Elections Bill

Baroness Chakrabarti Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Thursday 17th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, made a distinguished contribution, based on his great experience—although I fear that in identifying Conservative clubs he was thinking of Walsall North Conservative Club, which defines itself online as a pub that has gone out of business, rather than the neighbouring Aldridge Conservative & Unionist Club, which defines itself online both as a social club, which it is, and also as “community and government”. That rather makes my point about some clubs—not only Conservative clubs but also Labour and Liberal clubs.

I want to make one brief comment on Amendment 54B and what the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, said, and will requote one of the principles he identified, which is clarity. In 1995 I was tasked with ensuring that the Labour Party and the trade unions stayed within the law, as it was emerging under the Nolan committee, to which I presented evidence with my noble and learned friend Lord Morris on behalf of all trade unions. Before the law changed, my experience was that clarity was critical. I was able to go to senior politicians—my noble friend Lord Blunkett was an exception because he was always exemplary on all financial matters, but not everyone was because politicians are often more enthused about their political campaigns than by exactly how they are funded—and one of my roles was to ensure that everything was within the spirit of the law and within the law we already had on trade union funds. Clarity was critical.

It would probably be a best seller if I cited some of the spectacular examples, but there were some ferocious rows. I explained to people that they were not having that money because the way they were trying to get it was not technically legal, despite the fact that the way they wished to spend it was clearly for social good. Politicians have a weakness when it comes to money, especially when it is to do with elections. Clarity is critical.

When the law changed, and treasurers were about to be elected in my local party, when I was a Member of the other place, I always used to say, “You’ll go to prison if you get this wrong.” That quickly weeded out those who wanted the position of treasurer for some kind of political enhancement and left a tiny number who were prepared to ensure that the finances were in order. They were awkward to me, because I kept saying “That’s perfectly legitimate”, and they would delay income or expenditure because they wanted to be absolutely certain.

That is the beauty of what the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, is suggesting: a designated treasurer with a duty that they will apply with draconian consequences for breaching the law. I strongly commend this approach and this principle as one of the levers to ensure that transparency is delivered. I think this is rather a good proposal.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I am not an expert on dining clubs, working men’s club or gentlemen’s clubs. Sadly, in these days of the pandemic, even nightclubs are a distant memory.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

Not for me.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I will get advice from my noble friend on that afterwards.

I am concerned about third parties campaigning in a free democratic society and unintended consequences. My background is as a human rights campaigner, on civil liberties and civil rights in particular. In my experience the nature of those campaigns is that you are always having to side with the opposition of the day—not just the Labour Party but any opposition of the day. Just google me and you will find lots of reasons for my noble friends to be cross with me. I am not expressing hurt feelings on behalf of the Labour Party on this occasion. I am concerned about the ability of human rights organisations and civil society to function in the future, regardless of who is in power.

While I commend the sentiment behind these amendments, I worry about whether the fundamental problem that they attempt to respond to is the one touched on by my noble friend Lord Collins in the last group, which goes back to PPERA itself: the concern about what joint campaigning is and how one is touched by these third-party controls. I totally understand successive Governments’ concerns about third parties who are proxies for political parties in a way that we have seen in other jurisdictions, where one sees even TV commercials funded by so-called civil society organisations that are proxies for political parties. That drives a coach and horses through any kind of regulation, and I understand that, but, at the same time, as someone who was the director of the National Council for Civil Liberties in 2014 when the legislation came in, I can testify about the chronic anxiety that it caused among civil rights organisations that were really not party political in any sense that would be understood in this place or the other place.

I support the instinct behind the amendments. The Minister has been so kind as to say that he wants to drill down a little more before Report. In whatever time is available in his discussions, I ask him to bear in mind that there are ongoing anxieties about that fundamental problem. It is wonderful to have guidance, but, as we always do with legislation when there are ambiguities and concerns, we say, “Well, we’ll have this regulator who will help. We’ll have this guidance that will help after the fact”—whereas, if we are really talking about rights, freedoms and the constitution, ideally we would have sufficient clarity in the primary legislation itself.

We have heard from trade unions, with their particular link with the Labour Party, but we could be talking about all sorts of charities, NGOs or grass-roots campaigns, from the Countryside Alliance to Liberty, which I worked for. I listened carefully to the Minister on the previous group. This is not about climate catastrophe or poverty—except “It isn’t until it is”. It is not an issue until it seems to be the biggest issue of the day and people think that it is then capable of toppling a Government or making an opposition party. I am looking for that level of comfort and—the word has been used a number of times—clarity, not in just for future guidance but in current law.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome this. I recall the days when the noble Lord, Lord Mann, was telling general secretaries what they could and could not do. There were occasions in meetings where he was the bad cop and I was the good cop—I do not think that things have changed much, really.

The noble Lord talked about clarity and my noble friend Lord Blunkett talked about certainty. That is the nub of this, and I support the proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson. It is not that I do not trust the Electoral Commission or what it may or may not do; it is because the current system relies on guidance that could change overnight and is not certain. My trade union colleagues behind me know that statutory codes of practice are often used as a way of creating certainty, to ensure that there is a clear defence, as the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, put it. So the noble Lord and my noble friend Lord Blunkett are therefore absolutely right.

There is a problem at the moment with the regulation, and because there is doubt and uncertainty, the result is “Don’t do it” and inaction. Therefore, this sort of proposal, where we create a statutory framework that could be properly scrutinised—again, I support that— would create clarity and certainty, and therefore encourage civil society to participate in our democratic process. So I support the noble Lord.

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[Baroness Verma (Con)]

I am tired of this divisiveness that keeps coming up. We have been in this country for a very long time. The divisiveness that has been caused has been caused because we have refused to allow people to be fully engaged. I am going to stand here and say that over and over again. The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, can shake her head, but I have heard it over and over again that minority communities do not want to engage. They do, but unfortunately the systems do not always help them.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I have found this absolutely fascinating—I genuinely have. This is not a rhetorical point. I understand that both the noble Baronesses opposite who have spoken have said they want integrity in the system. The noble Baroness has just said she feels passionate about a lack of engagement and obstacles to people’s engagement—an issue on which I suspect she finds common cause with the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, and everyone in the Committee. My question to the noble Baroness, because I really want to understand her position, is whether she feels that, at present, a significant bar to the engagement she seeks is coming from widespread voter fraud in the communities she is discussing. Is that the problem she feels is the stumbling block and is that why she is a supporter of the Government’s policy?

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, there was no intention on my part at all to create any division within our communities. I have spent a lifetime in mixed communities, trying to engage people from every background in the political process. That is the point that I was trying to make and I am sorry if the noble Baroness opposite perhaps misunderstood.

Here we are today, talking about the costs of voter ID, which the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, has eloquently said will create an even greater barrier to people being able to vote. At this point, I want to draw the attention of the Committee to the fact that I am an elected member of Kirklees Council and a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

I speak in support of the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman—of course I do. In many ways, she is absolutely right. Any changes in the way in which elections are administered will be an additional cost to already hard-pressed council finances. Returning officers have expressed their concern. They know that there is more to it than just creating the new eligible voter ID for those without it.

Additional costs are mentioned in the Explanatory Memorandum, helpfully. What it does not do is list them. I am going to draw the Committee’s attention to what some of the additional costs will be. As we have heard, there is the additional cost of creating a photographic voter ID card for those who do not have one, the cost of providing screens for voters who do not wish to remove their face covering in front of others, and the cost of additional equipment to make it easier for those with disabilities to vote in person. The latter is one part of the Bill that is positive. There is also the cost of additional polling clerks to check ID in busy polling stations—perhaps financial incentives will be required to encourage polling clerks to fulfil that role because they will now have to check the ID of every voter before they get their ballot paper. There is the cost of effectively communicating the change, and the hidden cost of more trained staff. And so it goes on.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, has said, the estimate is £180 million—a mere £3 per person. I say to her that, in my council area, that is £1 million a year—and £1 million does not half fill a lot of potholes. If I asked my electors back in Kirklees whether they would rather the council produced voter ID cards for people or filled potholes, I am fairly confident that I know what the answer would be.

Can the Minister confirm that the Government will meet all the additional costs of the changes that they want to make? Can he confirm, given that individual councils will have different additional expenditure based on their demographics, that any government grant will be divided to meet the cost of changes rather than on a formulaic basis? Do the Government believe that extra expenditure is value for money? The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, raised that issue and I have just given an example. Have the Government consulted with electors on whether they believe that these additional costs are value for money and can be considered a priority in these straitened times?

Schedule 3 relates to the changes proposed to postal voting. There is a very high cost to the requirement to reapply after three years. In my local authority, around 50,000 electors currently vote by post; the postage costs alone are very high. In England there are about 8 million postal voters, so the postage costs for writing out to existing postal voters for them to reapply and fill in the postal voter application would be about £4 million. Is that money well spent in the current circumstances?

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[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, in a previous debate on this Bill, I heard my noble friend say that he would not have wanted to be an election agent. I have now heard him say that he would not want to be a poll clerk. So perhaps I should begin by saying that I have been both in my lifetime. Being an election agent was quite a big responsibility, and the law has changed and become more complicated since then.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, very clearly laid out some of the questions that have been raised. Like my noble friend Lord Grocott, I will wait to hear what the Minister thinks.

I would like now to send a message, if I may, to the noble Lord, Lord Woolley. We have never met. First, I thank him for coming from Cambridge today. Secondly, when the noble Lord goes back to Cambridge, can he please tell his students that it was well worth his while coming here to make his speech? I am a new Member and, shortly before Christmas, I went to visit a secondary school in west London to talk to some politics students about politics. I had a very interesting time, and they raised many interesting questions—not least about this place. Of course, I asked them whether they were interested in politics. Some of them looked fairly vague. I said, “I think you are interested in politics. You just don’t realise it.” I asked them a few more questions, including whether they were on the register, because it is essential.

As an election agent, I remember a general election in which I was quite pleased that I had persuaded someone to come with me to the polling station—which was very close by—in order to exercise their vote. From just a single individual, I saw the devasting effect on someone who gets to the polling station and realises that they were not on the register and could not vote. What we are talking about, and what the noble Lord was talking about, was this situation being replicated thousands of times. It is a terrible thing. I am not saying that I made much progress with the students at that west London school, many of whom, unlike me —I am white—

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

No, really?

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

Sorry? There was a huge collection of different communities. But it is really essential that we engage with these people.

When the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, said that she wanted every single vote to count, I could not have agreed more. What we are talking about is ensuring that every single vote is available to be counted, and I hope that I might persuade her to change her mind on this. However, we will wait and see what the Minister says. I look forward to going back to that school, or indeed to any other which might invite me.

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[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I rise in support of Amendments 56 to 60 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, to which I have added my name. As I said at Second Reading, one of my biggest concerns about the whole Bill—though it is not the only one—is that the ID requirements could, when an election is closely fought, lead to an entirely different outcome of the election from that which would have been achieved without this ID process. In some cases it could result in a change in the MP elected in particular constituencies where, again, the result is close. Although there are obviously problems about individuals and groups, my biggest concern is that this could tip over or interferes with and distort the result of an election. That is a very serious matter.

The requirement in paragraph 8 of Schedule 1 that the electoral identity document

“must … contain a photograph of the person”

risks excluding various groups. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, went through those groups in some detail, and I certainly do not want to repeat her remarks. A differential turnout in these groups and constituencies will therefore determine to what extend the ID system affects the outcome of elections. I have no doubt that the ID system will affect election results and outcomes, and therefore, in my view, the ID provision should not be included in this Bill at all. However, I do understand that the Government had the election ID proposal in their manifesto. Nevertheless, I think I am completely convinced, certainly by the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, who did not get to speak on it, that the manifesto did not refer to photographic evidence. I hope the Minister will, therefore, while hanging on to his ID scheme no doubt, agree that these amendments are very important to keep the impact on elections to a minimum. We need the information required by these amendments. It will be difficult to estimate the impact on various groups, and I would be grateful if the Minister in his response would explain how that data will be obtained—assuming of course that he accepts the vital importance of impact assessments, and I am sure he does—before the ID system is introduced.

The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, referred to various countries that have electoral ID documents, but it would be very helpful if the Minister would make clear which countries have electoral ID systems that do not have general national ID documentation. I think it was indicated that it would not make any difference; of course, it would make an enormous difference if everybody was automatically required to carry their ID in their pocket or bag. Of course, they would roll up at the polling station with their ID—so I have to say I do not accept that it does not matter. It does; and it would be very helpful if the Minister could give some kind of evidence about efficacy and about the impact on elections in those countries that have electoral ID but not national ID.

A very different concern relates to the delegated powers in relation to the registration officer’s power to issue the relevant electoral identity document. For noble Lords not involved in the earlier debate, perhaps I should again declare my interest as a member of the Delegated Powers Committee. The registration officer is under a duty to determine the application “in accordance with regulations”. That is a very wide power, which leaves it open to Ministers to determine the conditions that must be met before an applicant is entitled to receive an electoral identity document. We are not going to know that; that will be a ministerial decision under delegated powers. It also allows for the possibility of the registration officer being given discretion in deciding whether or not to issue an electoral identity document to a person. Again, on what grounds? What is actually going to go on here?

The Delegated Powers Committee is wanting an explanation from the Minister about why these provisions are not on the face of the Bill, and it is quite difficult to think why they are not. If the Minister cannot give an adequate explanation, the committee’s view is that the delegation in this case is inappropriate. I bring that to the Committee because I think it is relevant, and it is important for people involved in these discussions. I do not know whether the Minister is in a position to respond to this, but, if he is not, maybe he can respond in writing, not just to the Delegated Powers Committee but to Members of this Committee. I hope the Minister will be able to respond, though, to this concern.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, to vote is a fundamental right. It is not a new-age right invented the other day; it is a fundamental civil and political right. It is also, for many of us, an ethical duty. If the Government took that view, they would not judge the balance of risk in the way that they currently are. That is where this group relates to the debate foreshadowed in the previous group on financial cost. In that debate, the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, said that it is worth it to have integrity in the system, but the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, asked whether just one conviction really justified the risk. Now we are closer to the crux of the debate.

Different groups of people have fought for the right to vote over many centuries, all over the world. It is one of the first-order civil rights in a democracy, and an ethical duty. If the Government agreed with me, they would judge the balance of risk rather differently from the way they are currently doing with this one conviction as evidence of a problem. Although it is always hard to prove a negative, any evidence produced for it—whether in pilots or from well-established civil society research organisations—is batted away and the Minister in the other place says, “Let’s lock the house before the burglary happens”.

If I am right that it is a first-order civil right, like the right to liberty, you have to judge the balance of risk and put the presumption in a slightly different place. With the right of presumption of innocence and the right to liberty, we put the presumption in a particular direction. We say that it is more important—many Conservatives not in their places would agree with me—that one innocent person does not lose their right to liberty than that even a few more who are guilty go free. If that is how we judge the presumption of innocence in relation to liberty, and if we take participation in free and fair elections as a first-order right of that kind, why do the Government judge the balance of risk in the way they do? Why are they not doing everything possible not just to ensure that those with the right to vote can do so but to encourage the behavioural change we want so that people get the habit of voting and discharge what I think is an ethical duty?

Some other countries say that voting should be compulsory—that it is not just an ethical duty but a legal one. That is a step too far for my libertarian instincts; speaking of which, I fought for many years with many who are not in their places on the Benches opposite, and the current Prime Minister, against the principle of compulsory identification cards for people in this country. Conservatives were some of the most eloquent participants in that debate and the Conservative Party fought elections on manifestos against it, on the basis that this is the kind of free country in which free-born English men and women should not have to carry compulsory ID.

It did not make me many friends among those who are now my noble friends, but that was the argument and principle that united the Conservatives with the Liberal Democrats in 2010—repealing compulsory identity legislation was their flagship policy—and I welcomed it. It seems a little odd now to say that there will not be universal compulsory identity cards for everyone but we will take your vote off you if you cannot afford ID such as a passport or a driving licence. Ministers are shaking their heads on the basis that they will make it possible for all sorts of other kinds of free and cheap ID to be available. We have to take that on trust.

That does not deal with the principled concern—why we require it at all, given that we blew all those trumpets about free-born Englishmen not requiring compulsory ID in the first place—or solve my practical concern about discouraging people who are already discouraged from getting into the habit of voting. The noble Lord, Lord Woolley, made that point so eloquently in the previous debate.

With all the comings and goings and the vivid nature of the debate, I never heard from either of the noble Baronesses, Lady Noakes or Lady Verma, in what way they think fraud is of a significant enough degree in this country at the moment to justify their points about people being shut out of the process by it.