Elections Bill (Fifth sitting)

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

I thank the hon. Lady for that point of order. I have had no communication from the Government. Regarding more time, it is perfectly in order for the Committee to come to an agreement, either between the usual channels or by way of an amendment, to allow more time. I will leave it to the hon. Lady to discuss with her colleagues and the Government whether they want more time. I am sure that my colleagues and I will be perfectly open to that, but it is entirely up to the Committee. We are in your hands.

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

Further to that point of order, Sir Edward. I share the concerns of the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood. It is outrageous that the Government should seek to parachute in something in addition to the scope of the Bill without any debate. There was no debate on Monday night, because the Minister, the right hon. Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher), did not engage with the House. He turned up and read a pre-prepared statement. He did not engage. He did not even take an intervention from his opposite number. It is farcical that it should happen in such a way that no questions were answered and there was no scrutiny. This did not appear from thin air. The Government knew that this was happening; yet I believe they held it back from the Committee. I think it is only right that the Committee should have a chance to bring back expert witnesses so that we can have testimony from them on what this crucial part of the new scope will mean for the entire Bill.

[The Chair]

I can only repeat what I said to the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood. That is a perfectly fair point, and if the hon. Gentleman wishes to table an amendment to that effect, I am sure that the Government will listen very closely. I am completely in the hands of the Committee.

We will start with clause 1, and the question that it stand part of the Bill. Members will note my grouping and selection, and that several detailed matters relating to voter ID will be covered in debates on amendments later today. Clause 1 introduces the schedule on voter ID. I would be grateful if Members could please restrict their remarks to the principles of the proposals. That is quite important. I am sure that we can have a very wide-ranging debate that will be more like a Second Reading debate, but remember that there are loads of amendments later, so there is no point in getting into detail now. We will have plenty of time to discuss the detail.

Clause 1

Voter Identification

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

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[Cat Smith]

The situation in Northern Ireland actually came about over a much longer period. The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute somewhat of an expert on these issues, but in Northern Ireland we did see huge swathes of personation going on in the 1980s. The politics in Northern Ireland in the 1980s was very different from the politics that we see in England, Scotland and Wales in 2021.

[Brendan O’Hara]

I have been trying, both on Second Reading and in Committee, to tease out where the Northern Ireland comparison comes from and how the Government believe that the situation we have in the United Kingdom in 2021 in any way resembles that in Northern Ireland in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, which led to the change. Nobody has managed to give me an answer to explain what the similarities are and why the Northern Ireland example is being used to advocate this change.

[Kemi Badenoch]

Can I come in on that point?

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[Chris Clarkson]

The hon. Lady says that there were only four cases. Of course, there were only four cases that we are aware of. That goes back to the point that was made throughout the evidence sessions: it is an incredibly easy thing to do, so we do not know the quantity. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme said, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I have to ask her what an acceptable level of voter fraud is. Are four cases of fraud okay? Do we just let that go, and say, “It’s fine. There’s a cost-benefit analysis to a bit of electoral fraud.”? How many election results have to be overturned before we say that this is actually an investment worth making?

[Brendan O’Hara]

None of them has been overturned.

[Cat Smith]

I do not think that any elections have been overturned, as the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute says from a sedentary position. We have to work on the basis of what we know, and what the facts are. We can only go on the cases that are reported, but we know that 758 people in just a handful of councils were turned away and did not come back. That is an unquestionable fact.

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[Alec Shelbrooke]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward, and my—what a lively start we have got off to!

I intend to speak to the principle of the Bill, because we will come to amendments later. Despite my point of order, it is interesting that the American electoral system keeps being referred to, because it speaks to the wider issue of faith in elections. We have seen some disgraceful activity by the former President in America, which leads to an undermining of the basis of democracy.

There is no doubt that electoral fraud has taken place in this country, and I struggle to think of another crime that we would be willing to say we do not need to do anything about. I struggle to think of another crime where we say to the victims, “Well, it wasn’t many of you, so we’re not going to bother with it”. There is a very important principle about where we stand in this place.

[Brendan O’Hara]

The right hon. Gentleman seems to be saying that currently there is no law to stop electoral crime. Laws to stop electoral crime are in place at the moment and they seem to be working; as we have heard, Tower Hamlets and other elections have been refought. Does he accept that there are existing laws to tackle exactly what the Bill intends to tackle?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point, because, of course, Richard Mawrey said in his evidence that the threshold for proving in electoral law as it currently stands is too high to really get over the bar. By bringing in an extra set of checks and balances, we hopefully get away from the point that we would have to try to prove these cases to get over what is a very high electoral bar.

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[Alec Shelbrooke]

The point I am making, drawing on the comments that have been made, is about faith in the electoral system, and this clause creates those levels of faith. It is all very well trying denial and complacency about where we are today, but we have to accept that we now have a mass media system in the world that makes it very easy for conspiracy theories to grow and be built very quickly. We must be in a position to ensure that our elections are deemed to be as safe and secure as possible.

I was disappointed on Second Reading that, when I intervened and asked Members about the recommendations of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, those recommendations were pretty much dismissed out of hand. It was argued that they did not apply in this country, but the OSCE has made it clear in its reports that the security of our elections cannot be guaranteed without voter ID, and that is a very important point.

Those who have done election monitoring will know that many countries in the G20, let alone the G7, ask for voter ID, and I fear that we are in a period of history where democracy—which is a precious thing, and must always be developed and worked on—is under threat from those who refuse to accept election results. I am basing those comments more on what has happened in the United States than what has happened in this country, but what happened there is pervasive because of mass media. This Bill is trying to ensure that the perception of the security of elections, which is a very important thing, is clear in people’s minds.

From the very beginning, there has been entrenched opposition to the idea of voter ID. The hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood—who I have a great deal of respect for, as she knows, and I enjoy serving on these Committees with her—talked about cuts to local government funding, but my council, Leeds City Council, is spending £10 million on the European city of culture campaign. The council bid for it before the referendum, then we left, so it is not getting the money and it is spending £10 million on it. It cannot say that it is being starved of funds when it is spending £10 million on something that is pretty irrelevant and certainly creates some lively debate in my home city.

When we come to debate the voting age—I know that we are not discussing that now—there will be some very important points to make about how the UN defines who is a child by saying that anybody under the age of 18 cannot fight on the frontline. Again, it appears that we are dismissing international bodies to suit the argument that is being made on the day.

I end my remarks by simply saying that this clause is a very important part of the Bill, ensuring that people have faith in our electoral system and that we do not allow a growth in voter fraud. We heard in evidence that bringing cases of voter fraud to court involves meeting an exceptionally high bar and that the financial constraints mean that people are not willing to bring those cases forward, so we cannot close our eyes and say that voter fraud is not happening because it is not getting to the courtroom. The proposals in the Bill go a long way to making people feel that when they cast their ballot, they have an equal say in those ballots, compared with people who may want to act criminally.

[Brendan O’Hara]

I always suspected throughout the passage of the Bill, whether on Second Reading or in our evidence sessions, that there was absolutely no evidence that voter ID cards would address an identified problem. In the evidence that we heard in four sessions over two days, not even the Government’s star witness said that personation was a sufficiently big issue to make voter ID cards essential to tackling it. Overwhelmingly, every single person who spoke to us about the subject said that the issue that needs addressing is postal vote fraud.

[Paul Bristow]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman was not paying attention to Councillor Peter Golds during the evidence session, who turned around and said on a number of occasions that personation was a relevant thing in Tower Hamlets. Was the hon. Gentleman asleep during that evidence?

[Brendan O’Hara]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that I was not asleep; perhaps he should temper his language somewhat. I suggest he reads Councillor Golds’s evidence, which I will come to in a moment. He talked in such great detail about postal vote fraud: it was the biggest issue in Councillor Golds’s extremely detailed and voluminous file. In fact, he was reduced to anecdotal evidence about personation and a gentleman with large feet and red shoes. That is the nub of where he was. Every person and even the Government’s star witness, as I would class Councillor Golds, was unable to give any evidence that personation at polling stations was a major problem.

[Aaron Bell]

The hon. Gentleman dealt with Peter Golds there, but what about the case in Peterborough? Surely the requirement to introduce CCTV that Gillian Beasley told us about says it is not an anecdotal problem. It is a real problem. That step has had to be taken in Peterborough for deterrence. The Bill enables deterrence without the expense of CCTV.

[Brendan O’Hara]

Again, I will not use the language that the hon. Member for Peterborough used, but read the evidence. Gillian Beasley said that

“we have seen less personation”—[Official Report, Elections Public Bill Committee, 15 September 2021; c. 21, Q23.]

in recent years; she followed that up by saying that postal voting is her concern. The Government are looking in the wrong place and they know that. They are doing it for reasons about which one can only speculate.

[Jerome Mayhew]

There is one clause in the Bill on voter ID and there are five clauses on postal votes, so it is not right to say that the Government are looking at the wrong place. The Government are addressing all the issues with our voting system.

[Brendan O’Hara]

Again, it came out from the evidence session that postal vote fraud is the major issue and that is what is concerning the vast majority—if not all—of our witnesses.

[Jerome Mayhew]

I am grateful for the second opportunity to address this. We heard from Mr Mawrey QC, who is also an election judge. In his judgment in the Birmingham cases, which I referred to during the evidence session, he said that

“there is likely to be no evidence of fraud if you do not look for it.”

The whole point is that we need to look for it.

[Brendan O’Hara]

With all due respect to the hon. Gentleman, if a Government ignore the problem in front of their nose and then run about trying to find evidence of a problem when there is no evidence that that problem exists, I suggest they are wasting their time. The problem to be addressed is around postal voting. Richard Mawrey said that Birmingham, Slough and Woking were all cases that involved postal vote fraud; voter ID was “neither here nor there.”

[Chris Clarkson]

The hon. Gentleman says that the Government are wasting their time looking for something of which there is no evidence, but he also says that it is a waste of time to look for evidence of it. Would he clarify his position?

[Brendan O’Hara]

I absolutely will. My position is that there is no evidence whatsoever. Policy must be made on the basis of evidence. We have a limited time in this House in which to act and legislate. It is a waste of that precious time, I believe, for a Government to run around looking to create a problem to find a solution for. We should address the problems that we know exist, and those problems that have to be attacked.

Even Lord Pickles, in his evidence, said:

“I did not recommend photo ID”. ––[Official Report, Elections Public Bill Committee, 15 September 2021; c. 16, Q13.]

He also said that fraud

“is not endemic within the system”,––[Official Report, Elections Public Bill Committee, 15 September 2021; c. 8, Q5.]

However, somehow, Lord Pickles has now embraced this voter ID card with the zeal of a convert. It is further evidence of a Government with a solution looking for a problem.

Councillor Golds gave chapter and verse on the problems of postal voting in Tower Hamlets, and he was extremely convincing. Fair play to Peter Golds and the people who he has been working with—they have identified a serious problem—but to try to segue that into pretending that ID cards at polling stations will somehow solve what we saw at Tower Hamlets is frankly nonsense. It is not there.

[Tom Randall]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Brendan O’Hara]

I will in a moment. Ailsa Irvine, of the Electoral Commission, admitted that

“we are starting from a high base of public confidence.”––[Official Report, Elections Public Bill Committee, 15 September 2021; c. 46, Q64.]

There is confidence in this system—that the system works and is sufficiently robust.

[Peter Gibson]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Brendan O’Hara]

I will in a moment. There is nothing perfect. There is no way on earth that we can stop every sort of crime, but this Government and this Committee should concentrate on identified problems, rather than seeking to find problems and then provide a solution as they see fit. Now, there were two hon. Gentlemen bobbing.

[Tom Randall]

Just briefly, on Councillor Golds’ evidence, he did make reference to the Jehovah’s Witnesses who had been marked as having voted on the register in the polling station when, of course, they would not have done. I appreciate that it was anecdotal evidence, but does that not go to the heart of how difficult it for someone to realise that they are a victim of electoral fraud? If a non-voter was a victim of personation, they would not go to look for it.

[Brendan O’Hara]

Nobody on this side of the room is saying that electoral fraud should not be punished. It absolutely should be punished. It should not be tolerated and should never be tolerated. Any victim of it deserves justice. However, that must be evidence-led and proportionate. This is neither.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Brendan O’Hara]

I will come to the right hon. Gentleman in a moment.

[Peter Gibson]

I am incredibly grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I wish to provide clarity, in respect of the report by Lord Pickles. I have a copy in front of me. Recommendation No. 8 states:

“The Government should consider the options for electors to have to produce personal identification before voting at polling stations. There is no need to be over elaborate; measures should enhance public confidence and be proportional. A driving licence, passport or utility bills would not seem unreasonable to establish identity. The Government may wish to pilot different methods. But the present system is unsatisfactory; perfection must not get in the way of a practical solution.”

[Brendan O’Hara]

The hon. Gentleman is making my point for me. He did not recommend ID cards. He did not. If he mentioned taking a utility bill, he is not talking about registering for and receiving a voter ID card. As he said, he did not recommend it. In the first bit of evidence, Lord Pickles says he did not recommend voter ID cards.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

The hon. Gentleman has made the point, quite rightly, that there is electoral law in place that can be used to prosecute fraud, but we heard in evidence that there is a very high bar for people, not least financially. Prevention is better than prosecution. Preventing electoral fraud from happening in the first place is surely better than trying to prove it has happened and prosecuting.

[Brendan O’Hara]

At the risk of repeating myself, nobody is saying that we should not root out electoral fraud and that it should not be punished to the full extent of the law, but this Bill, and particularly voter ID cards, will not solve it. If there were a Bill in front of us that said, “We will beef up the Electoral Commission. We will give the police more powers of prosecution. We will allow greater transparency in how we find and prosecute people who are cheating the system,” it would have unanimous support, but the Government are trying to pretend that the introduction of voter ID cards will stop this, and that is simply not the case.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there are different types of prevention of electoral fraud? One was outlined in the evidence from Peterborough. The witnesses said they could put up CCTV cameras, which would cost them nothing because they would borrow them from the police. That is a much more proportionate measure to prevent fraud, and there would not be the risk that it would stop people and put up a barrier to voting.

[Brendan O’Hara]

I could not agree more. We do not support ID cards, but that does not mean we are turning a blind eye to electoral fraud. There are proportionate ways of preventing it. This is not even a way of stopping it. We are not even saying that this is the wrong way to stop electoral fraud; this is nothing. This will achieve virtually nothing.

[Cat Smith]

The hon. Gentleman is drawing on the evidence of Lord Pickles, who did not say that photo ID cards should be required to prove identity; he also included utility bills. The forms of ID listed in this Bill are very limited. When international examples are given of where ID cards are shown, they are often from countries that have a national ID card, so does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that this may be a back-door way of bringing in an ID card, which I am sure many Government Members would wring their hands at? The Prime Minister himself said that he would eat it if he was ever asked for it. Should the Government not be a bit more up front about their real reasons?

[Brendan O’Hara]

There is an argument to be had about what the hon. Lady says about the introduction of ID cards. Perhaps the plan is to introduce ID cards via the back door.

The right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell spoke about the OSCE report. As I said on Second Reading, if we were inventing an entirely new system from scratch—if democracy was invented tomorrow in the UK—there would be an argument to be had and we could bat back and forth whether to do it, but to impose ID cards on to the system that we have at this stage, with all the democratic history that we have, smacks of something other than what we are being told it is for.

The politics of this is interesting. Rob Connelly, the returning officer from Birmingham, got to the nub of the political argument we are hearing when he said:

“I asked a senior politician…what evidence he had of personation, and his response was, ‘I haven’t actually got any, but I just know it goes on.’”––[Official Report, Elections Public Bill Committee, 15 September 2021; c. 55, Q82.]

That sums up the argument that we heard on Second Reading and in Committee this morning. There is no evidence—it is a hunch—and policy cannot be made without evidence. There is no evidence of this. Politicians believe it happens, and therefore we must go and do something about it. We gather the experts—the great and the good—and they tell us that it is minimal and inconsequential: it is neither here nor there. However, the Government decide to plough on regardless of the evidence.

Gavin Millar supported Rob Connolly when he said:

“It is not a problem of any great consequence in our system.”––[Official Report, Elections Public Bill Committee, 16 September 2021; c. 108, Q165.]

He explained that it is actually the most inefficient way to indulge in electoral fraud. The risks are enormous, the chances of detection are much greater and it is such a tiny margin that it will make no difference. The Government are looking in the wrong place, and they are pursuing it on a hunch. He was right to say that the Government should focus on registration instead of voter ID cards.

[Cat Smith]

The hon. Gentleman is making a point about following the evidence, but should the Government not also follow what is going on in the courts? Is he aware of the case in Braintree, where there was a voter ID trial, of Neil Coughlan, who had no voter ID? The Supreme Court is due to hear that case next year. The Committee might end up legislating on the matter before hearing what could be quite a useful verdict from the courts about the way in which the policy disenfranchises voters.

[Brendan O’Hara]

I thank the hon. Lady for making that point. I was unaware of that case, but it does seem to suggest that we are getting ahead of ourselves somewhat.

Moving on, what is the point of an evidence session if we are going to ignore the evidence? I refer the Conservative members of the Committee to the words of Baroness Davidson on voter ID—perhaps the only time her words were wise. I will not repeat what I said on Second Reading; it is there for all to see if they wish to go back and find it. Suffice to say, Baroness Davidson was correct in her assessment of voter ID cards in May, and she is correct today.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

The hon. Gentleman seems to have a slight contradiction in his opinion. He said that there was minimal voter fraud and that we should take no notice of it. He has picked on one Conservative politician out of hundreds and used that as an argument.

[Brendan O’Hara]

I rise slowly to my feet, because I have no idea what the right hon. Gentleman is talking about. I will sit down as slowly as I rose if he wants to make that point again.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am merely making the point that to dismiss one argument because there are not lots of people coming forward with an allegation, to then pick on one person out of hundreds of Conservatives and say, “Therefore, this is why we should not do it,” seems slightly at odds with the balance of the argument.

[Brendan O’Hara]

Absolutely not. The idea that I would take any political lead from an unelected baroness is utter nonsense. I simply used her as an illustration of the deep divisions in the Conservative party.

[Cat Smith]

In the intervention the hon. Gentleman took, he was accused of using as evidence one Conservative politician. Have the Conservative members of the Committee not just taken the example of one Labour constituency party in Tower Hamlets, when there are 650 constituencies?

[Brendan O’Hara]

A good point well made. What was striking about the evidence session was that Conservative Members were reduced to asking the witnesses leading questions. If it had been a court, the judge would have slapped them down almost immediately. It was reduced to, “Motherhood and apple pie is good. Do you agree?” and “Yes, we do.” It was nonsense. The evidence session showed that voter ID cards are a priority for nobody but this Government.

Almost all the witnesses referred to the need to tighten up postal votes. That was summed up by Gavin Millar, who said that is

“hugely inefficient compared with other forms of fraud that have been perpetrated, particularly since postal voting on demand”––[Official Report, Elections Public Bill Committee, 16 September 2021; c. 108, Q165.]

The Government are looking in the wrong place. There is no evidence that personation is widespread; that is based purely on anecdote. I went into the evidence sessions believing that the measure was a solution seeking a problem; I came out of them absolutely convinced of it. We will support the Labour party when the Committee divides.

[The Chair]

Before I call the next speaker, it is not in order to be tediously repetitious. The debate is proceeding extremely slowly. On the lack of evidence and on other points, if I have heard it once, I have heard 100 times. Try to keep speeches to the point and pertinent to clause 1. I call Aaron Bell.

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[Tom Randall]

An electoral card will be issued free of charge. I am sure that between the passage of this legislation and the introduction of that scheme there will be a lot of publicity surrounding it, to make sure that the new system that is to be introduced will be well understood. The Government are used to widespread publicity schemes. I see the point that the hon. Lady makes, but I am sure that can be addressed in the fullness of time.

The point was made that no significant election has been swung or affected by electoral fraud. I gently suggest that the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, a London authority only 18 minutes from here on the tube, which has a directly elected Mayor and a multi- million-pound budget, is not insignificant when it comes to elections—it is very significant.

For my final point, I declare an interest as a former chairman of Poplar and Limehouse Conservative Association. I know Councillor Golds personally. I speak to him as a friend as well as a witness to this Committee, and he made a point to me in writing afterwards. I will read the email from him, which stated:

“When we were preparing the grounds for the petition we investigated personation. We were a small, cross party group acting voluntarily and at our own expense. I was doing most of the legal digging and the amount of time required to prove personation would have been enormous. We had evidence via marked registers but quickly found canvassing and potentially obtaining statements would have been incredibly time consuming. People who are disengaged from politics and voting are unlikely to wish to make statements for submission to a court of law. We did refer to some of the worst cases in various statements but personation…was not one of the nine grounds that we concentrated on.”

Tower Hamlets has come up a lot in this debate so far. The absence of personation as the main ground in that case should not be interpreted as meaning that there was no personation in that election. The point is that investigating it is incredibly difficult. The fact that it was volunteers working on it, who stumped up their own money, which they have not got back, is perhaps one reason why that ground in that claim was not gone into in such detail.

[Brendan O’Hara]

Does not the hon. Gentleman think that it would have been helpful in his lengthy evidence session if Peter Golds had actually said that to the Committee, rather than saying it as an afterthought in a private letter? That is surely the whole point of holding an evidence session.

[Tom Randall]

I wish Councillor Golds had had a whole evidence session to himself, but unfortunately he had to share one and we had to listen to other witnesses, which I shall not go into now, but I think that was an unfortunate timetabling measure.

There is a fundamental weakness in the system as it stands. For that reason I will support this part of the Bill.

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[Patrick Grady]

Thank you, Sir Edward. I think there is a slight difference between someone voluntarily taking part in different parts of the economy and someone exercising their fundamental right to vote. The Prime Minister himself has not ruled out vaccination certification, so we will wait to hear what those on the Government side of the House have to say about that a couple of weeks down the line.

The point that the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton touched on there is the divergence across these islands. He is perfectly entitled to make that point. It is interesting, because in the devolved areas, rather than making it more difficult for people to vote, we have been making it easier to vote and more proportionate. We will get on to more of this later in the Bill, but in Scotland the franchise has been extended to 16 and 17-year-olds, to all EU nationals with settled status and to refugees, and nobody is being asked to turn up with voter identification in the devolved areas. We will have people on increasingly different franchises—[Interruption.] I am glad this is of such interest to Government Members, because they are supposed to be defenders of the Union, and they want to keep this glorious country, as they see it, together and keep us in a United Kingdom. Actually, what they are doing is increasing divergence and showing that Scotland and Wales can adopt a far more liberal, all-encompassing and participative approach to democracy. Here it is being made more difficult and increasingly narrow. That is a challenge for people who want to protect the Union.

[Brendan O’Hara]

Scotland extended the franchise to the groups that my hon. Friend mentioned, but one that he did not mention was people in prison with 12 months or less to go on their sentence. Would I be correct in saying that, by extending the franchise, Scotland achieved its higher ever turnout at the elections in May and ensured that people have faith? It is not just about creating rules; it is about creating faith in the system. The Government do not have to go down this draconian ID card route to create faith in the system; they just need people to believe that what they elect is what they get, and Scotland is doing that.

[Patrick Grady]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Compare that to the “Oh no, here we go again” response to the sequence of snap elections and uncalled for and unprepared for ballots that have happened in the UK in recent years, because of the utter chaos and incompetence shown by the Conservatives.

My hon. Friend brings me on to my next point, which the Labour spokesperson touched on. We as elected politicians are not impassive observers, as perhaps parliamentarians can be on other aspects of legislation, where we can take an objective view. All of us have an active interest in who elects us and how we get elected. I join the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood in paying tribute to election administration staff in councils up and down the country—later in the Bill we will talk about the role of the Electoral Commission and who gets to mark our own homework. If it has been tough south of the border, it has been even more so north of the border, where there has been another referendum, local elections and the devolved Parliament elections, on top of all the UK-wide ballots and plebiscites that have had to be administered.

I also pay tribute to our party activists and volunteers, as I am sure everybody in this room will—perhaps we can get one point of consensus. They are in many ways the backbone of the electoral process and political engagement of this country. They are the people who stand outside the polling stations in the pouring rain and the blazing sun—sometimes in Scotland that can be within the same 10 or 15 minutes. We can have all four seasons in one day or even just a couple of hours—that is certainly true of the last couple of elections we have had. These people play an incredibly important role. If there was widespread personation, with people turning up in dodgy rain jackets, funny moustaches and thick eyeglasses to repeatedly impersonate other voters, it would kind of be noticed. That is the point of having the system we do.

We have polling agents, counting agents and voluntary observers. That is a hugely important part of trust in the system. It happens at counts as well, when we watch how the ballot papers come out and how they are sorted and so on. We have heard examples of electoral malpractice and intimidation outside polling stations. Exactly: we know about it because it has been witnessed and reported. It has been covered on the news, because it makes for a bit of drama if people are shouting at each other outside a polling station—the cameras like to go and see that. It should not happen, and that is why people have been punished for it.

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[Patrick Grady]

There we go: that is the benefit of having these evidence sessions, and we should thank, congratulate and treat with respect all the witnesses we heard. I echo the points of order that were made earlier on: I hope we get to have more evidence sessions when it becomes appropriate, so we can hear about the extension to the Bill’s remit that the Government have made.

[Brendan O’Hara]

Looking back at the evidence given by Maurice Mcleod, it got to the point that the Government are aiming at the wrong target with this Bill. Does my hon. Friend not agree with Maurice Mcleod and, indeed, Gavin Millar, who both said the Government should prioritise a registration drive, increasing participation and opening up? As Maurice Mcleod said:

“I do not really understand why you are not automatically registered. I remember turning 18; you get your national insurance number because going out to work and paying your…tax”.––[Official Report, Elections Public Bill Committee, 16 September 2021; c. 88, Q133.]

However, people are not automatically registered. Does my hon. Friend not think this Bill should look at automatic registration rather than seeking to disenfranchise people?

[Patrick Grady]

Yes. I hope as the Committee progresses we will be able to look at precisely that issue. That brings me quite neatly on to what I hope will be my final point of concern: what is really needed is a massive voter education drive. We need a new wave of civic engagement, helping people to understand the critical role they play in democracy and decision making in this country. As the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell said, irrespective of our views on a matter, we as politicians should be able to express those views, and try to convince the voters and win as many of them over to our side of the argument as possible. That is what is vastly needed, and that need for civic education and massive voter registration drives in order to encourage as many people as possible to take part came out in quite a lot of the evidence, as well. That requires us to live up to our promises, not make false promises and pretend that things are going to happen.

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[Paul Bristow]

No, no—a very brief one. Hon. Members have doubted the evidence of voter fraud and personation, as a very small thing, but I encourage them to look at some of the evidence we have from Peterborough. When walking down busy streets in Peterborough, we often see large crowds gathering, with people chanting, singing and handing out various leaflets. That is not on a Saturday when we are watching Peterborough United; that is on a Thursday afternoon, when people are marching towards the polling station. We have had evidence that a number of councillors and activists in Peterborough who have gone to prison as a result of voter fraud are now acting as tellers and counting agents, participating in the democratic process.

A lot of people have talked about the advantages of the CCTV that was offered by the chief executive of Peterborough City Council. I ask hon. Members who have said that this was a good thing why they feel it was necessary for Peterborough City Council to install CCTV at polling stations. It was there in order to combat personation.

[Brendan O’Hara]

Does the hon. Gentleman not believe that Peterborough council has the right to implement a bespoke solution for what it may or may not perceive to be a particular problem, but that having a blanket ID card from Truro to Thurso and beyond is completely and utterly disproportionate? If Peterborough council wants to introduce CCTV, then let it. I imagine that Argyll and Bute Council has no intention of introducing CCTV or anything else, because we believe our democracy is quite robust.

[Paul Bristow]

The people of Argyll and Bute probably have great satisfaction with, and faith in, their electoral processes, down to the quality of their Member of Parliament. I am sad to say that in Peterborough, people perhaps do not have that faith, so CCTV is there in order to give people faith in the security and integrity of the ballot. That is the point I am trying to make, because I think that rather than suppress democracy, voter ID cards give people greater confidence in the electoral process and the idea that their vote will count. We hear that not just in Peterborough, but in Tower Hamlets, Oldham, Birmingham, Slough, and across the country. These are not isolated incidents: they happen across the country, and they undermine our democracy.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Rebecca Harris.)