Elections Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

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

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I support these amendments, so ably introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. I will speak to Amendments 119 and 120 in particular, but I must first apologise for not having contributed at Second Reading because of a pre-existing engagement.

I am at a genuine loss as to why the Government appear to have dug their heels in against an amendment along the lines of Amendments 119 and 120, with such an amendment being rejected in the Commons. They claim to have been listening to civil society when developing the Bill’s provisions, yet it is clear that civil society organisations of and for disabled people, while welcoming the new broader provision in the Bill, are very concerned about the dropping of the specific provision for the effective voting rights of blind and visually impaired people. Examples include the oral evidence to the Public Bill Committee given by the head of policy at Disability Rights UK, evidence to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, and a series of briefings from the RNIB.

No one is disputing the value of having a broader protection to cover disabled people more generally, but why does it have to be either/or rather than both/and—that is, both the more general protection and the specific protection that it has long been recognised blind and visually impaired voters need, albeit updated to be more effective than the existing provision that, as we have already heard, leaves all too many blind and visually impaired voters humiliated when they try to vote independently?

The only argument the Government seem to have is that the kind of specific provision that would be provided in these amendments is, in the words of the Commons Minister in the Public Bill Committee, “needlessly prescriptive” and an “unnecessary obstacle to inclusion”. But the RNIB is clear that this is not so. Amendments 119 and 120 both refer to equipment without specifying what that equipment should be. How is that prescriptive? Can the Minister please explain? Prescription is left to secondary legislation, which can easily be amended.

I understand that the RNIB has been working with the Cabinet Office on how to improve voting accessibility and that officials have met with it to discuss concerns about the Bill. The Minister in the Commons confirmed that they had seen the evidence presented by the RNIB but said:

“We do not expect the outcomes that the RNIB has outlined to necessarily be the case.”—[Official Report, Commons, Elections Bill Committee, 19/10/21; col. 235.]


Why do the Government believe they know better than those with day-to-day experience of the issues involved? That is not a rhetorical question; I would appreciate an explanation from the Minister. If they do not believe the predicted negative outcomes to “necessarily be the case”, the implication is that they accept they might be the case. Surely on the precautionary principle used to justify the introduction of voting identification—which will create its own problems for disabled people, as I am sure we will discuss on Thursday—the Government should listen to the warnings of the RNIB and other disability groups.

In the interests of inclusive citizenship, I hope very much that the Government will think again, accept the spirit of these amendments and bring forward their own amendment on Report.

[Lord Kerslake (CB)]

My Lords, I would like to lend my support for the amendments in this group. Interestingly, the Bill says that its purpose is

“to strengthen the integrity of the electoral process”

but not its inclusivity. That is a gap that pervades the whole Bill, and we will return to it in subsequent debates.

In this specific instance, there is a significant gap indeed—you have only to read the RNIB briefing to see the extent of it. It identifies the scale of the challenge, with 250 people starting to lose their sight every day, and its serious concerns that the Elections Bill weakens protections for blind and partially sighted voters at polling stations. It seems to me surprising, if not unconscionable, that we will be approving legislation that the RNIB believes weakens protections.

It is doubly concerning given that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, has said, there are plenty of opportunities to improve access through technology. There are pilots that have proven to be successful.

I find it difficult to understand why the Government would resist these amendments, which seek to keep the innovation within the system but maintain the protections. That ought, after all, to be what we seek to do here. If the outcome of this legislation is that those who are blind or partially sighted feel that their opportunities to vote independently and in secret are diminished, and that their protections are diminished, something has gone very badly wrong in our consideration of legislation.

Elections Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Tuesday 15th March 2022 Lords Chamber

Whichever route the Government prefer, in my view, there is an unanswerable argument for a change to the regulated period, and the need for change has been made more important as a result of the ending of fixed-term Parliaments. I make no comment on the desirability or otherwise of fixed-term Parliaments, but the by-product of having them was to give third-party campaigners increased visibility of the likelihood of a general election coming along. Now, for better or worse, that forward visibility has disappeared. With that, I beg to move.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, in his amendments. I am acting as a kind of understudy for my noble friend Lord Blunkett, but I cannot say that what I shall say would be his lines, but in his absence, at least there is a Labour Back-Bencher speaking in favour of the amendments.

I should perhaps first declare my interest as vice-chair of Compass, which is a left-of-centre campaigning organisation that has been promoting a progressive alliance for some years, and as honorary president of the Child Poverty Action Group. I worked for CPAG for many years and, during that time, worked on trying to get child poverty raised as an issue in many general elections.

The question of the 365-day limit was raised in the Public Bill Committee: why is it so long? I think the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, made a strong case for it being too long. When questioned, the Minister in the Commons had three arguments. The first was that we all have a fairly good idea of when an election will be. Do we? There is already speculation that there could be an election next year. Indeed, those who have been lobbying about the Bill, sometimes groups in combination, could find that they are in the regulated period already. We simply do not know, now that we are outside fixed-term Parliaments. A prudent organisation would need to start taking steps very soon not to get caught out.

Secondly, the Minister argued that, in effect, we are all in it together: we all have the same amount of information, so it does not matter. I will not be affected by this legislation, but the kind of organisation that I am associated with could well be.

Thirdly, and most worryingly, the Minister said:

“People will need to take that into account when they are campaigning politically.”—[Official Report, Commons, Elections Bill Committee, 26/10/21; col. 314.]


Well, exactly. That is the problem: what is often called the chilling effect will take effect. If organisations involved in campaigning take account politically, that could stop them campaigning for large periods of the electoral cycle. That cannot be right. The noble Lord made helpful distinctions. Looking back, when I was at CPAG, there would have been big periods when we could not try to make child poverty an issue because we would have been caught by this legislation.

Perhaps the Minister will have stronger arguments for why 365 days is appropriate, but certainly the arguments put in the Commons were either weak or worrying. I am not clear why we need any retrospective regulated period. Why can it not just start when the election is called? However, in the spirit of compromise, I am happy to support one or other of these amendments and am very interested to hear what the Minister has to say about them.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the scars are still on my back from having taken the transparency of lobbying Bill, now an Act, through this House. I remind the Minister that we paused it when we ran into waves of criticism from all sides and arguments that we had not entirely got our own arguments in line. It was not quite as messy as this Bill, but we did at least manage to sort out something which did not displease everyone too much.

I have read the very useful report by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, which I compliment him on. It does its best to strike the balance between a number of very difficult and different priorities. All of us who have been involved in politics know that there are many civil society organisations. Some are easily politically neutral—as the Church is, most of the time—while others are inherently a bit on the right. Those of us who are old enough to have fought campaigns that the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children was active in will remember how vigorous, to say the least, it could be in its campaigns and how biased it was. Development NGOs and poverty NGOs, being in favour of greater public sector spending and greater equality, tend naturally to be more on the left. The balance between advocacy and electoral campaigning, as the noble Lord has said, is a difficult one, which we must all strike. In debating this issue with some of the organisations concerned, there were those who felt that they were entitled to campaign entirely as they liked because they were morally right and therefore should not in any sense be controlled in an election campaign.

I agree strongly with the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, that 120 days is much better than 365 days. We no longer know when the election will be. It is one of the many bits of incoherence of this Government that putting through the abolition of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act in the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill has not sorted out entirely the knock-on effects of that for this Bill. If I recall correctly, in his report, the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, said that looking back on how various NGOs and civil society groups have spent on their advocacy and campaigning, the spending does come very much in the last few weeks and months before the election, rather than being spread evenly over the previous year.

Therefore, I strongly support Amendment 39 and hope that the Minister will accept that this is a reasonable adjustment in the Bill which the Government could accept, and which makes life simpler for those civil society groups which we all want to see engaging in campaigns and public debate. This tidying up would be a help to all concerned.

Elections Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

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

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I do not know about mandatory ID cards. All I know is that they have to use voter identification when they vote and that is the important issue—

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

I am sorry to interrupt but surely the important thing is that if they already have to have an ID card, it is very different from having to get a special ID card to vote.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I do not agree with that. I do not think that is necessary. It is in the government manifesto and electoral fraud is not a victimless crime. I know the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, was very clear that there had been only one case of fraud but the impact of electoral fraud on voters can be very significant. It takes away their right to vote as they want to—whether through intimidation, bribery, impersonating somebody or casting their vote for them—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I think that is a different discussion.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

This might be helpful, because we were wondering what was in the manifesto. In fact, the Joint Committee on Human Rights quotes from it:

“We will protect the integrity of our democracy by introducing identification to vote at polling stations, stopping postal vote harvesting and measures to prevent any foreign interference in elections.”


There is nothing about photo ID.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

Can we now move on, please?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord True (Con)]

In the Queen’s Speech in October 2019, the Government announced that they would introduce legislation on voter identification. It was very clearly set out in the guidance and briefing that was given around the Queen’s Speech that that would specifically include photo identification and the free identity cards for local authorities. It was an announced and established policy of voter identification, and the manifesto referred to this.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

The Queen’s Speech and the manifesto are different things, and the manifesto did not say “photo identification”.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

That is correct. I appreciate what the Minister said about the Queen’s Speech, but, again, my noble friend is absolutely correct. Members of the Government keep telling us that this was a manifesto commitment, but it is important to clarify the distinction between a manifesto commitment and what the Government decided to go forward with in the Queen’s Speech. We can debate that, I am sure—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I have a number of amendments in this group. I thank noble Lords who have been supportive: the noble Baronesses, Lady Meacher and Lady Lister, and the noble Lord, Lord Woolley. In the previous debate, where we strayed into other areas, we heard a lot of concern about voter turnout. My amendments in this group aim to draw attention to the potential impact on voter turnout in all the different areas where concerns have been raised.

I will just run through them. We are looking at age brackets. We have heard concerns that younger people could be badly impacted by this. At Second Reading, the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, raised huge concerns about the impact on older people.

I also have an amendment about the impact on voter turnout of different disabilities. Our last day in Committee started with a debate on what could happen to blind or partially sighted people if the proposals were brought in without addressing the concerns of the RNIB and other people who have sight problems. Other disabilities have also been looked at; access, for example. There is also an amendment on the impact on voter turnout among different ethnicities. The noble Baroness, Lady Verma, who is no longer in her place, talked about this and the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, has done tremendous work looking at this area.

There is an amendment on nations and regions. One of the concerns is the differentials that will come with England and the devolved areas, and how this will be managed regionally. We know from different kinds of evidence that certain regions are more likely to struggle with voter turnout than others. Also, there is the issue of voter turnout in different income brackets. At Second Reading, noble Lords referred to the important research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which was carried out because the Government had not looked at this. They had looked at other areas but not at income level. If any noble Lord has not read the report, it is very important in getting an understanding.

I draw attention to one or two things the foundation said. It said that low-income potential voters are much more likely not to have photo ID—1% compared with 6%. It talked about how this could mean 1 million low-income voters in Great Britain not having possession of approved photo ID. On top of that, 700,000 low-income adults who would have photo ID felt that they were not actually recognisable and were concerned that their ID would not be accepted. We will have another debate at some point about people being turned away.

I do not want to take up too much time, as we are supposed to finish at 7 pm, but to cover a lot of those different areas, I want to look at the London Voices project. It carried out a survey that asked organisations to describe the impact that they thought photo voter ID would have. The key concerns expressed were that the requirement for photo voter ID

“would reduce democratic participation thus widening the democratic deficit, and impose unfair barriers on already marginalised communities, such as disabled Londoners and Black, Asian and ethnic minority Londoners.”

The report quoted some people in their own words. We have talked an awful lot in this House, but we need to listen to what people on the street say when they are asked about this.

The first one that I want to read out is from Southwark Travellers’ Action Group, which supports Gypsy, Traveller and Roma Londoners. We have not heard enough in their voice. They are very marginalised and we do not take enough account of the difficulties that they often have in civic life. The group said:

“‘The women who we work with, not all of them, but some of them don’t have either passports or driving licences. So that would be an extra barrier for them. Also just the expense of getting those things … Sometimes we have people who want to get a new passport but can’t afford it at the moment, so that’s a real problem.”


Haringey Welcome, which supports migrant and refugee Londoners, said:

“Loads of people don’t have a passport, have never travelled outside of the country… it’s clearly the poor and the disadvantaged, who are least likely to be able to prove their identity”.


Central YMCA looks after young Londoners and points out:

“We do have an informal economy in London. Anybody who doesn’t want to accept that is just not facing reality. So, the people in that economy will be very reluctant. And quite a lot of people in that economy tend to be from BAME communities, or from poorer communities. And therefore, you’re actually saying to quite a large part of the demographic that they are going to be excluded from the democratic process.”


Jacky Peacock, from Advice for Renters—aimed at private renters—says:

“Fewer people will vote—some won’t have photo ID, some (particularly refugees) have lived in authoritarian countries and are fearful while for others it’s just one more small deterrent”.


Voice4Change England looks after black Londoners, and says:

“In vibrant civil society, it is incumbent on the government to endeavour to increase political participation by expanding voters’ rights. The US case rightly highlights that the introduction of voter ID legislation reduced voter participation, and it is suggested that this was disproportionately high among racial and ethnic minority groups … The government should … address the fact that millions of people are left off the electoral register, to review anachronistic campaign laws”.


Finally, Rachel Coates speaks for Advocacy for All, which represents disabled Londoners:

“I think less people with disabilities will vote as this makes it more complicated”.


I beg to move.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I support this group, and I will speak specifically to Amendments 58 and 59, to which I have added my name. But first I will make some points about the group in general. In the Commons the Minister said:

“The Government are committed to increasing participation in our democracy and to empowering all those eligible to vote to do so in a secure, efficient and effective way”.—[Official Report, Commons, 17/1/22; col. 83.]


Yet a wide range of civil society groups, the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee have all voiced concerns about how the voter ID requirements will have the opposite effect for marginalised groups. We heard powerfully from the noble Lord, Lord Woolley of Woodford, about that earlier.

When these concerns were raised in the Commons Committee, the Minister tried to turn the tables with the extraordinary response that to suggest that those groups more likely not to hold the requisite photo ID would not be able to access photo cards

“is to unfairly diminish the agency”,

and

“assuming from the get-go that people are disadvantaged on the basis of their background is stigmatising and denies them their agency”.—[Official Report, Commons, Elections Bill Committee, 22/9/21; col. 127.]

As the author of a book on poverty, one of the central themes of which is the importance of recognising the agency of those living in poverty, I would point out that agency has to be understood in the context of the myriad structural constraints and barriers they face. The same applies to all the marginalised groups that concern us here. The Bill will increase those barriers further.

I now turn to the impact of Clause 1 on people in poverty, which I am pleased to say has already been touched on by my noble friend. As she said, the official evidence made available and statements made do not address this directly at all, as income status is not one of the parameters researched, even though the indicators of the likely adverse impact on the unemployed and on people in social housing should have set a red light flashing, prompting further research into those on low incomes. That it did not do so speaks volumes. Instead, as my noble friend also said, we are indebted to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation for carrying out the research. I will not repeat the details that my noble friend mentioned, but of the total of all those on low incomes who did not have photo ID, thought that what they had was unrecognisable, or were not sure, only about half said that they would be likely to apply for a voter card, and two-fifths said they were unlikely to, or were unsure whether they would.

That is not to deny the agency of this group, but it might reflect a reluctance to engage with the state in this way, because of a lack of trust, as a number of commentators have observed. Or it may be a function of the sheer hard work involved in getting by in poverty. Getting by in poverty is itself an example of time-consuming agency, the more time-consuming when also juggling multiple jobs, long hours and/or insecure work.

Elections Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

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

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Has the noble Lord finished? I am sure my noble friend will deal with his query, which has been dealt with thoroughly already. The Labour Party is a voluntary organisation which you can choose to be in or not, and if you choose to, you abide by the rules thereof—rules that are democratically determined within the party itself. It is totally different, as the right reverend Prelate pointed out, from a clear right to vote, which should apply to everyone, irrespective of the degree to which they wish to become involved in daily politics, which is of course a matter of choice.

I wanted to speak now because I did not quite understand what it was that the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, did not understand about my previous intervention on this subject. I shall not discuss any individual details, because we have sundry debates on those coming up. The silence of the Government Front Bench on two or three issues in the whole of this discussion seems to have permeated the Back Benches as well. One of the crucial questions for me is whether the Tory party, which is investing an awful lot of time and effort in the Bill—and money; £180 million at least and rising—is doing so on the basis that somehow, we should be disturbed by the result of the last general election, which, I sadly remind everyone, it won with an 80-seat majority.

The Government are saying—by their actions, if not by their words—that the election is a bit dubious, a bit dodgy. Every contribution from that side is more or less implying just that. If it is not dodgy at a global level—the 80-seat majority—it must surely be dodgy in respect of a number of individual constituencies. So, I would like to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, who is an expert on these things, which of the 650 constituencies he thinks should probably be declared invalid on the basis of serious doubts and misgivings about the authenticity of the voters in those constituencies?

Having fought numerous elections and, on one occasion, having won by 360-odd votes in an electorate of 90,000, I can only say to the noble Lord and to all those who say that people do not accept our election results because the system is first past the post, that no one in the ballots in individual constituencies argues for a moment with the idea that the person who was first past the post was the winner and should be declared the winner, even if it was by a short head. But the point I am making now is that no one contested that result. My opponent, to his credit, although he called for a couple of recounts, did not doubt the validity of the result any more than I did when, prior to that, I lost by rather more, it must be said—by 1,500. Likewise, I did not contest the result.

I really do want to know the answer to this, because we are in a very odd situation. You would think we would be on different sides of the argument. You would expect the Opposition to be saying that they were really worried about the last election result and that it looked very dodgy that the Tories got an 80-seat majority, with the Government saying that it was the finest election they have ever been privileged to take part in. But in this Alice in Wonderland world, it is the Government who are raising serious questions about the validity of the election result. So, I repeat that point, which is hanging in the air, and if the Minister would share with the House his deep anxieties about the last general election, I would like to hear them.

I would also like to hear from the Minister precisely what the Government’s estimate is of the effect on voter participation of the proposals in Part 1 of the Bill, which introduce a substantial new requirement for people to exercise their right to vote. This is the biggest change in the electoral requirements in my lifetime. I suppose the voting age has changed and there have been other changes of that sort, but this is a substantial one that says to electors that what they have done in the past is not good enough and there are too many risks associated with it, so they must jump over these additional hurdles.

Our contention—I say ours, but I think it is a pretty broad contention—is that the one thing you can be sure of is that introducing a brand-new requirement such as this will have a completely neutral effect on election turnout, which, I remind the House, has been going down rather badly, certainly since I first started fighting elections. I looked up the figures for a few—1970 was the first one I fought. In February 1974, the turnout was 79% and for the last five or six elections, it has been down in the 60s. That is bad news for anyone who cares about democracy. I was proud of the fact that we used to beat lots of other countries substantially on turnout at major elections. That is no longer the case. It is not credible to say that this big change in voting requirements for voters will have no impact whatsoever on turnout. I will give the Minister three options: is he saying it will have no impact whatsoever; that it risks reducing turnout; or that it is going to increase turnout? That would be an interesting intellectual case to develop.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My noble friend might be interested to know that at the end of the last day in Committee the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, pointed out that no analysis of turnout has been done. Indeed, the noble Baroness the Minister said:

“I can confirm that we have not done that impact analysis. The important impact will be after.”—[Official Report, 17/3/22; col. 568.]


So I am afraid my noble friend will not get an answer to his question, because they have not done the research.

--- 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.

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[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con)]

Well, my Lords, I thank all those who have taken part in what has been quite a lengthy debate—but why not? It is an important issue.

I will try to answer the various points which have been made. The proposition in Clause 1, which is before us, is part of a whole series of measures which this Government are putting in the Bill to strengthen the security and integrity of elections. These include matters we are coming on to in relation to postal votes, the handling of postal votes and so on. There is a consistent overall desire in the Government to ensure that votes are cast, and cast with integrity. I submit to the Committee that there is no distinction—no “one or the other”—between wanting more people to vote and trying to secure the integrity of the vote. This is a false antithesis that has run through the debate. All of us should want to do both things: to ensure that all votes are honest and honestly handled, and that as many people vote as possible. We are able to do both; it is not one or the other.

Last week, on the first technical amendment in what was a lengthy series of amendments relating to voter identification, we had a wide-ranging clause stand part-style debate on many aspects of Clause 1, and on the assessments done on costs for voter identification and its potential impacts. I acknowledge that, as has happened again today, the Benches opposite have made it abundantly clear that they do not support this policy—or Clause 1 or Schedule 1 of the Bill. The Government disagree. In our submission, this policy is necessary and proportionate. It also implements the Government’s manifesto commitment to voter identification to protect the security and integrity of our ballot, so that our elections will remain secure well into the future.

The idea floated by some, including the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, that this was not a manifesto commitment because the word “photo” was not in the manifesto, is wide of the mark. As I said in our last session, the Government clearly declared their policy in the Queen’s Speech in October 2019, set out in detail in the briefing what that would mean, and referenced that in the manifesto. Manifestos briefly often reference established policy. Indeed, there was much debate at the time about the proposition that the Government had put on the table, including the photographic aspect.

I must tell the House that the Government regard this proposal as fully covered by the conventions of your Lordships’ House on manifesto commitments—as they would apply under the Government of any party. The process for voting in polling stations—

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

I am sorry, but can the Minister clarify why the Government chose not to put the word “photo” into the manifesto? No one is disputing that there was a manifesto commitment; what we are disputing is whether that commitment was for photo ID.

[Lord True (Con)]

The Government had an established and declared policy on voter identification which was referenced in the manifesto. Not every aspect of every policy goes into a manifesto. We do not normally put 177 pages—or whatever it was that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, mentioned—into a manifesto. However, the specific details—not only the photo identification, but also the fact that we would offer, as part of this, a free card to anyone who is not covered by any of the aspects of the policy—were declared public policy. That, too, remains the Government’s policy.

My noble friend Lady Noakes said that the process for voting in polling stations in Great Britain has seen no significant changes in its security since the Ballot Act 1872. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, mentioned another Gladstonian reform. None the less, the system used in the Victorian era, in a confined franchise in smaller communities, is in our submission simply not fit for the 21st century. There are undeniable vulnerabilities in our system—covered not only in this Clause 1 measure but in others as we track through the Bill—which let people down because they can lead, and have led, to votes being stolen by unscrupulous individuals. The introduction of photographic voter identification as a solution to such vulnerabilities is supported by the independent Electoral Commission. As we have heard, it is also backed—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

I take that point; this is not the perfect list. Indeed, there is a rather different agenda behind it. I shared at Second Reading my concern about lower rates of participation in voting and the difficulty of voter registration, especially for younger voters. It is odd that a Government driving forward a digital reform agenda in so many other areas are not doing so in this one. I believe in modernisation; I think digitisation is coming. It is very odd that we are not taking the Bill as an opportunity to introduce it in the electoral register. I also do not believe in lots of red tape and disproportionate burdens from it. By adding to the list, I am trying to reduce the amount of red tape as a barrier to people legitimately voting in elections.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to support the amendments to which I added my name: Amendment 80 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Willetts—he made a very strong case for the amendment, possibly modified to take account of what my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti said—and Amendment 78 in the name of my noble friend Lady Hayman. Again, my motivation in supporting these amendments stems mainly from my concern that the photo ID requirements will disproportionately exclude marginalised groups, including people in poverty and members of the GRT communities, who are also less likely to apply for a voter ID card, to some extent for the same reasons they do not have photo ID in the first place. The additions suggested by the noble Lord are much more likely to be held by these groups. For me, that is the key test: are these forms of identification that members of marginalised groups are more likely to have?

The noble Lord quoted the Pickles report. I will repeat the quote, because he rather rushed over it and it is worth emphasising:

“perfection must not get in the way of a practical solution.”

My fear is that perfection is getting in the way of not just a practical solution but, as I have said, inclusive democracy and citizenship. I am yet to hear a convincing justification for why this should be accepted as a proportionate response to the supposed problem of personation. Again, the noble Lord spoke eloquently about that.

I am also unclear why the Government are so opposed to a vouching system, as proposed in Amendment 78—they made it very clear in the Commons that they are opposed to it—not least given the fact, as my noble friend Lord Collins pointed out, that the Electoral Commission has supported the idea. Once again, it smacks of a worrying lack of trust in the electorate.

Finally, once again, I welcome the commitment to continued consultation with civil society groups to maximise accessibility for those most likely to need to apply for a voter card and/or who will find it most difficult to apply. Once again, will that include groups working with people in poverty and GRT communities? Will it include those who bring the expertise of experience to the table? That expertise will be of particular value in this context: who will know better what will work, or not, about applying for a voter card than the people who will make those applications? I am grateful to the Minister for promising last week to send me a list of those being consulted, but I would welcome an answer to this specific question about whose expertise will be taken into account in rolling out these provisions, because it is quite important.

[The Lord Bishop of Coventry]

My Lords, I offer your Lordships an apology for not being able to contribute to Committee for all sorts of reasons, but I said at Second Reading that I would support amendments that introduced mitigating factors to reduce the risk of unintended exclusion, particularly for that group of people the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, referred to: those on lower incomes. There is real risk that that could happen through this immediate introduction of photo ID.

That is why I was very glad to add my name to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, which, as he said, seeks to widen the forms of photo ID available and extend the list to include other forms of ID that do not include photographic ID. I was going to make similar points to say that the amendment is consistent with the approach taken in the local council pilot scheme in 2018-19. As has been said, it is entirely consistent with the earlier report from the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, and the gradualist introduction, if I may put it that way, of photo ID in Northern Ireland.

It seems that the purpose of the amendment is to reduce the risk of people living on lower incomes—a significant proportion of whom we know do not possess the acceptable photo ID—being disfranchised, which is my particular concern. That would simply be a form of non-recognition, which would be a moral injury to them and an injustice that would damage the UK’s traditions of democratic participation. The amendment seems to follow the logic of the inclusion of 60+ Oyster cards and blue badges, allowing for greater accessibility to particular groups of the electorate by making provision for those on lower income and other potentially marginalised groups to retain the highest chance of inclusion in the democratic process.

Elections Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

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

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, Amendments 137 and 138 are grouped with Amendment 143 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, who will undoubtedly want to speak to that amendment.

We have just had a long debate on voting systems because the Bill contains a clause that intends to change part of our voting system. The Bill also has a number of clauses that add somewhere between 1 million and 4 million extra voters to the electorate by extending the overseas electorate. I declare an interest as I have two sisters who have lived abroad for 50 years who would now be able to vote in British elections, not to mention a niece born in Britain, so I am conscious of the problems with that.

That means that the discussion as to whether or not the electorate might also be extended to include those between the ages of 16 and 18 is within scope of the Bill. As I mentioned in my earlier speech, it would have been appropriate for that to have been considered together with the question of whether to extend the electorate by increasing the opportunities for overseas voters to register. I do not intend to rehearse all the arguments for voting at 16. I say merely that I was converted to this by going round schools and learning about, first, the lack of citizenship education; secondly, the lack of engagement by young people in politics; and, thirdly, our failure to get young people to register.

The proportion of people aged 18 to 25 on the register is, in some areas, as low as 40%. That is an extremely poor failure within our electoral system. It is also very bad for our politics that we have an increasingly elderly electorate, which votes. Parties recognise this and therefore produce policies that appeal to older voters. Young people do not vote, which therefore means that the parties tend not to produce policies that they think are particularly important for younger voters. Again, I declare an interest, as I have twice led the manifesto process for my own party and I can remember, in 1996-97, people saying, “William, that’s not terribly important; we have to produce policies that appeal to people in their 40s, 50s and 60s, not those in their 20s and 30s, because those are the people who really care about this.”

The two amendments on which I am speaking are for parliamentary and local elections. I raise these as probing amendments. I suggest that the Government ought at least to be open to the idea of opening voting in local elections to young people aged 16, because it would involve them in discussing local democracy. It would therefore help to educate them about local democracy and that is very important for the future of our country.

I will make just one further remark. The last debate was remarkably English, with the exception of the contributions from the noble Lords, Lord Murphy and Lord Kilclooney. We have had proportional representation in the United Kingdom in two different forms in Northern Ireland and in Scotland and Wales. I am now talking about the problem of young people throughout the United Kingdom. I hope the Minister will at least address the problem of how we engage young people in politics. How do we get citizenship education back into our schools? How do we make sure the young do not switch off from politics, as there is substantial evidence that they have? I beg to move.

[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.

Elections Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

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

So there it is. Mr Raab can choose, with all his bluster about terrorists, rapists and paedophiles, to inflict a Victorian-type civic death on an offender the moment the prison doors clang shut. It is done under the Forfeiture Act 1870 of 150 years ago. It is a relic of Locke’s heavily criticised 1689 theory of the social contract. What does that achieve in the 21st century? In Europe, it aligns us with Russia and Belarus, not the overwhelming majority of European countries that now permit prisoners to exercise their right to vote. Today, this modest amendment will return the franchise to those sentenced to one year’s imprisonment or less. I beg to move.

[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.

Elections Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

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

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I will briefly speak to Amendment 8 in my name and the names of other noble Lords. The proposal in Amendment 8 would extend the list of accepted documents beyond the narrow group of photo ID that the Government are proposing, but I regard my amendment as consistent with the commitment in the Conservative Party manifesto. I approach this from the perspective of red tape. Is the extra regulation being proposed proportionate to the problem that needs to be tackled? As we have heard from all sides of this House, there is no evidence that personation is a significant problem in the British electoral system.

That is very different from Northern Ireland, where ID and then photo ID were introduced. There, there was in the words of the then chief electoral officer a “planned and well organised” programme of personation. In the absence of any such evidence of personation as a significant problem in the UK, the costs imposed by this measure seem to go way beyond the scale of the problems—costs estimated at £180 million over 10 years. If a broader range of documents is accepted, that removes the need for a new, separate group of voter ID cards and, hence, lowers the costs involved.

I acknowledge the way in which the Minister has engaged with these issues and has recently written to us on these proposals. He may say, “Well, there’s not a problem now, but we still need to do this to boost confidence in the security of the British electoral system”, despite the evidence that our problems are actually in postal voting and proxy voting and not in personation. We know that confidence in the British electoral system currently runs at over 90%. It is not clear that confidence could be much higher than that. Indeed, the attempt to legislate may have the opposite effect to the one that Ministers are seeking and may create anxiety and uncertainty where none existed before. In Northern Ireland, where there is a track record of voter ID, confidence in the system is no higher than in Britain—indeed, on some measures, it is lower.

Besides this, I have one wider concern: what might happen at the next election if a significant number of voters—hundreds of voters per constituency—confronted with a new requirement with which they are unfamiliar in order to vote, photo ID, are turned away from polling stations and do not return? Let us imagine that the outcome of the next election is a modest majority—I hope a majority for the party of which I am a member—where, throughout the day, the media story has been of voters being turned away from polling stations. That seems a significant political and constitutional risk that needs to be taken into account if this measure is introduced. Here we do have a precedent from Northern Ireland: the first use of voter ID in polling stations there was estimated to have reduced voter turnout and turned away the equivalent of approximately 1 million voters across Great Britain, so this is a real risk.

In light of that, while I respect the similar thinking behind Amendments 5 and 6, for example, my intention is to divide the House on Amendment 8, because I regard it as protecting our system from a major political and constitutional risk while remaining consistent with the manifesto on which the Conservative Party fought the last election.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 8, to which I have added my name. I am very pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Willetts.

The one real argument put by Ministers to support the restriction of identification to photo ID was that it is the most secure form of ID. However, we never got an explanation of how it was decided that, in the necessary balancing of the two, security trumped accessibility to the point that only the most secure forms of ID were permissible, despite the lack of evidence of fraud, as we have heard. In reaching that position, it was not clear why the Government rejected what we might call the “Pickles principle”—that perfection must not get in the way of a practical solution. Amendment 8 and some of the other amendments offer such a practical solution, but the Government’s response hitherto has been disappointing.

Ministers have also frequently cited the finding of the Electoral Commission tracker that 66% of the public say that the requirement to show identification at polling stations would increase their confidence in security. But I note that the word “photo” is never mentioned, so I can only assume that the question did not specify photo ID. Also, we do not know how members of the public would weigh up that balance between security and accessibility. It would appear from the latest election tracker—a point made by the noble Lord—that a much larger majority, eight in 10, are confident that elections are well run, and that nearly nine in 10 think that voting at polling stations is safe. But there is a real danger, as has been said, that perceptions will be tainted by the Government’s narrative of voting fraud, which risks reducing trust in the system, as has been pointed out by a number of bodies. According to the Electoral Reform Society, recent US studies have found that talking up voter fraud reduces confidence in electoral integrity and has indeed corroded trust in the system.

As I made clear in Committee, I am particularly concerned about the impact on people in poverty or on a low income, who are not necessarily caught in the Government’s focus on groups with protected characteristics. Of course, I am concerned about them too; I particularly noted the position of Gypsy, Traveller and Roma communities in Committee. The Government have chosen not to enact the socioeconomic duty in the Equality Act, which might have encouraged them to focus on people in poverty. As it is, the more I have read, the more convinced I am that they have in effect been ignored in consultations with stakeholders and in the pilots.

According to 2019 data from the British Election Study, provided to me by the Library, there was a clear income gradient in turnout in the 2019 election, with half—or slightly more than half—of those in households with an income of £15,599 or less not having voted. If the JRF is correct that, as it stands, Clause 1 and Schedule 1 risk disenfranchising as many as 1.7 million low-income members of the electorate, these worrying figures can only get worse.

Finally, the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, promised that she would get me

“a list of the consultees that we worked with because that is important.”

This was in response to my questions as to

“what engagement there has been with organisations speaking on behalf of people in poverty, or in which people in poverty are themselves involved, so that they can bring the expertise born of experience to these policy discussions”.—[Official Report, 17/3/22; cols. 562, 567.]

I repeated the question when we returned to the issue on day three of Committee, but there was still no sign of that list. Instead, in his letter to Peers, the Minister assured us that there has been a comprehensive programme of engagement with civil society organisations, with a heavy emphasis once again on those with protected characteristics. However, once again, the implication of the letter is that the impact of poverty has been ignored, and that there has been no engagement with organisations working with people in poverty or with those who can bring the expertise of experience of poverty to bear on the matter. Yet, their perspectives could be particularly valuable when considering appropriate voter ID and the process of applying for a voter card. I ask yet again whether there has been such consultation and, if not, will the Government now prioritise it?

As it happens, I was at an event this morning organised by Poverty2Solutions, an award-winning coalition of grassroots organisations led by people with direct experience of poverty and socioeconomic disadvantage and supported by the JRF. The key message was the need to put lived experience at the heart of policy-making, complementing other forms of expertise. I asked whether Poverty2Solutions would be willing to engage with the Government on the development of voter ID policy, and the response was an enthusiastic yes. The door is open.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to support—I could say all the amendments in this group, but that is slightly inconsistent. There is absolutely no evidence at all to support the need for any voter ID in British elections in person, as highlighted by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights. The Government’s plans are unnecessary, discriminatory, expensive and a regressive step.

There is also no public support for these changes at all. The latest edition of the Electoral Commission’s public opinion tracker, which measures public views on the electoral process, showed that 90% of voters say that voting at a polling station is safe from fraud and abuse. That is an exceptionally high percentage in any poll. Overall, public confidence in elections is apparently at its highest level since data collection began.

We know that the idea of voter ID arose from the allegations of election fraud in Tower Hamlets. However, as noble Lords know, the Tower Hamlets allegations had nothing to do with personation at polling stations. It is interesting that the judge in the Tower Hamlets case told the Bill Committee:

“Personation at polling stations is very rare indeed.”—[Official Report, Commons, Elections Bill Committee, 15/9/21; col. 15.]


This is basically the view of most noble Lords in this House.

The voter ID system will cost an estimated £120 million over three years—there are various estimates, but that is the median. I must say that I find it quite shocking that any Government would spend that sort of money on a completely unnecessary reform when there is so much need which is unmet all over the country—it is really upsetting. I like the Liberty analogy on the voter ID issue: a householder who has not had a problem with burglary for years and yet decides to spend a fortune on a new lock. In similar ways, his house was perfectly safe and so is our electoral system at polling stations. However, I would not say the same necessarily of postal votes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD)]

My Lords, I express my full support and that of the Liberal Democrats for the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, for producing this amendment. I congratulate him in particular on the success of his negotiations with the noble Lord, Lord True. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord True. This is a very sensible way to deal with a problem that I had not appreciated until last year, when I was partly sighted. The amendment stresses that a person suffering from blindness or partial sight, or another disability, can vote independently and in secret, and will not have to face the humiliation to which the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, referred of having either to announce his vote publicly in a polling booth or to have someone else vote for him.

It was very wise for he and the Minister to agree that the Electoral Commission should give guidance to returning officers and that it would have to consult the bodies concerned—the RNIB and others—before specifying the sort of mechanisms which would enable this to happen. One of the good things about this is that it is not prescriptive and so it allows the mechanisms to improve over time, as new inventions come forward. In Committee, I talked about the pilot scheme going on in, I think, Norfolk, where not only was a frame put over the ballot paper but information was given to the voter by a recording as to what was on the ballot paper. That was an interesting pilot scheme, but maybe more things will develop in the future and the wisdom of these provisions will be recognised. Having agreed the report that must be returned by returning officers, that of course ensures that these provisions are carried out. I very much support this amendment.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I too very much support and welcome these amendments. I am very pleased that there have been discussions which have led to an agreement. However, I have been approached by the RNIB, which welcomes the amendments but has some concerns. I want to raise a couple of them now.

One concern was partially addressed by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, when he talked about the postcode lottery. He argued that there is a minimum standard contained in the amendments, but the RNIB’s view is that there still is not a minimum standard of provision specified in the Bill. It would like to see that being more explicit. I would be grateful if, when responding, the Minister could explain how he sees the question of a minimum standard and whether the Government might be minded to tighten it up a bit.

One of the other points the RNIB makes—we discussed this in Committee—is that it is very keen that trials of potential accessible voting solutions continue. Therefore, I would be very grateful if the Minister could commit to driving innovation through government-run trials in the future.

[Lord Kerslake (CB)]

My Lords, I shall make three brief points. First, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, on his valiant efforts to move this forward in a constructive way. This has been exemplary, in my view. Secondly, I wholeheartedly support his amendments, which I think will move this on. In Committee, I was seriously concerned about what was being proposed by the Government; according to the RNIB, we had moved things backwards from where we are at the moment and that was a serious concern. I am sure there is further work to do, but nevertheless this set of amendments will move things forward, and that is greatly to the noble Lord’s credit. Thirdly, I entreat the Minister to give his support to what I think has been a really excellent piece of work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken for their general welcome and support for the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Holmes. I can tell the House that the Government are very pleased to be able to accept these amendments. I pay tribute to my noble friend and to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, for their hard endeavours in helping us to improve accessibility measures in the Bill. It has been quite a pleasant operation for me to return to my old office, which I used to share with my noble friend Lord Holmes, and see a couple of my pictures still hanging on the wall—I had forgotten about those. I thank those who have spoken and am grateful for the kind words said by many, including the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford. There was one slightly discordant note from the Green group, but a great effort has been put into working together to find a solution that works for all parties.

We have been clear from the outset that the Government’s intention with these changes is to improve the accessibility of elections. My noble friend Lord Holmes and the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, have understood our policy intentions and introduced welcome changes that complement and improve them. These amendments will introduce specific reference to supporting disabled voters to vote independently and secretly through the provision of assistive equipment by returning officers. While the existing drafting of the duty to support disabled voters would undoubtedly have facilitated the provision of suitable equipment for this purpose, this amendment will underline the importance of equipment to enable or make it easier for voters to vote independently and secretly, where that is practicable.

My noble friend specifically asked me—as, I gather, did the RNIB, which I took great pleasure in meeting in the course of these discussions—to clarify “enable” and “make it easier” in practice. His understanding is precisely right in terms of what the people who drafted this are seeking to achieve. The Government see it as fundamental that we recognise the variations in what people need in order to be able to vote, so that they may access the most appropriate support for each of them. The use of both the terms—“enable” and “make it easier”—reflects the fact that the duty relates to the provision of equipment for those who find it impossible to vote under rule 37 and for those who can do so but find it difficult due to their disability, as per the definition of “relevant person”, which covers both. For those who would otherwise find it impossible to vote independently, appropriate equipment might enable them to do so, but for those who are able but find it difficult to vote due to their disabilities, we also want them to be supported by provision of equipment that would mitigate the difficulties, making it easier. As such, having “make it easier” in the clause does not result in an either/or situation or a dilution. If the amendment said only “enable”, there would be no duty to assist those who find it difficult; if the amendment said only “make it easier”, there would be no duty to assist those who simply find it impossible. The amendment is designed to ensure the widest possible assistance support, greater innovation and accessibility.

As my noble friend has said—this was something on which he was understandably insistent, and I hope it has pleased all those involved—his amendments will put on a strong statutory footing the role that the Electoral Commission will play in providing guidance about meeting this duty, which returning officers will have to have regard to. While these are things that we are confident both the commission and returning officers would have done as a matter of good practice, we welcome that these will be put on a strong and permanent statutory basis. That is why the Government have acceded to these proposals.

As I said, I recently met the RNIB and heard its concerns—which were echoed by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister—including around the risk that guidance might not be as strong as statute and might represent the end of a conversation on accessibility that may not have disabled voters at its centre. I can say only that that conversation will continue; that is why the amendments will in fact require the Electoral Commission to consult with relevant organisations, such as the RNIB and other disability charities, in the production of the guidance and to report on the steps that returning officers have taken to assist disabled voters. This will promote accountability in the policy.

I will respond to the concerns that, without a minimum standard, there will be uncertainty about how individual returning officers decide what they deem to be reasonable. First, in requiring provision for what is reasonable, the clause imposes an objective standard rather than a subjective one. Secondly, the role and purpose of the Electoral Commission guidance will be to set out a clear framework, and therefore to promote consistency. Returning officers will have to have regard to this but the guidance will, of course, be more flexible than legislation—the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford—with a much more responsive capability for adding new equipment that has been developed and identified over time, without having to bring forward primary or secondary legislation each time.

The amendments make provision for a suite of duties that I hope will reassure those with concerns. I am confident that the changes represent a good move away from the limited, prescriptive approach towards more flexibility and innovation. We will look to the Electoral Commission to do its duty in consulting with organisations representing disabled voters, such as the RNIB, in producing its guidance.

I cannot specifically answer the noble Baroness’s point on funding, which, in a sense, is related to what will come out of the ongoing discussions, but I will communicate to her what I am able to on that.

I believe that this has been good work by your Lordships’ House, working in a consensual manner for a common purpose. I hope this will lead us towards a more accessible future for our elections. Again, I thank my noble friend Lord Holmes for tabling these amendments, and the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. The Government support them and urge the House to do so as well.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

Before the Minister sits down, can he say something about what the RNIB has asked for in respect of driving forward trials for innovation? I do not think he mentioned that in his speech. The RNIB is looking for an assurance from the Minister that that will stay on the table.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I infer from the debate that the RNIB has been spreading quite a lot of correspondence around your Lordships’ Chamber on these issues. I have not seen that specific letter myself, but we are acting in good faith here. The RNIB is a trusted and respected partner. I have told the House that there is a duty on the Electoral Commission to consult with it, and I said in my speech that we should move towards a future of more innovation. This was something that we were challenged on, quite rightly, by my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond in his first speech on this matter. That remains the Government’s hope and expectation. This is a conversation that is going to be carried forward, not by me at this Dispatch Box or by your Lordships but under the duties set out in the amendments, hopefully to produce a better and more accessible future for all voters. I repeat that I urge the House to accept these amendments.

Elections Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Wednesday 27th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, I want briefly to refer to Motions B and B1. In this House, we moved and passed an amendment that would have significantly added to the list of possible identifications that could be used by voters. I continue to believe that that would have reduced the risk of genuinely eligible voters finding themselves unable to vote. Nevertheless, that amendment has been substantially rejected in the other place and, as we have just heard from my noble friend Lord Cormack, we are drawing to the end of this Session.

I take some comfort from the words we have just heard from the Minister; I thank him for his engagement with this issue. He assured the House that it will be perfectly possible through secondary legislation to add to the list of identifications that can be accepted. He also assured the House that the Government will monitor the potential for new forms of ID to be used and improvements to the security of IDs, which appeared in our original amendment but have now been rejected. I hope that the evaluation he has promised will show that it is possible to add to the list of further IDs that can be used; that would be desirable. I very much hope that the Minister and the Government will be as flexible as he has said. In the light of his assurances and the clear rejection from the other place, I do not think that it is now our role to pursue this issue further.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Motion A1, but I want to speak briefly to motion B1, which I also support. My primary concern throughout our debates has been the impact on the ability of people experiencing poverty to exercise their right to vote. I am not going to repeat the arguments, but I hope I can get a couple of assurances on the record from the Minister.

First, I thank him, as I understand he has asked officials to include organisations led by people in poverty— such as Poverty2Solutions and, I would add, the APLE Collective—in their ongoing consultations about the implementation of the Bill, so as to get their expertise on the experience of poverty. I would welcome it if the Minister could place that commitment on the record.