We are but weeks away from a complicated and difficult election for the Northern Ireland Assembly. Issues which might to us seem relatively unimportant are magnified a dozen times when we cross the Irish Sea.

I add my plea to the Minister: can he persuade his colleagues in the Northern Ireland Office, or himself—whoever decides to go—to meet the Human Rights Commission and the Equality Commission? They have jointly put forward a submission. Both those bodies were set up 25 years ago at the time of the Good Friday agreement—for obvious reasons, because they were major planks in that agreement. Therefore, if they say that this is going to cause a problem, there is a very strong case for the Government to meet them.

In Scotland and in Wales, local government elections are devolved, so they take their own decisions on this. I am not quite sure why this has not been devolved in Northern Ireland, but it is not, and it lies in the purview of the United Kingdom Government. As it happens, of course—given that this relates to European Union citizens—the people of Northern Ireland voted to remain in the European Union. But that is not the main issue.

The main issue is that there is a problem with regard to the Good Friday agreement and Article 2.1 of the protocol—all difficult issues. But I think that a meeting would be absolutely final, in the sense that it would mean being able to talk to the two commissions about the issues which my noble friend has raised—at least, I hope it would be final. We will know in a second what the Minister will say, and whether he will go ahead with this proposal or could delay it a little until he has met with the two commissions. But I repeat: this is a difficult issue in difficult times. We look forward to what he has to say.

Elections Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 25th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, and the noble Lord, Lord Wallace. They have already very clearly outlined Amendment 63, to which I attached my name, so in the interests of time, I will comment just on Amendments 66 and 68 in my name. These are advances, derivations or different approaches that arose from the debate we had on these issues in Committee. As the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, just said, I would not necessarily suggest that these are the complete answer—although Amendment 68 certainly takes us in the direction that he referred to of reviewing our current situation—but they are an attempt to raise the issues and continue the debate from Committee.

I begin by noting—I owe this to the Forbes website—that a superyacht costs on average about $275 million. I cannot personally attest to that, but we can take it as a ballpark figure to start with; of course, there are probably quite a few going second hand at the moment, which might make them a bit cheaper. This is a demonstration of the fact that, in our current economic system, with the corruption and extractivism, we have people in the world who have access to massive sums of money. Amendment 63 and most of the debate around this have focused very much on foreign influence. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, talked about bringing influence over our democratic politics. But what my Amendments 66 and 68 do is ask: why should any individual, wherever they reside, have that kind of influence over our democratic politics?

If we look at what a typical political party—one of the two largest parties, or perhaps particularly the party that draws the most funds, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said—spends on a general election, it is about 10% of the cost of a superyacht. It is not quite small change down the back of the sofa for the oligarchs, but it is not a really large amount of money. I asked in Committee what would happen if one of our existing political parties or a new political party drew all its funding from one source—one highly questionable source or any source at all. For example, we have just had the French election, and the far-right candidate, Marine Le Pen, who got more than 40% of the vote, got a very large loan from a Hungarian bank linked to President Putin. If noble Lords want to see how this plays out in Australian politics, they might like to look at the role of Clive Palmer in the election going on now, since I raised that issue in Committee.

This amendment developed from the Committee work. Of course, we do not have exact parallels to the two examples I have just cited in the UK, although I note, looking back over the past decade or so, that in the run-up to the 2010 election, Lord Ashcroft donated about 20% of the money that the Conservative Party spent in preparing for and running that election campaign. In 2021, the Conservative mayoral candidate, Shaun Bailey, received about 40% of his funding from the same source. I am not in any way casting aspersions on those cases; I am merely asking what happens to our politics when one person is hugely influential and a party is dependent on that one person.

Amendment 66 is an attempt to say that there should be a limit on how much one person can influence a political party. I came up with the figure of 5%, which I think is a reasonable estimate. This was debated at some length with the noble Earl, Lord Howe, who is not in his place today. He said that he would go away and think about whether one person should be able to donate 100% of the cost of an election campaign for a party or major character. I give notice to the Minister that I raise that question again. The noble Earl said he would go away and reflect on what the maximum percentage should be; maybe the Government do not think my 5% figure is right, but do they really believe that 100% of the funding for a political party’s campaign for a general election should be able to come from one source? Maybe they think it should be 50% or 25%. I give the Minister fair warning that if I do not get an answer to that, I will be bouncing back up again. I am sure that, if they engage with Amendment 66, the Government are likely to say that this might be drafted differently. I have attempted to address some of the main issues. I will not push this to a vote. I do not believe that I have necessarily found all the answers here, but there is a really important question that needs to be asked about whether we should limit anyone’s, not just foreign residents’, percentage of influence over our parties.

Some will say that we have rules about declaring donations and, providing they are followed—your Lordships’ House did its best earlier to keep an independent Electoral Commission overseeing that—voters can use that information to influence their choice. However, even if it is all open and transparent, voters have many reasons to make the choices that they do. Elections do need to be funded, which is why I have put down Amendment 68, which would require a 12-month consultation on public funding of political parties. This very much draws on the amendment the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, tabled in Committee and on which, unfortunately, due to the hour, we did not have time to have a full debate. None the less, the noble Lord put forward—as he has again in an amended form here—a proposal for how to do this and get state funding of political parties. We could have lots of debates about the nature of that and the way it should be done, so rather than do that, I have put down this amendment for a review.

I will stop there, but I remind the Minister that I will be asking him if he thinks that 100% of the funding for a campaign should be able to come from one source.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly support my noble friend’s amendment, although I do not think it goes to the source of the problem. The source of the problem is the massive increase in the electorate contained within this Bill. We know from the impact assessment and I know from written replies I have had from the Minister that it increases the electoral roll of people living abroad—many of whom have lived abroad for decades—from around 1 million to 3.3 million, an increase of 2.3 million names. I remind the House that these will overwhelmingly be people who have lived abroad for more than 15 years—for many, 50 or 60 years —and who have no reasonable expectation of ever returning to this country. The Bill makes it easier for this registration to persist as, once on the register, names now remain for three years as opposed to one year previously, and you can get on the electoral roll by the process of attestation—in other words, providing you can get someone to attest that you lived at 22 Station Road 60 years ago, even though 22 Station Road has been demolished and you have not been back since, and that you are a bona fide former resident of the United Kingdom.

To me, that is wrong in principle, but I shall also apply it at a constituency level—the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, raised this and I can give him some of the answer. Under the present system, with the 15-year rule on residence that is allowed, in London and Westminster, 2.43% of voters at the last election were overseas voters. Let us assume that that increases by three, once these 2.3 million are added to the register. You could then have constituencies in the United Kingdom with 6,000 or 7,000 voters in an electorate of 73,000 who have no obvious connection whatsoever with the constituency in which they are voting. That, it seems to me, is wrong.

Whatever your view is, the absolute basis of our electoral system—which I cherish; I have to be controversial here by saying I am a powerful supporter of first past the post and single-member constituencies—is that representation, for a general election, is based on where you live. That is a very good basis for registration and voting, it seems to me. But, no, we are going to add 2.3 million people to the register who never lived in the country—not in recent memory.

In order to do this, the Government are spending some £15 million. I wish that they would show the same anxiety and commitment on making sure that people resident within the United Kingdom and not on the register at present were added instead of spending £15 million on getting people to vote in individual constituencies—possible decisively, affecting the result—who simply do not live in the area.

I am very sorry that this Bill has extended the period of residence from 15 years to life. I hope that the Minister can improve on his answer when I raised this before; he asked what on earth is the basis for objecting to supporting a 15-year rule, which says that—I quote him loosely—if you have been abroad for 15 years, you can vote in an election, but if you have been abroad for 15 years and a day, you cannot vote in an election. That really is a thin argument; he really can do better than that. That applies to any boundary—why do we say people can vote at 18 but not at 17 and 364 days? We can all find numerous examples of how people draw boundaries.

The problem of overseas voting—and here I find myself agreeing with the Green Party, which I do not on every occasion—is that with the possibility of this initial problem, which is that you can vote however long you have been away from the country, you can also now provide funds for parties. It means, as has already been said, that, in theory, a party could be almost entirely financed by people living abroad with no intention of returning to the United Kingdom or of living with the consequences of their vote. That is the other crucial element in our democracy: you live to see the consequences of your vote. People who voted Conservative—I hope a lot of them vote Labour at the next election—bear some responsibility for what is happening in the country at the moment. It is not the same responsibility as the Minister, of course, but they have some responsibility. Of course, if you live abroad, vote from abroad, remain abroad and intend to remain abroad, then you do not live with the consequences of your vote.

I very much regret that, somehow or other, this massive extension of the franchise is in this Bill, without any compensating extension of the franchise for people in this country who are not on the electoral roll. I have seen no sensible, adequate defence of it so far. I am sure that the Minister will do his best, which he is bound to do, but we have made a step in our democracy that violates the principle of representation by place of residence and adds the problem of enabling parties to be massively financed by people living and working permanently abroad.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I was thinking that others would wish to intervene, but that does not appear to be the case.

These are important amendments, but I shall not encourage anyone to think that the Government will accept them. The context is a shared concern about dirty money, a phrase that the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, used. I do not think any Government have been stronger in response to the Russian invasion, or in bearing down on oligarchs, than this Government. However, following our robust debate in Committee, I am pleased that we are again returning to this important issue of political donations. I do listen to contributions of noble Lords and these debates will certainly serve as a key reference point for the Government as they keep rules on political donations under review, to ensure that they continue to provide an effective safeguard that protects the integrity of our political system. In that context, the Bill bears down very heavily on foreign donations and makes them much harder.

Turing to the specific amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, and the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, Amendment 63 would remove the rights of overseas electors to make political donations. Amendment 69B would place a £7,500 limit on any donation or series of donations from overseas electors. I fear that many will not be surprised when I reiterate that the Government cannot support these amendments, as we intend to uphold the long-standing principle, first introduced by the Committee on Standards in Public Life itself in 1998, that if you are eligible to vote for a party, you are also eligible to donate to that party. These amendments would overturn that principle by removing the right of overseas electors to donate. Overseas electors are British citizens who have the right to vote and, despite what the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said, the Labour Party has acknowledged that for many years. They are reasonable participants in our democracy. Furthermore, due to the interaction of Amendment 69B and the existing legislation, there would be no provision for either the return of donations exceeding the £7,500 threshold or the reporting of such donations to the Electoral Commission. This leaves a significant gap, which means that the amendment would simply not have the intended impact.

The Government do not support the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, to which I listened carefully. It was fair for him to set out his case because he wishes to establish an independent committee to report on the creation of a foundation for democracy. The concept here, however, which is where agreement falls away, is that he submits that this body should be responsible for collecting all donations made to registered political parties and mandatorily allocating them based on membership and vote share at certain elections. The Government can find no justification for this amendment and believe it would place unreasonable restrictions on an individual’s freedom to donate to the political party of their choosing. It would go against the fundamental principle of allowing members of the public to get involved in our democracy by giving their support, be it at the ballot box, via a cup of coffee or via donations, to any party or parties that they choose.

Moreover, this proposal would risk disproportionately penalising smaller parties, which may not have such high levels of membership and vote share as the larger parties, but form an integral part of our democracy. Indeed, it is not clear to me how any new parties would emerge under the noble Lord’s system, as they would not be able to fundraise for themselves and would therefore struggle to get their message out to the public to encourage members to join and voters to support them in the future. The Government are therefore simply not convinced that there is a demand or evidence to support the noble Lord’s radical idea; nor do we think it necessary to establish an independent committee to come to this conclusion. Should other parliamentarians share the noble Lord’s view, the existing framework of parliamentary committees obviously provides an ideal place to consider the proposal further, so I urge the noble Lord not to press his amendment.

Next, I turn to Amendments 66 and 68, spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, which address a similar theme. Amendment 66 would seek to cap donations that any one individual or organisation can make to a political party to 5% of that party’s maximum campaign expenditure limit at the preceding election. This cap would apply to all donors, whether individuals or organisations, such as trade unions for example. What effect would it have on a large trade union donation?

Amendment 68 would require the Government to publish a report on proposals to establish state funding of political parties and limitations on private donations. In essence, the noble Baroness and the noble Lord are seeking the Government’s views on these two fundamental principles. I will underline our position.

First, fundraising is a legitimate part of the democratic process. Consequently, there is no cap on political donations to parties, candidates and other types of campaigner but, instead, strict limits on what they can spend on regulated campaign activity during elections. These maintain a level playing field in elections. In particular, the noble Baroness’s amendment has the potential to create a very uneven and complicated playing field. Under the proposal, each political party will have different amounts it can fundraise, given that spending limits are calculated according to the number of constituencies it contests. New political parties in particular, again, would be affected and this change could encourage quite unnatural growth, whereby new parties are incentivised to contest seats they have no intention of winning to give them a more competitive funding limit in the next cycle. I will not be drawn on what percentage of a party’s overall donation might be permitted because the Government simply do not accept that there should be such a percentage figure.

Secondly, there is absolutely no public support for expanding the level of public funding already available to political parties. The Government are not going to go down that road.

Finally, I wish to address Amendment 69, retabled by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. This would introduce requirements, as he said, for registered parties to carry out risk assessments and due-diligence checks on donations. Only those with a legitimate interest in UK elections can make political donations and there are strict rules requiring companies making donations to be both incorporated and carrying out business in the UK. Parties must check that companies meet these criteria. It is also an offence to circumvent the rules through proxy donors—for example, an impermissible donor seeking to make a donation through a company that is itself a permissible donor. Political parties must already report all donations over a certain value to the Electoral Commission, which are then published online for public scrutiny.

The Government have heard the concerns that donors may seek to evade the rules and, in principle, the point of strengthening the system to provide greater levels of assurance on the sources of donations to ensure they are permissible and legitimate is important. Indeed, the Government recently published, ahead of introducing necessary legislation, the Corporate Transparency and Register Reform White Paper.

Reforms to Companies House will deliver more reliably accurate information on the companies register by introducing mandatory identity verification for people who manage or control companies and other UK-registered entities, providing greater powers for Companies House to query and challenge the information it receives, and introducing more effective investigation and enforcement powers for Companies House. This, in combination with a new power for the Companies House registrar proactively to pass on relevant information to law enforcement and other public and regulatory bodies, including the Electoral Commission, will indirectly support the enforcement of the rules on donations by providing greater confidence in the accuracy of the data held at Companies House, including when seeking information on UK-registered companies and other UK-registered entities that have made political donations.

The Government have not dismissed the fact that this is a significant area, which is why we are instituting these reforms to corporate transparency, but for the reasons I have outlined to the House on various amendments, I urge that noble Lords consider not pressing their amendments.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Before the Minister sits down, may I confirm what he said? I wrote down his words: “The Government do not accept that there should be a percentage limit.” On the percentage of contribution from one person or organisation to a political party’s campaign, would the Minister confirm that the Government believe it appropriate for 100% of the funding for a political party’s campaign to come from one source or organisation?