Oral Answers to Questions

Cat Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I can tell him that we are in the process of reviewing the 15-minute waiting requirement for both booster doses. We continue to be guided by the JCVI and the MHRA.

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

Q8. My constituents are having to resort to performing DIY dentistry, including on their children. In the catch-up money, nothing has been allocated to NHS dentistry, so can the Prime Minister explain why my constituents cannot access an NHS dentist?

[The Prime Minister]

We are putting record funding into the NHS, including NHS dentistry. If the hon. Lady would like to write to me with the cases that she has mentioned, I would be happy to take them up with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.

G20 and COP26 World Leaders Summit

Cat Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I agree 100%. I am looking forward to seeing the Westfield PODs and their means of conveying human beings around, although I cannot quite imagine what they are. What we want in this country is regulators for growth, and for green growth. We need a much more proactive approach that engages with brilliant ideas like that.

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

Moving to rail travel and away from more carbon-intensive forms of transport will be essential if we are to meet our ambitions to tackle the climate emergency. Two years ago, the Prime Minister visited Poulton and announced his commitment to reopen the railway line to Fleetwood. Can he tell my Fleetwood constituents what progress he is making with that, and when they can expect to catch the train from Fleetwood to the entire national rail network?

[The Prime Minister]

What we are doing is a general programme of Beeching reversals around the country. I will get back to the hon. Lady as soon as I can about what is happening in Poulton, but this is the biggest investment in rail for a century or more.

Oral Answers to Questions

Cat Smith Excerpts

Thursday 23rd September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I understand that the Labour party does make those requirements, not that I have attended Labour conferences of course. May I offer the further reassurance that a wide range of countries, including most European countries, require some form of ID? Canada, France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Norway do. So I have to say that the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire ought to refrain from these repeated scare tactics, which may have a deleterious effect on voter turnout.

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

European countries that do require voter ID often have national ID cards, and if that is the Government’s intention, they should be a little more straightforward about it.

My question to the Minister is specifically about the human rights aspects of this. The Elections Public Bill Committee has been warned that this policy may be in breach of human rights. It quizzed Gavin Millar QC, who said that there will

“inevitably be challenges to this as incompatible with the European convention on human rights”.––[Official Report, Elections Public Bill Committee, 16 September 2021; c. 109, Q165.]

I draw the Minister’s attention to article 1, protocol 1. What legal advice have the Government had that makes them so sure that this policy is not in contravention of our human rights laws?

[Michael Ellis]

Of course we do not discuss legal advice, but what I can say is that people also have a human right not to have their votes stolen. In 2019, the Electoral Commission found nearly 600 allegations of electoral fraud. They had to be investigated by the police, and 142 of them were related to alleged voting offences. So this is a problem, and it needs to be dealt with. This was a Government manifesto commitment and we intend to follow through.

[Cat Smith]

My question was specifically about how this legislation is compatible with human rights laws, so may I invite the Minister to publish the legal advice his Government will have received in the Library of the House of Commons, so that all Members, especially those on the Bill Committee, which is currently sitting, can be confident that this legislation is not in breach of human rights law?

[Michael Ellis]

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for her repeated question, but she well knows that successive Governments, from both sides of the House, do not publish legal advice, and there is a good reason for that. But she can be assured that this Government are very focused on protecting the human rights of all, and that includes those who have been subject to personation, where their votes have been taken by someone else. That is also a human right that we seek to protect, and we will continue to do so.

Elections Bill (Second sitting)

Cat Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Chloe Smith]

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

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[The Chair]

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[The Chair]

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[Chloe Smith]

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[The Chair]

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[Chloe Smith]

Elections Bill (First sitting)

Cat Smith Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 15th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Chloe Smith]

Q Eric, you then had the opportunity to follow up on Richard’s work and to say what ought to be done about it. Is it still your view that something ought to be done about all of those things?

Lord Pickles: Yes. In terms of vulnerability, there might be the odd seat in the House that is vulnerable, but this is about local government. I think it would be a big mistake to say that this is just about voting, democracy and elections. It is actually about power and money. A place like Tower Hamlets has a budget of £1 billion. Many of the large cities have budgets of large sums of money. Even a small district council has considerable ability to dispose of assets and to make appointments.

The reason I put commissioners in Tower Hamlets was, like many things, based on quite a small thing. I looked at the small grants that were available to many organisations, some of which could be distributed by councillors. They were there to relieve poverty. I had a map that showed me where the grants had been distributed and another map that showed me where the deprivation was, and there was no relationship between the two. Then, I looked at the number of decisions that had been overturned by councillors and the number of decisions they had granted without a business plan. It was on that basis that we decided to put the thing through.

I was asked to look at it and we started taking evidence on the types of fraud. I have been involved in politics for a long time and have seen most things on the street, but I was quite shocked by some of the frauds that were being committed. Richard will be able to tell you about warehousing. There was a warehouse in Birmingham, I think, where they were literally changing the ballot papers on an almost commercial basis. There were things like carousel fraud, where a ballot is palmed—a fresh ballot is taken out, filled in and given to another person and it is palmed—as a way of controlling the election; landlords insisting on seeing a photograph of their ballot being completed; and people suddenly finding out that their landlord has registered six or seven people at their house just before an election, only for their names to disappear afterwards.

It is really important to understand that that is not endemic within the system; it is an example of how vulnerable the system is. If Tower Hamlets represents the future, we have to ensure that that future is terminated. We probably will not be burgled, but we lock our houses. The measures in the Bill are moderate and reasonable, and they ensure at least that we will not find some of our large cities run by kleptocrats—this is about rewarding friends; it is not necessarily about politics. Sorry, I went on a bit there.

Richard Mawrey: Could I just come in here on what Lord Pickles has said? The Bill addresses something that was a real problem in Tower Hamlets: the registration of political parties. The Electoral Commission blithely signed off Tower Hamlets First as a party, but it was a joke. It had no premises, and it had—as I discovered to my amazement by asking questions—no bank account. I said to Lutfur Rahman, “If I want to give a donation to your party, do I have to come along with an envelope of used non-consecutive fifties?” Obviously, he was dying to say yes, but that would clearly have been the wrong answer. You can see the levels to which it has come. If anyone can just say, “I am a political party,” and give themselves a name, you lay yourself wide open, particularly once they are registered and can say, “I am a registered political party and have all the rights of a registered political party.”

Lord Pickles: The system is vulnerable. To misquote John Major, it is about old maids cycling to evensong and drinking warm beer, and in most places, that rather twee, gentle system kind of works. When I was a councillor, in gentle rural villages in my own wards, it was fine, but where there is money, we have to protect the integrity of the ballot and of governance.

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

Q Richard, can I start with you and the Tower Hamlets examples that you have already outlined? Thank you for that. You said that in Tower Hamlets there was a wide range of different types of electoral fraud that was used to try to manipulate. I was particularly struck by what you said about public funds being diverted for political advantage. Does anything in the Bill prevent public funds being diverted for political influence?

Richard Mawrey: The Bill, as I read it, does not make any particular changes to the laws relating to bribery. The laws relating to bribery, in actual terms under the 1983 Act, are quite clear. The problem is that bribery was a common law offence, and it then became a statutory defence under the Victorians. Before the secret ballot, the Victorians had a system whereby you voted in public and everyone knew how you voted. Rich candidates would simply put money in the hands of the electors, who would not be very large in number, to pay them to go and vote. That was the principal thing that led to both the secret ballot and the introduction of electoral courts in the 1860s.

We have moved on from that now. Very few candidates have the sort of money that allows them to put fivers in people’s pockets, so to speak, but they do control public money. The answer is not necessarily electoral law, but better control, particularly in local authorities, of local authority finance. It is better auditing and more independent scrutiny. The law is clear; it is policing it that is the problem. You don’t need to change the law; you need to change the policing of it. Would you agree?

Lord Pickles: Yes, I think I almost certainly would agree. When it starts to go wrong, it is a terrible thing. I do not think I am betraying confidences, because I am sure they would be happy for me to say this, but the two Labour Members of Parliament within the borough came to see me and laid out all these various things, and said that basically the Electoral Commission was ignoring them, that the police were ignoring them, but there was something deeply wrong within the administration, and they urged me to take action.

Obviously, a Secretary of State can only go in on a reasonable basis, and I went in on a reasonable basis because it seemed to me that the way in which grants were being delineated for every small thing was entirely wrong, entirely arbitrary and not based on fact. So the point is that this Bill is about just tightening up and trying to make the system reasonably proof in terms of personation and various other things. It is not going to cure corruption and it is not going to stop bad people being elected; it just reduces the chances of a community being abused.

[Cat Smith]

Q Turning to postal votes, this legislation obviously makes some minor changes to the way in which postal votes are handled, in terms of limiting the number of postal votes that an elector may hand in at a polling station on the day, but there is nothing to prevent postal votes being posted in a post box. So I just wonderer whether you consider that the legislation might not be effective in reducing postal votes, which I think you said was the greatest weakness in the system.

Richard Mawrey: I appreciate the risk of going on about my King Charles’s head. Postal voting is going to be open to fraud, however hard you try and however much you do. Legislation has, since the Birmingham judgment, tried to stop all the mouseholes, but as the old saying goes, the better mousehole breeds the smarter mouse, so you can try and stop all your mouseholes but the mouse will still get out eventually. Obviously you need to tighten up registration, but the problem is resources. If every time somebody wrote in asking to register Mr Jones at 1 Acacia Avenue, if you had unlimited resources you could send someone around to see whether there was a Mr Jones at 1 Acacia Avenue. Had they done that in Slough, things would have been very different.

The thing that blew Slough open was a small road—I still remember its name, Hawtrey Close—of four houses, in which, just before the election, 19 people were registered to vote. What drew the attention of the Labour party, who were on the qui vive for fraud, was that they went along to Hawtrey Close and all four houses had been boarded up and unoccupied for several years. None the less, they had 19 voters in them. Surprisingly, they all voted for the winning candidate. But you couldn’t blame the town hall. The town hall said, “Here is an address. It is a perfectly good address.” The town hall didn’t know that the houses were boarded up. “Here are these people wanting to be registered; we’ve got to register them.” They did not have the resources to send someone out who would look at this thing and say, “Of course there’s nobody registered, as there’s no one living there.” So that is the problem. It is resources, not the law. The law is quite clear: you cannot be registered unless you are a genuine person, living within the ward or constituency.

Lord Pickles: What the Bill does is restrict the number of people you can handle. So you cannot go door to door collecting postal votes, as has been common practice between all political parties for a number of years. I did receive quite a lot of representations from people who just hated the whole idea of postal votes and wanted to go back. I am old enough to remember when you had to make a case—you had to get your employer or your doctor to sign to say it was necessary. But I took the view that it would be just about impossible to turn the clock back and go back to that kind of system. It is probably not fashionable to mention Richard Nixon, but he was told, “Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it is awfully hard to get it back in.”

Rather than trying to go back to what was, in some people’s eyes, a golden age, we need instead to restrict it. Returning officers tell me of people arriving at 6 pm on polling day, which as we all know is a busy time, with a crisp packet box full of postal votes—perhaps 200, 300 or 400, which all have to be separately verified, which slows the process down. It could be that that is all straightforward, but I do not think so. It is trying to restrict the handling of postal votes, ensuring that parties cannot pick them up—I think the Labour party went round with a mock ballot box to put papers in. I am not suggesting that it was attempting to do anything wrong—it was trying to get the vote out—but it is important to demonstrate that a vote is important and should not be handled by anyone other than the voter.

[Cat Smith]

Q I wanted to pick up on the example given of Birmingham, which was quite a long time ago. The laws around postal votes and electoral registration have changed since, and a national insurance number is now required, or an electoral registration form with a date of birth and a signature on the postal vote return slip. I wonder whether the example given, of a street where people were registered and postal votes applied for, could happen under the existing law today and the changes that have been made.

Richard Mawrey: It certainly could happen. Instead of having 19 entirely fictitious people living at the address, someone could—if they have sufficient organisation—get entirely genuine people who just live somewhere else. That was done in Slough, where a whole lot of people were registered who actually lived in Walthamstow. Walthamstow did not have elections, so the people were not voting twice. The people registered in Slough by the fraudsters were genuine people, with national insurance numbers and everything—they would have been A1 at Lloyd’s—but they just did not live there. They claimed to have moved just before the election and, curiously, moved back to their old houses just after the election. It was of course fraudulent, and not one of them had set foot outside Walthamstow. Their names were being used, with their permission and their connivance. If someone knows their national insurance numbers, it can be done without their connivance, because the signature on the application form for the postal vote can be replicated if someone has a copy of it.

National insurance numbers were not needed back in 2008, when I did Slough. It is difficult now to put a completely fictitious person on the register, but it is not difficult to harvest votes, with or without consent, from real people who live somewhere else. Of course, the old Irish habit was to vote the graveyard.

Lord Pickles: In terms of warehousing, where the ballots are changed, the signature would not be touched because it is outside the envelope. It is the envelopes that are opened and the vote changed. The signature authenticates something that has been changed subsequently.

[Cat Smith]

Q If I understand it correctly, Richard, in most cases it would require the consent of everyone involved. The people registered at an address that they were not actually living at would need to provide their national insurance numbers—they would have to be in on it. That makes it harder to do on a bigger scale, which feeds into your point that the smaller electorates of local government make it easier to manipulate the outcomes than in a parliamentary election. Given that, does it therefore follow that increasing the turnout at an election makes it harder to commit electoral fraud, so a higher turnout is a good mitigating factor against electoral fraud and a good weapon to combat it?

Richard Mawrey: I think that is absolutely right, because fraud is obviously a relatively risky occupation, and the more bogus votes you have to put in, the more difficult it is. That is why it is very rare in parliamentary constituencies and would be completely unfeasible in any form of referendum, even a local referendum. However, when 50 or even 100 votes is likely to make a difference, then the game is worth the candle, unfortunately.

Lord Pickles: To be clear, nobody really cares that much about Parliament. There is no money in Parliament. You would have to be certain that someone was eventually going to get to a point where they would actually be issuing contracts. However, there is plenty of money in local authorities. As you are probably well aware, there have been, I think, two attempts to unseat a Labour MP using these kinds of methods. Pleasingly, they fell well short, and I was pleased to offer help and assistance in that, because it is massively important that this place remains absolutely secure, but the real money is in local authorities, not here.

Richard Mawrey: And, of course, a local councillor perversely has rather more influence, particularly in the sorts of boroughs where influence is perceived by the public to matter—“Oh, yes, he can swing this for me. He can swing that for me”—far more, curiously enough, than the MP himself or herself, who may be seen as a rather distant figure who you might go and moan to if your granny is not getting proper treatment from the NHS, or something like that. If I may say so with respect, you are not handling the readies: you are not dishing out jobs or contracts, and that is why people are keen to become local councillors. In some cases, it is a different sort of keenness from the keenness to become a Member of Parliament.

[Cat Smith]

Q My final question is about the resources of local government, because under this legislation, local government will be asked to do more because of the requirement to issue free voter ID cards. Our electoral returning officers are quite stretched already, and the Association of Election Administrators has already made representations about the pressure on electoral registration officers. In terms of their ability to spot potential fraud, given the increase in workload and the cuts to local government, do you have concerns about the resources of local government to be able to do their jobs, frankly?

Richard Mawrey: I know it is not in your Bill, but it occurred to me that a solution—although not necessarily one that the Electoral Commission would welcome—would be if the Electoral Commission had resources so that, if necessary, it could assign someone. If a local registration officer or returning officer said, “I think we have a problem, but we cannot handle it because we do not have the resources,” the Electoral Commission could, under this theory at least, put in what might be termed a hit squad to go and see what was going on and deal with it.

That would also have the benefit that this would be an independent, external body coming in, so the local councillors and the local officials would not be getting local flak. These would be people rather like the commissioners appointed by Lord Pickles to go into Tower Hamlets, who were completely independent of the borough and were therefore able to find out all about the financial misappropriations and so on. We have the ability to put in external people. Frankly, I would not necessarily rely on the police, because one, they are overstretched, and two, they do not have the available techniques, resources and skills to deal with this—and they hate doing it, and they make quite clear that they hate doing it. My suggestion is that the question of whether the Electoral Commission itself might be able to assist might at least be considered at some future time. I do not know whether you would go along with that.

Lord Pickles: This is a really important question. If you go to a count, say for Parliament, the chief executive turns up or maybe the mayor, and I as the returning officer—the person who is doing the work is not them, and for too long, electoral registration has been in the legions of the damned. They are forgotten about and not properly resourced.

If chief executives understood that it was part of their terms of contract to deliver a fair poll, and that they would be personally held responsible, that would be an important point. The point that you make about electoral returns being poorly resourced is absolutely right. I do not think that it would take an enormous increase in resources to improve the situation, but what is in the Bill makes their life that bit easier because there are fewer things for them to worry about. I agree with the substantive point that you make.

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[Cat Smith]

Q Thank you, Ms Rees. My first question is to the witnesses from local government. What will be the practical and cost implications for electoral administrators and councils of implementing the Bill’s voter ID proposals? Also, what pressure will there be on electoral administrators as a result of having to cope with two different categories of EU citizens when it comes to voting rights—whether they are a qualifying EU citizen? Do you anticipate any difficulties in managing that, and what kinds of resources do you expect to have to increase or bring in to meet those difficulties, as well as the requirements to administer free ID cards?

Councillor Golds: Is that for me first? Remember that I am an elected councillor, rather than an official, but obviously I can give you some ideas because I am extremely familiar with the electoral services department of Tower Hamlets Council and how it interfaces with the rest of the council. The electoral services department does understand the need to clean up the system we have, and I believe that there is a will within our council to provide extra resources to electoral services, but of course it is the Government who pay costs toward electoral services. One thing that the department often complains about is the adverts that go out when there is an election, because suddenly they will be inundated when tens of thousands of people ask, “Am I on the electoral register?” A quarter of a million people apply to go on the electoral register, but about 85% of them are already on it, so electoral services are sitting there saying, “Yes, yes, yes.” That is expensive and time consuming.

Gillian Beasley: There are important resource implications for both areas. Looking at how electoral services teams will have to respond, we certainly anticipate that having to produce these new electoral identity documents will require additional resources. We know from experience that voters tend to turn their minds to voting very close to polling day, and if they discover that they do not have the requisite documents to prove their identity and we have to issue those documents, we will probably see a surge at what is the busiest time for electoral services teams, the pre-election run-up, when they are dealing with late registrations, and proxy and postal vote applications, so there will be resource implications for them.

Returning officers, which is what I have been since 1999, will probably have dedicated teams that are able to do that, because when someone discovers that they do not have the requisite documents and they need to bring in other documents, depending on what those are, they sometimes do not bring the right ones and we have to send them home, so there is a lot of administrative burden in that regard. We will also need to train and resource that at polling stations in a better way, because there will be problems in polling stations over this. We need confident presiding officers who understand the law and are trained well, so there will be additional burdens there.

I think that in our arena, in particular, there will be significant resource issues. It is not the case that we do not want to do it; we just need to ensure that is highlighted at very busy times during the electoral process, because of voter behaviour. That has been our experience in Peterborough, and I am sure that it is the experience of other returning officers.

Assistant Chief Constable Cann: From a policing point of view, it is difficult to estimate with any precision what the resource impact might be. Some elements of the Bill, if put into law, might go some way towards helping. For example, voter ID could potentially help to avoid various demands that we have around it. I do not want to overstate that, because it would not be a huge thing, but it could be helpful. On the other hand, until we understand fully what is involved in the digital imprints regime, for example, it is a little difficult to be precise about the likely impact on police resources at the moment.

[Cat Smith]

Q If I may follow up on that, my question to you, Gareth, was going to be slightly different. It is on the policing of electoral fraud, particularly in relation to overseas voters. With regard to overseas voters making political donations that are unlawful, or voter fraud, what powers does the UK have to detect infringements and prosecute?

Assistant Chief Constable Cann: With regard to any infringements that might be committed overseas or by non-UK citizens, for example, our powers to deal with that are very limited.

[Chloe Smith]

Q I welcome all three witnesses. I have one question for each. Councillor Golds, thank you for giving us your time today. Can you tell us a little about the experience on the ground of how people might have been victims of electoral fraud in Tower Hamlets, and perhaps how difficult it can be for some of those stories to come forward?

Councillor Golds: I have been studying it. I have been involved in elections in the borough for 20 years. I should quickly declare that over the years, I have been an election agent in 13 general elections. In fact, I have been an election agent for every kind of election we can have in this country, from Parliament and European Parliament to GLA, GLC and local council, and I have never seen anything like what I saw in Tower Hamlets.

The thing that always upsets me, and that I find terribly disappointing, is that ordinary people’s votes were effectively stolen. When I knock on a door, somebody will say to me, “Mr Golds, my father used to vote for Mr Attlee.” I smile at them, and then they say, “But what’s the point of voting now?” The problem is that, as both Mr Mawrey QC and Lord Pickles said, those are the people whose votes have been stolen. Most of all, however, there are our Bangladeshi voters, who sometimes come forward and say to me, as their local councillor, “Can you provide this information?” I say, “But you have to go on record, otherwise it is hearsay,” and they will then say, “I’m frightened to do so.”

That is a very intimidating situation, and I have to say it is not only in Tower Hamlets. Mr Shelbrooke read what had happened in Batley and Spen. A few years ago I took a friend of mine, who had contested an election in Calderdale, to meet the Electoral Commission. It was a waste of his time, because the Electoral Commission, as it so often is, was completely uninterested. He had a dossier as large as the one I brought with me today, which he handed to the Commission; as far as I know, it is probably still sitting in an archive, gathering dust.

Elections Bill (Second sitting)

Cat Smith Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 15th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

Q My question for both witnesses is about the accountability of the Electoral Commission and the part of the legislation we are looking at on that issue. It is a balance between parliamentary accountability for the commission but also independence of the commission to be able to do its job. As it stands, the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission has an in-built Government majority, with five Members from the governing party and three Opposition MPs—I declare an interest as a member of that committee. Do you feel that is effective and what do you think will be the impact of adding another Government MP to that committee? Do you think the Electoral Commission is currently suitably held to account by Parliamentarians?

Professor Howarth: Perhaps I should answer that more than Fraser. I do not think there should be any circumstances in which there is a Government majority on the Speaker’s Committee. It was set up not to have that, but the balance in the House that determines which party gets which Chair of which Select Committee has an effect. I think the legislation has to be adjusted to ensure that the definition of who is on the Speaker’s Committee is not affected by those sorts of changes. The whole idea is for there to be consensus on electoral matters across the parties. That is the main objection to having ministerial guidance in the first place—a Minister from any particular party might be seen to say something in the interest of the party. Similarly, the Speaker’s Committee should never have a single-party majority. The legislation should make that clear.

Fraser Campbell: I agree with what Professor Howarth says about majorities on the committee. Members have to bear in mind the distinction between accountability and direction. It is one thing for the Electoral Commission to be accountable to Parliament, through the Speaker’s Committee and potentially through other mechanisms, in terms of explaining itself and being questioned about decisions it has made or its performance. It is another thing for it to be directed to do particular things.

That is the concern that arises in terms of the statement of principles. One example of that is that it envisages the ministerial statement and directing priorities. One can easily think of examples where it might be quite improper for particular priorities to be set; for example, if there was a hypothetical party that drew disproportionate amounts of support from older people as opposed to students. One can imagine why that hypothetical party might wish to make it a priority for the Electoral Commission to assist in increasing turnout among the elderly, and on whatever grounds it came up with, deprioritise facilitating students living in multiple households to register to vote. If that was a direction given to the commission, that would not really be accountability at all but interference. It would be much better for the commission to be allowed to get on with what are very well established and understood statutory objectives, and for Parliament through whatever means to hold it to account on its performance.

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

Q My question is in two parts. On the plan to give Ministers more control of the Electoral Commission, David, were these plans ever discussed or floated when you were a commissioner between 2008 and 2018? To both of you, why do you think they have now appeared in the Bill?

Professor Howarth: To answer the first question, this would have been unthinkable in my time as an electoral commissioner, and also that was during a time when there had been a Conservative Prime Minister for the whole time. I do not think anyone would have ever imagined this was a good idea. It is an open goal for the opponents of western democracy. If you are President Xi, you might think this is the kind of thing you want—all the institutions of the state lined up behind the governing party—but not in this country. It is completely unthinkable.

As to where it has come from, it is beyond my time in office. All I can say is it looks as if it has arisen out of certain resentments in certain quarters about decisions the commission has made that people disagree with, and the Government must have been scrambling around for ways of satisfying that desire for revenge and come up with possibly the mildest version they can think of, but even this version is outrageous.

Fraser Campbell: I would not wish to make a window into the Minister’s soul, but I think all Members on all sides would want to bear in mind that if they are in Government, they will one day be out of Government, and one would not want to have a position where whatever party happens to be in Government is able to take advantage of an opportunity to influence or exert pressure on the commission while the sun is shining, only to see the boot on the other foot when they are out of power.

One sees this, for example, in the United States where it is very nice for the governing party to be able to nominate justices to the Supreme Court, but it feels much less promising when they happen to be out of power. In my position, it is much better to have a properly independent process, which we have in the courts here. We do not have the same business of political nomination of judges. We would lose something of value were we to have, in any sense, a politicised, oscillating Electoral Commission, whose priorities change depending on who is setting the direction from time to time. That would not be in the long-term interests of any party.

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[The Chair]

Q We will now hear oral evidence from Virginia McVea from the Electoral Office for Northern Ireland, Ailsa Irvine from the Electoral Commission and Peter Stanyon of the Association of Electoral Administrators. All the witnesses are on Zoom. Welcome. We have until 3.15 pm for this session. Would the witnesses please introduce themselves for the record?

Virginia McVea: Good afternoon, I am Virginia McVea, Northern Ireland’s chief electoral officer.

Ailsa Irvine: Good afternoon, I am Ailsa Irvine, director of electoral administration and guidance at the Electoral Commission.

Peter Stanyon: Good afternoon, I am Peter Stanyon, chief executive of the Association of Electoral Administrators.

[Cat Smith]

Q If I could begin with you, Ms McVea. Part of the Bill concerns electors showing voter identification at polling stations. That has been a requirement in Northern Ireland for some time. We know that has changed over time: initially not requiring photo ID, then much later having a requirement to show photo ID. Do you have anything that could inform the Committee’s thinking on the way in which that might be implemented in England, Scotland and Wales, and with regard to the speed, if we were to move straight to requiring quite strict photo ID? Obviously, in Northern Ireland you had a much slower transition. Could you outline any of the initial problems electors had in Northern Ireland with access to ID, and what barriers voters who did not have ID came up against?

Virginia McVea: That was obviously prior to my period in office. There are not many records in relation to that. What I can say is that there is no particular difficulty encountered in providing that photographic ID. We have around 370,000 cards and they have been available since 2003. One issue that will be encountered is the administration. Initially records show that the outsourced cost per card was over £14, and that continued. It is now provided in-house, at just over £2 a card, including postage. Part of it will be around comms and how people are able to access them.

For us, there is obviously a time taken per card. Outside election periods, we have had to extend that to a six-week turnaround. I have no record of what the turnaround period was initially in the provision of the cards, but the take-up was much higher. Probably in around 2016, we were looking at more than 20,000 cards being produced in the year. We have found that continuing to tail off.

There has not been any related difficulty in attendance at polling stations of being able to produce ID. Certainly, the data shows a change in the requirement on cards.

We do not know whether people have kept all of their cards—we know lots of cards get lost. We occasionally have visits from various nightclubs when they empty their sports bags on to the table and return the cards that have gone missing. Those need duplicates. A lot of time can be wasted in reproducing cards, but I am afraid that there are very few records that show what the initial difficulties were in engaging and in providing the ID.

[Cat Smith]

Q If I may ask Peter Stanyon to answer a question from the point of view of the electoral administrators, obviously the issuing of free voter identification cards will fall to local authorities and electoral administrators. Can you outline to the Committee some of the pressures that the people you represent in electoral offices up and down the country face on a day-to-day basis? What kind of pressures already exist? How is the requirement to produce ID cards likely to affect electoral administrators?

Peter Stanyon: The expectation is that the vast majority of those cards will need to be issued ahead of the next national electoral event—a general election, for example— when the pressures in the electoral offices are at their greatest. Late registration statistics show that the spikes in registration come towards the end. At that stage, the same people delivering the election—certainly across England and Wales—will be the ones who also have to manage the process of issuing free voter ID cards to individuals. In Scotland, it is slightly different because that tends to be done by the valuation joint boards. There is a difference in the way that is delivered north of the border.

The real pressures are that we do not know the statistics—the numbers of people coming through—and, because of the spikes in registration, we will not know that until literally the last minute. One of the concerns being expressed across the electoral community is as much about what the basic system is: what will it look like? Will it require attendance in person? Virginia mentioned posting out ID—will that be permissible in the remainder of the UK? We do not know that detail at this stage.

It will require a whole-council approach—there is no doubt about that. It will not just be the returning officer or registration officer who is involved; it will be councils, with the pressures they are already under when delivering their day-to-day services. It really comes down to trying to make sure that we do not disenfranchise—it is probably not quite the right word—individuals by simply not being able to get to them the relevant ID they require to present at the polling stations on polling day.

The other factor to take into account is how late in the day it will be permissible for an individual to apply for free voter ID from a local authority. The pilots go right up to the eve of the polls, and we have concerns about the ability to cope with what are expected to be higher numbers when interest in the election is higher because it is a UK parliamentary general election.

[The Chair]

Thank you. Would either of the other witnesses like to comment?

Virginia McVea: Just to say that the statistics that we have in 2019 show that the applications for ID cards will at least double. In Northern Ireland, where we have had nearly 20 years of ID card provision and so have decreased the number of people who might need access to a card, we are looking at around 1,500 or 1,600 applications per month during an election period. That is the information that I can provide in relation to how you might scale it up, bearing in mind that that is nearly at the end of a 20-year process of the provision of cards.

Ailsa Irvine: It is important to ensure that any scheme that is introduced is workable. The voter ID card will play a critical part in making sure that any scheme that is introduced is accessible for those who do not have one of the prescribed forms of ID. It absolutely needs to work, but it also needs to be considered in the realm of the whole administration of elections, including the other changes that the Bill brings forward, to ensure that there is capacity within local authorities to deliver effectively. There must be sufficient time for all this to be planned on an administrative level, with the software suppliers that local authorities depend on, and appropriate resourcing must be in place to support that.

[Cat Smith]

Q I have one final question for Ailsa Irvine. The Electoral Commission reports to and is funded by the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Senedd, as well as the UK Parliament. How do you think the changes in the legislation whereby the UK Parliament can set the strategic direction will impact the way in which the commission engages with the devolved nations?

Ailsa Irvine: In general terms, we have concerns about the commission relating to the strategy and policy statement and the impact that that may have on the commission’s independence, going as it does beyond scrutiny and accountability, and potentially into providing guidance about how we carry out our functions on a day-to-day basis.

Specifically on our accountability to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Parliament, which is as important as our accountability to the UK Parliament, looking as we do in those three different directions, it is really important that there is consultation with those Parliaments. At the moment, the legislation focuses on consultation with Welsh Ministers and Scottish Ministers, but we are actually accountable to those legislatures through the Llywydd’s Committee and the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body, so it is important to be able to ensure that they are also consulted and involved in the process in an equivalent way to the Speaker’s Committee.

When those consultations take place, whether with the Speaker’s Committee or with the devolved legislatures, it is really important that we are able to see what feedback is provided on any consultation on the statement, so that—assuming that the provisions go through—when it is presented to Parliament, given that it is presented as an all-or-nothing decision, there can be absolute clarity on what those who have been consulted have fed back and on their views on the operability of the statement.

[Chloe Smith]

Q Good afternoon to our three witnesses. Thank you very much for joining us. In our various ways, we know each other well from much work done over the years, so it is good to have you with us.

I will start with a couple of questions to Virginia about the concepts of turnout, fraud patterns and confidence, each of which is important in what we are looking at, particularly for voter identification. I am sure we would all agree that turnout is not a linear trend—it can be influenced by wider political factors—but can you confirm that in the first general election after photographic identification was introduced, the 2005 election, turnout in Northern Ireland was higher than in each of England, Scotland and Wales?

Virginia McVea: I am sorry, but we do not retain those records within the Electoral Office. I can certainly provide the answer to the Committee as a follow-up.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Louise, do you have anything to add to that?

Louise Round: Just to echo what Rob said: the incidents of personation in all the years that I have been doing this have been zero—at least, that we have known about. There is a question about whether the cost and extra administrative burden of voter ID is strictly speaking necessary. As Rob said, it does not mean that it does not happen; we just do not know whether it has ever happened.

[Cat Smith]

Q Louise, in your earlier remarks, you were talking about overseas electors and how administering the applications and registrations for voting takes up the most time of electoral officers. With the removal of time limits—the 15-year limit on that connection—how much more resources would you expect local authorities to have to make available to service overseas electors? Also, you said that when overseas electors registered, there was an element of having to take it on trust. Do you believe that potentially opens it up to electoral fraud by overseas voters?

Louise Round: In relation to the additional work created by removing the time limit, it is hard to say at this stage. It will depend on take-up. We do not have—or I certainly do not have—any access to any information about how many people who have moved abroad but have not been on the register might now suddenly decide that they want to be. It is a bit of a “How long is a piece of string?” question. What local authority election teams will not be in the business of is gearing up to a just-in-case position. They will have to wait and see, prudently, what extra work comes their way.

On fraud, I do not think that is so much the issue as it is that if somebody has fallen off the register, as it were, then reapplied to be an overseas elector, they cannot have been on the register in a different place from the one they are now applying to. That is the bit where we cannot necessarily check that they have not been, but it does not mean that they are not entitled to be an elector in this country: it might just be that the place they are trying to be an elector in might not strictly speaking be the place they ought to be an elector in.

[Cat Smith]

Q I have a couple of questions for Rob. In your opening remarks, you mentioned how you had managed to put the “ghost of 2004” behind you in Birmingham. Does that mean the existing legislation on the statute books has clearly been sufficient for your council to turn that around?

Rob Connelly: Sorry, I couldn’t quite hear the question. Will you repeat it, please?

[Cat Smith]

Q In your opening remarks, you said that you had moved on, in that this was no longer the problem that it was in 2004. Does that indicate that the current legislation is sufficient to combat the problems that you faced in Birmingham?

Rob Connelly: I would come back to the point that we can never rest on our laurels. There is always room for improvement. If we think something would improve the perception of the integrity of our system, I am all for it. As I said, the biggest problem for me was not about fraud itself; it was about the perception and how we dealt with that. For me, people have to have confidence in the system, otherwise how can they have confidence in their elected officials? That has always been the starting point.

That is why we have always gone over and above our statutory obligation. I know we had no alternative, but we found it beneficial. If we do more, we restore that integrity and confidence. I have read in recent reports that there is a fairly high confidence level in our electoral system at the moment, but, again, if we can improve it, we should look to do so at every opportunity.

[Cat Smith]

Q My final question is about the practicalities of a local authority running the polling stations. The legislation would require voters to show photo ID. The Minister has said in the House that there would be provision for privacy screens so that voters who wear headscarves for cultural or religious reasons can prove their identity. I think you said that you have about 500 polling stations in Birmingham.

Rob Connelly: Just under 500.

[Cat Smith]

Q Are you confident about being able to provide a female polling clerk at every one of your polling stations?

Rob Connelly: We have been talking about this as two considerations, really. We will have to start reviewing all our polling stations again to be able to have privacy screens in place, because some of them can be fairly small. We have a couple of huts, and we would have to revisit those. Again, on polling day, I probably employ around 2,500 all told, including the count, and maybe 1,600 at polling stations alone. Our ability to put a female poll clerk or member of staff in each one is something that will cause us some headaches, and we will have to revisit all our processes to make sure it happens. As it is, we struggle to recruit and retain staff, who come to the polling station literally for one day a year. They do not do it for the money; they do it because they want to part of the process—I am a very firm believer in that. That is a concern for me.

[Chris Clarkson]

Q Rob, I have just consulted the oracle that is Google by putting in “Birmingham electoral fraud”. It goes all the way back to 2005, and then there are articles from 2011. Interestingly, one from 2016 says:

“20,000 voters vanish from Birmingham’s electoral roll”.

That was around the time that individual electoral registration came in. Obviously, a lot of work has been done to combat some of that fraud already, and you should be commended for that, as yours is the largest authority in Europe. How far do you think the measures in the Bill will go towards challenging the perception of fraud, which is still there?

Secondly, you have both said that there are fairly low levels, or no levels, or personation that you know of. Do you accept that, although there is no voluminous information, it is quite an easy thing to do? By using a bit of nous or looking at a marked register, you can work out who does not normally vote, rock up and claim to be them, and vote without any challenge. Do you accept that the measure will go some way to adding extra safeguards to prevent that from happening in great numbers without detection?

Rob Connelly: The short answer is that, for ID, I think it will, yes. I do not know whether Louise has anything to add to that. It will add to that protection, and it will stop your casual fraudster from thinking, “Actually, I know they’re not here, so I’ll nip down to the polling station and act as Joe Bloggs.” It will prevent that type of scenario.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Thank you. Cat Smith?

[Cat Smith]

Q Thank you, Chair. My first question is for Dr Dommett, regarding your research on digital campaigning. Obviously, for about a decade now, there has been widespread support and campaigning for additional imprints to be part of transparency around online campaigning. Do you feel that this is sufficient? Do you feel that it is future-proofed, and are there any changes or additions that you would like to see in the legislation, given your specialist knowledge in that area?

Dr Dommett: Thank you very much, Cat. First, it is very good to finally see imprints being tabled into electoral law. This is something that has been called for for 10 years. I have sent evidence to the Committee that outlines some small changes, but broadly I think there is support for this and it is likely to be welcomed. There are questions about the implementation of the proposals as drafted. For example, there is a lot of vagueness around what it means for an imprint to be “reasonably practicable”. From my perspective, that appears to be quite a big challenge in implementation. Is it going to be down to a campaigner, for example, to determine what is reasonably practicable? If that is the case, we are going to see imprints being placed not directly on the material itself, but on external websites. That starts to pose significant challenges not only for oversight, but for researchers such as me, who will be tasked with collecting all these instances to offer any scrutiny. That is a point of concern that I would raise.

The other issue is the distinction between paid and unpaid material, and the implications for what is regulated under each type of content. This is a very challenging issue, and it comes to your question about what is and is not being covered in future-proofing. It is notable that, in focusing on page content, we are talking about a very specific type of page content in relation to imprints. This is about being paid for dissemination, and it is a reflection of the huge growth in online political advertising and payment for dissemination on platforms such as Facebook. It leaves a big gap, so we are already seeing, particularly in other electoral contexts, things like influencers being paid to produce content that they then disseminate organically. That material would not be required, if it was being disseminated by an unregistered non-party campaigner, to contain the kind of imprint we are talking about. There are some questions about what will be left out under the Bill as currently drafted.

There are also issues of confusion around paid and unpaid content. One phenomenon that we see very often is that a piece of content will start paid and will then begin to be disseminated organically or, vice versa, it can begin as an organic piece of content and a campaigner can then decide to pay to boost it. Depending on the origins, it could create ambiguity about when an imprint is required.

I think there is also a challenging question, and I see both sides of it, about the regulation of unregistered third-party campaigners. There are of course valid concerns about the regulatory burden placed on those actors, but it does create an opportunity for something we have seen evidence for: a lot of organic groups that are very small in scale co-ordinating to disseminate messages across social media. They would not have to carry an imprint under these rules. There is a very good example in Scotland, where this has already been tested and where both paid and unpaid material from all actors is required to have an imprint. I think it is interesting that the Bill is diverging from that practice, and I would raise a question about that.

On your bigger question about whether this is enough for the regulation of digital campaigning, I think my answer can only be no. That was being called for 10 years ago, and you only have to think back to 10 years to think about how much the digital space has evolved. There are huge questions around the regulation of digital campaigning, particularly about the power of our electoral institutions and processes. The democratic institutions that we have to oversee elections do not have any power to intervene in the activities of social media platforms, which now provide an incredible and very valuable platform for campaigning. The Electoral Commission in particular has minimal powers to compel information from those actors.

As a researcher, I may be expected to say this, but there is an incredible lack of transparency around digital campaigning because of the lack of data access available in that space, as it is a commercial realm. That means that it is virtually impossible to scrutinise what is happening in the digital space, and given the range of concerns emerging in that area, the Bill misses an opportunity to provide avenues for more information about what is happening online. Broadly, I would say that it is good to finally see this being taken forward, and I think there is potential for it to work well with a couple of clarifications.

[Cat Smith]

Q You touched on the issue of third-party campaigners, and beyond the digital side, the legislation actually gives the Minister for the Cabinet Office the power to remove the ability of a campaign charity, for example, to campaign in an election. Do you have any concerns about that? The recent legislation change in Scotland means that there would be a disparity in the UK. Do you think that could lead to confusion, particularly for UK-wide third-party campaigners?

Dr Dommett: Yes, there is definitely potential for confusion. One of my headline thoughts about the entire Bill is that it is a real missed opportunity to fundamentally rewrite electoral legislation to provide greater clarity, which has been repeatedly called for because we have a mismatch of regulations, so I think there are potential concerns. I have forgotten what you asked about—was it third-party campaigners? Apologies.

[Cat Smith]

It was about third-party campaigners and the Minister’s power to remove their ability to campaign.

Dr Dommett: I have concerns about the powers of ministerial discretion in a number of areas in the Bill. That comes to a different area of my research that is not focused so much on the digital side but on public perceptions. The importance of electoral processes—especially electoral oversight—being seen to have a high degree of independence is absolutely pivotal for public trust. I would have concerns about the Minister’s ability to exert discretion here. I think that is fine for parliamentary oversight, but Government interference could raise public concern.

Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill

Cat Smith Excerpts

Committee stage & 3rd reading
Monday 13th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chloe Smith]

I am afraid I have not got time to give way; I need to draw my remarks to a close. I look forward to the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr being able to say more about his amendment, which he has not yet had a chance to do. It would be rather good at this point if the Committee heard from others, rather than me. I draw my remarks to a close. I hope I have covered all the points on the new clauses, the schedule and the amendments. I commend the Bill as a whole, unamended, to the Committee.

[Cat Smith]

The Bill does two things: it repeals the Fixed-term Parliaments Act; and reinstates—or attempts to reinstate—the status quo that existed before 2011. The Labour party supports the repeal of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, which we committed to in our 2019 manifesto, because the Act undermined motions of no-confidence and removed conventions around confidence motions. The concept of fixed terms, however, is not a bad one, and we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater here. When the Act was introduced, the then Prime Minister was clear that it transferred power away from the Prime Minister and to Parliament. By virtue of that, the Bill is clearly a power grab by a Prime Minister who thinks that one rule applies to him and the rest of us can just wish for it.

New clause 2, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), would make Dissolution subject to a vote in the House of Commons. At the heart of the new clause is the question whether a Government should have the power to decide when an election takes place or whether elections should be fixed. The democratic position to take is that terms should be fixed. Indeed, that is what happens in our local councils in England and in the Parliaments in Scotland and Wales. In fact, in most parliamentary democracies, Dissolution is controlled by the legislature with varying degrees of involvement from the Executive.

In the UK, with our strong tradition of parliamentary sovereignty, Parliament should be central to any decision to dissolve, for three main reasons. First, there is the electoral advantage. If only the Prime Minister knows when an election will be held, only the Prime Minister will know when spending limits kick in. That plays to the advantage of the incumbent political party. It is also possible to bury bad news by calling an election before such news hits. If, for instance, there was to be an inquiry on covid and they felt that would be bad news for them, they could choose to go early to avoid negative headlines. Secondly, a vote in Parliament for Dissolution would remove any possibility of dragging the Crown into the politics of the decision. I am sure no Members of the House would like to see Her Majesty dragged into that. Thirdly, it would render the Bill’s ouster clause unnecessary, whether that clause is effective or not. The easiest way to keep the courts out of Dissolution decisions is to leave Dissolution in Parliament’s hands. It is impossible to imagine the crack through which the courts could intervene in a duly recorded decision of the House of Commons on that matter.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the new clause is a much more effective way of keeping the courts out? The ouster clause is a bit like a red flag or saying to someone, “Don’t think of an elephant”—they will think of an elephant. It is saying to the courts, “You can’t touch this,” which would be a charter for clever lawyers and clever judges to start to think, “Where can we start to look at this?” rather than using the long-established, age-old way of deciding matters: a vote here in Parliament.

[Cat Smith]

I agree. In fact, it is probably like dealing with a toddler: if we tell them not to do something, we know fine well that they will do it.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I will not debate the points of politics with the hon. Lady. On her comments about using Parliament for Dissolution, we have had all of that. There are probably few Members of the public watching us in the Chamber tonight, but they certainly watched what happened in 2019. Surely when we have a Chamber in stalemate, the Government should be able to resign. She will recall how her then leader stood on Parliament Square to say that the Government should resign but then came in here and stopped them from resigning, which was incredible. Surely when Parliament is deadlocked, as it was then, the Government should be able to resign and that should just happen, not be stopped by Parliament.

[Chris Bryant]

They should do it today.

[Cat Smith]

I agree with the heckling from my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda. I think the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) is quite wrong and that the public are watching the debate with deep fascination. He underestimates the passion for constitutional legislation in this place. The point is that the new clause would remove the possibility of the courts being involved, and I think there is consensus across the Committee that that would be desirable. It strikes me that new clause 2 would be the most straightforward and easy way to do that. Of course, we know fine well that if the Government of the day can carry the House—in most cases, they can—there would be no issue in having a Dissolution. It would also avoid dragging the monarch into politics and remove the governing party’s electoral advantage. The new clause therefore strengthens the Bill, so I support it.

I turn to amendments 1 to 3 and new clause 1 on the length of an election campaign. It is impossible to look at the Bill without considering how it would move us to a position in which pretty much all elections will be unscheduled. I say “unscheduled” rather than “snap” because I recognise that an election period is very long; it certainly does not feel very snappy for candidates, voters or anyone campaigning. Unscheduled elections cause a problem for our electoral administrators. From having spoken to many of them and heard representations from the Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators, it is clear that many close misses happen on the timetable, and a reduction of the timetable alongside the Bill, which could lead to more unscheduled elections, risks the public’s confidence in our democratic elections. For that reason, although it would be desirable to have shorter elections, I cannot support those amendments.

The Bill is not in a vacuum—we also have the Elections Bill and the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill before the House—and taken together, it is clearly part of a political power grab with a movement of power away from Parliament. It is a movement away from 650 Members to the hands of one man or woman who is Prime Minister, who will decide when the starting gun will be fired on an election. The Bill is, frankly, an overreaction to and misunderstanding of the causes of the gridlock in the 2019 Parliament. The principle of fixed terms is not wrong, although the Fixed-term Parliaments Act was clearly flawed. Prorogation should be in the hands of Parliament, not the Executive.

[Mrs Miller]

I rise to speak in particular to new clause 1 in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill), my hon. Friends the Members for North West Cambridgeshire (Shailesh Vara), for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell), for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) and for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker) and a number of others. It is well supported. As the Minister set out, this is an important Bill. I had the privilege of serving on the Joint Committee on the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, where we heard the most extraordinary body of evidence about the last 10 years. I must say that it was overwhelmingly in support of the Government’s direction, which should take us back to the status quo ante position so eloquently outlined by the Minister. However, the evidence sessions also revealed a number of gaps—things that the Bill might do but does not—particularly on general campaigns and their lengths.

The Minister talked about the importance of a clear and easily understood scheme, and I completely agree. Elections are incredibly important parts of our democratic process—the pillar of the process in many ways—and should be clear and easily understood. However, as I alluded to in my intervention, the length of general elections is neither clear nor easily understood, and one must dive into the mice type to find out what the rules are.

The legislation says that elections should be 25 days in length, but that is not actually what it means: it is 25 days plus high days and holidays, and in essence that means an awful lot longer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Cat Smith]

This Bill would have benefited from being amended in Committee. Although it is right and proper that the Fixed-term Parliaments Act is repealed, as it was so clearly flawed, reverting to the status quo hands power to the Executive. Indeed, it is a power grab by a Tory party that believes there is one rule for it and another rule for everybody else.

This Bill should not be the Government’s priority during a global pandemic. While our doctors and nurses are having to wear bin bags, the Government are coming up with legislation to play to their own electoral advantage. However, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act was clearly a flawed piece of legislation and the 2019 Labour manifesto committed to repealing it. Although the Bill could have been improved in Committee, and it is regrettable that it was not, we will be abstaining on Third Reading.

Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill (Instruction)

Cat Smith Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

I rise to support my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), as the House should be able to debate these issues. He started by saying he is Billy No Mates, but he will find he has an awful lot of mates in the House today.

There is no getting away from the fact that the 2019 constitutional crisis caused by the unlawful Prorogation of Parliament was a warning shot that we should legislate in this area to ensure that the courts cannot interfere in matters of Parliament. The most obvious way to do that is to debate and support my hon. Friend’s new clauses and amendments.

The Minister says it is not her place to decide when these matters should be decided, but that they are certainly not in this Bill. What is the point of having a Minister for the Constitution if she cannot decide that such an important constitutional matter be decided today?

Elections Bill

Cat Smith Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House declines to give a second reading to the Elections Bill, notwithstanding the need for legislation around digital imprints and some accessibility improvements for disabled voters which do not go far enough, because it infringes on the right of expression of the electorate by allowing the Secretary of State to unilaterally modify and select which groups are allowed to campaign during an election period, creates unnecessary barriers to entry for voting, makes the Electoral Commission subordinate to the executive, would serve to restrict the franchise and thereby reduce the overall number of people able to participate in any future UK General Election and does not make provision for the UK Parliament to match the devolved nations in Scotland and Wales by extending the right to vote to 16 and 17 year olds and other disenfranchised groups.

It is a pleasure to speak in today’s debate. Let me begin by quoting: the law governing elections is “voluminous”, “fragmented” and “extremely complex”, with some provisions

“dating back to the 19th century”.

I used that quote from the Law Commission’s 2016 report back in 2016, when I first became Labour’s shadow spokesperson for elections, a role that I still hold. Since 2016, it is like nothing has happened. The Government did not make any changes on the back of those recommendations, and the Elections Bill continues to make absolutely no progress on them or on the recommendations of many reports that have been published since. In fact, over the past decade the Government have failed to take any action to modernise our electoral laws or to close the loopholes that allow foreign money to flood into our democracy; this Bill actually makes that threat far greater and does not reduce it at all. I think the reason is very clear and those of us on the Opposition Benches have seen right through it: it is because these laws will lead to benefits for the Conservative party. In the Bill we have before us, the Government have not reached out for cross-party consensus as is typical for a Bill of this type which massively changes electoral law and deals with constitutional matters. It would be normal to see a Speaker’s Committee put together before such massive changes were brought forward. There has been no attempt by the Government to reach out for a cross-party consensus on a matter as important as our elections and our democracy.

This Bill is a huge missed opportunity to modernise our electoral law to bring it into the 21st century and try to encourage people to participate in our democracy. Indeed, our democracy is stronger when more people take part in it. In this Bill we see that the leaders would like to choose the voters. I believe that the voters should choose the leaders of their country, yet the flagship part of this Bill is very much about the leaders of this country choosing who are the voters.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I am a known critic of this Bill, but I will say to the hon. Lady that when I served through over a decade of Labour Government, they did not once consult the Opposition when they changed electoral law—not once.

[Cat Smith]

For years now, I have stood opposite the Minister responsible for the constitution and we have talked about many ways of improving our democracy. I had hoped that this Bill would contain some of the many topics that we have discussed across the Dispatch Box and in Committee, to expand the franchise to make it more inclusive. That might include spending the £120 million that will be spent on the electoral ID system to encourage registration to make sure that the millions missing from our electoral roll are included, making it easier for homeless people to register to vote—but no, none of that is included in this Bill, which would in fact serve to reverse decades of progress. I draw attention to the recent changes made by the Welsh Labour Government to expand the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds.

Some of the Conservative Members here today should consider the implications of this Bill for their constituents whose votes they perhaps relied on to get into this House, and how difficult it is for so many people in this country to have access to ID, because it is expensive—£80-odd for a passport and £43 for a driving licence. This is a paywall to the ballot box.

[Mark Fletcher]

The Minister set out in her opening remarks that 98% of people have access to appropriate ID already and that a free alternative will be available from councils, so I am a little baffled by the argument that the hon. Lady is making.

--- Later in debate ---

[Cat Smith]

Is the hon. Member saying that 2% of his electorate should not have access to democracy? That appears to be what he is saying. Yes, 98% of people might well have valid ID, but 2% of the entire UK electorate is a very large number of people. In fact, to use the Government’s statistics, 3.5 million people do not have access to valid photo ID. It seems that one arm of the Government does not quite know what the other arm of the Government is doing. The Cabinet Office is saying that it is fine and everyone has access to ID, but the DCMS is saying that we cannot have ID requirements for access to social media sites because not everybody has ID. It seems they say one thing from one Department and another thing from another Department.

The reality is that requirements for ID discriminate against some groups more than others. Concerns have been raised from across the House and from charities and campaigning organisations that disabled people, older people, younger people and people without the spare cash to buy that passport or driving licence are going to be disenfranchised.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is no such thing as a free service? If local councils are indeed going to be providing voter ID, it will be at public expense. The £120 million that is due to be spent on that could be better spent on voter registration and boosting turnout rather than a disproportionate attempt to control the voting of a minority of people.

[Cat Smith]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. In fact, the Bill contains no details about how local authorities are going to roll out this so-called voter ID, which, as she points out, is not free: it will cost the taxpayer money. This is an expensive waste of taxpayers’ money trying to look for a problem to solve.

We know fine well that voter ID will be an additional barrier for voters. It will be an additional barrier even for the voters that have the relevant ID, because they have to remember to take it with them. We are all Members of Parliament—we all go out and campaign—and we know fine well that sometimes on a wet and rainy Thursday it is awfully difficult to get voters down to the polling station. We should be making sure that our elections take place on public holidays. We should be exploring the idea of weekend voting. We should be looking at ways of modernising our democracy for the 21st century. This Elections Bill does nothing to modernise and everything to put barriers up to participation. The 160 pages of this Bill were written during a global pandemic. At a time when our doctors and nurses were in our hospitals wearing bin bags because of a lack of personal protection equipment, this Government were drawing up legislation to put barriers up to democracy, wasting taxpayers’ money on expensive policies designed to benefit the Conservative party.

[Jonathan Edwards]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Member for giving way. Does she agree that it is important not just to look at the Bill in isolation? When we add it to things such as the boundary review and the scrapping of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, those of us who are cynically minded see a plan to skew the next election.

--- Later in debate ---

[Cat Smith]

The hon. Member is absolutely right: this Bill cannot be seen in isolation. Indeed, the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill is before the House currently and allows the Government to decide when an election is held. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill restricts the right to protest. We have to see the Elections Bill in the round and recognise that pieces of legislation are coming one after another. It shows that this Government are scared of transparency and scared of accountability.

Frankly, in the time of a pandemic, it is disappointing that the Government are spending time to restrict democracy and not making sure that we have the support we need for our young people to recover or that we are dealing with the crisis in adult social care. There is so much more that this Government should be getting on with doing, but instead we have this 160-page Bill that restricts democracy and rigs elections in favour of the Conservative party, and it is an absolute disgrace.

Turning to the voter ID part of the legislation, the pilots that took place in 2019 were in just 10 local authority areas in England. This is a UK-wide policy; that is not a reasonable look at the country. The type of voter ID that the Government wish to bring in was trialled in only one of those 10 areas: only in Woking has it been trialled. The Government have the idea of rolling out a policy that could disenfranchise 3.5 million people having only piloted it in Woking. They have the confidence to think it will work across the whole United Kingdom. I believe it is reckless and disenfranchising.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Cat Smith]

The right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) has been trying to get in for some time; I will give way to him.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am most grateful to the hon. Lady; she is always extremely generous. Does she completely disregard the recommendations of the OSCE that identification at ballots is an important part of the security of the ballot? That is an internationally recommended part of the electoral process. Does she completely dismiss that recommendation?

[Cat Smith]

It is a pleasure to see the right hon. Member in his place, and it is always a pleasure to debate these issues with him in very many forums. The OSCE recommendations are designed to give broad brushstrokes around the global issues of democracy. It is true that some countries require ID at polling stations, but they are countries with a national ID card. We do not have a national ID card in this country. It is not part of our culture and I would certainly oppose it, were it proposed. In fact, I believe that the Prime Minister said that if he were ever asked to produce an ID card, he would eat it. I think there is probably consensus that we are not seeking a national ID card, which is why it is so surprising that this piece of legislation requires ID to exercise the basic fundamental human right of voting in a democratic country.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Cat Smith]

This is my final point on this, and then I will give way. There is currently a case before the Supreme Court, brought by Mr Neil Coughlan, who is challenging the legality of the pilot trials. That case is not due to be heard until 15 February next year. If the judge makes any rulings from which we could learn something, it will be too late for this piece of legislation. I suggest to the Government that their attempts to rush this Bill through before we hear from the Supreme Court is reckless.

There is nothing in the Bill about how local authorities are meant to be administering the ID. Frankly, Ministers are living in an alternative reality, where they seem to believe that people are constantly trying to impersonate their neighbours to steal a single vote. I just think that is utterly bizarre. There have been four cases of voter impersonation fraud in the past 10 years. That is from 243 million votes cast. To put that in context, someone is more likely to be struck by lightning three times.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I take it that the hon. Member is referring to successful prosecutions, but one of the problems is that people are not prosecuted when they ought to be. I made a speech on 19 December 2019—I am sure she has pored over every word of it—in which I pointed out that election officials in Wycombe are not holding people to account even they are walking into a polling station repeatedly in comedy disguises, doing things like changing their glasses, changing their hat, putting sunglasses on, wearing a different coat or whatever. They are not being prosecuted, and that is the problem.

[Cat Smith]

It appears to be all happening in Wycombe. I believe that I was there for the hon. Gentleman’s speech, and I know he takes a keen interest in this issue, so he will know well that where there are widespread examples of voter personation, which is a serious crime, it should be tackled. That is why the law is different in Northern Ireland, where there was a culture of organised crime and gangs stealing hundreds of votes through personation at polling stations; that was legislated against. There is no evidence of that in England, Scotland and Wales, so legislation is not needed. Where there are examples of voter personation, it is right and proper that it is tackled, but as there are not such examples, the Bill is just legislation that puts up another barrier to legitimate voters’ ability to vote.

In the voter trial areas, which were in just a handful of local authorities, we know that 700 voters at local elections who were turned away did not return to use their vote. Given the tiny numbers of accusations of voter personation and the huge numbers of people who were turned away because they did not have ID, we know that the Bill will disproportionately disenfranchise legitimate voters.

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Thank you for your generosity and time. You said clearly that you think the proposal to introduce voter ID is an attempt to rig elections. Is that why the Labour party requires voter ID to vote in local party gatherings and has a long history of that? Have you attempted to rig your own elections?

--- Later in debate ---

[Cat Smith]

I reassure the hon. Member that I have been a member of the Labour party since 2004—a relatively active member—and I have never been asked to show ID at any meetings. Even if I was asked, I would say that political parties are membership organisations—we know that members are often expelled from political parties, as it often hits the headlines—but the right to vote in elections in a democracy is a fundamental human right. That is slightly different from being a member of a political party.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

Is the hon. Member as concerned as I am that comparisons from other countries show that voter ID requirements disproportionately affect voters from ethnic minority backgrounds?

[Cat Smith]

The hon. Lady makes a good point and is absolutely right. Studies from the United States show that voters from black and Hispanic backgrounds are disproportionally affected by requirements to show ID. Indeed, there are many similarities between the repressive voter suppression laws in some US states and this legislation. I believe that in Texas a voter can show their gun licence to vote but they cannot show a student ID, and in the Bill student ID is not a valid piece of identification but a bus pass is valid. It seems that one type of ID is more valuable than another, and it seems that the type of person likely to hold that ID is very much considered when drawing up the acceptable list.

I turn to changes to the regulation of the Electoral Commission, which seem to be political interference in the regulation of our elections. There is no doubt that the Government’s setting the strategy and policy document for the Electoral Commission is a dangerous precedent. When we look to similar democracies such as Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, we see a complete separation between Government and their electoral commissions. Indeed, at this morning’s meeting of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, Helen Mountfield, QC, a barrister at Matrix chambers, said that the Bill arguably breaches international law and that the removal of the Electoral Commission’s independence is “legally problematic” and breaches the UK’s constitutional standards. To be blunt, we would not allow, say, an arsonist to decide the fire brigade’s strategy and policy direction, and we certainly would not let shoplifters decide the police’s strategy and policy direction. It therefore seems a little bit odd that when it comes to regulating political parties, some parties—those in government—seem to have an awful lot of power to decide the strategy and policy direction of that.

On the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, this is a Committee that already has an in-built Government majority, and the legislation seeks to strengthen and increase that majority. If we saw this happening in any other democracy around the world, I do not think we would sit back and say that that looked okay. It does not look okay—it does not pass the sniff test—and that bit needs to be changed.

The Bill is riddled with cheap attempts to dodge scrutiny. That seems to be the theme that runs throughout this legislation. In a free and open democracy, democratically elected Governments are scrutinised by opposition parties and civil society. That is part of what makes democracy healthy, and the freedom for civil society to do this and to hold those in power to account is the sign of a strong democracy. This Bill is an attack on some parties more than others, and I would say that the attack on the trade unions—the 6 million people who are members of trade unions—is an attack on all working people’s rights to campaign for fair pay at work and health and safety in the workplace, and it is actually an attack on the people who have got our country through the pandemic.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am really grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way because this piece of legislation is alienating civil society. In particular, charities are really concerned about the measures in this Bill because it is going to have a chilling effect on their campaigning, but most of all push them into having bureaucratic reporting processes. Does she agree that these parts of the Bill need removing?

[Cat Smith]

I agree entirely. Trade unions are already incredibly heavily regulated, and charities will feel stifled and gagged by the legislation before us.

Finally, I want to turn to what the Government are calling the so-called votes for life section of the Bill. Indeed, if we wish to expand the franchise, I would very much support the Government if they wanted to extend the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds. However, it appears that, at one fell swoop, we seem to be advancing more rights to people who do not live in this country than to people who do live in this country.

There is nothing in this Bill that actually helps overseas electors get their ballots back in time. One of the complaints I have heard most from overseas electors is that they do not get their ballot papers in time and cannot get them returned to the UK in time for their votes to count. There is nothing in this Bill that explores the many different options of using modern technology to speed up this process to make sure that overseas electors currently registered under current legislation can actually use their vote. Instead, the motivation behind the change to remove the 15-year limit is about creating a loophole in donation law, and it will give rich Conservative donors unlimited access to our democracy in allowing them to bankroll the Tory party.

I look forward to the Committee stage of this Bill, and I cannot wait to get into the detail of the clauses in Committee with the Minister, but I shall finish by saying that I do believe this Bill tarnishes our democracy. It is an opportunity missed—an opportunity to modernise our electoral law, put it into one piece of legislation and make it fit for the 21sst century, and to use £120 million to encourage voter participation instead of putting up barriers. The Labour party will therefore be voting against this legislation today. I hope that all Members in this House will consider the implications for their own constituents, and I commend the reasoned amendment in my name and the names of others.

Oral Answers to Questions

Cat Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am only too happy to meet my hon. Friend at any time. I can assure her that we want to find the workforce to pick the flowers—the beautiful Cornish daffodils—that should not be “born to blush unseen”, if I remember the quote right. They should be properly picked. In addition to developing the local labour force, and making sure that we line up younger people and people across Cornwall with the opportunities that there are, she must not forget that, thanks to the EU settlement scheme, there are 6 million EU nationals still entitled to live and work in this country, who have taken advantage of that scheme. Never let it be said that we have done an injustice to that group.

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

Local residents in Lancaster are opposing the conversion of a popular local pub, the Britannia, into a 10-bedroom student let. The Housing Secretary says that the current planning system does not give people influence over local developments, but his party’s developers’ charter gags local residents and hands power to a Whitehall-appointed board of developers, resulting in low quality, unaffordable housing. Is it not the case that the Prime Minister is paying back his party of developer paymasters by selling out local communities?

[The Prime Minister]

I do not think that I have heard such total cobblers in all my life, except possibly from the Leader of the Opposition. That is not what the Bill does. On the contrary, it gives local people the power to protect.

If I understood the hon. Lady correctly, it was a pub called the Britannia that she wanted to protect. We are bringing forward measures to allow local people to protect such places of vital local importance. When it comes to development, the power remains vested firmly with local people, to make sure that they protect their green spaces and the green belt, and they have development only in the places where they, the local people, want it.