Voter ID

Chris Clarkson Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Chris Clarkson (Heywood and Middleton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary, and to follow the hon. Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins), although I have to politely disagree with some of her assertions.

In this country and most true democracies, the right to exercise the franchise is one of the most important symbols of the state as servant not master. Once every four or five years, voters go to the polls and give their verdict on the policies, commitments and ideals that they think will best suit their ambitions and hopes for where they live. It is a marvellous privilege, and we should not forget that there are still many places where people are denied that right.

Worst are those that go through the motions with an attempt to legitimise often ruthless, cruel and oppressive regimes through a veneer of respectability, in a charade of an election where every ballot box will be stuffed and every vote for the regime or junta in charge counted at least twice. That is why it is so important that our own democratic process is utterly unimpeachable. When we seek to bring the virtues of liberal open democracy to the rest of the world and promote our values, we cannot turn a blind eye to fraud and corruption at home. I do not need to look too far from my own constituency for examples of where that has already happened.

In Rochdale, a sitting Labour councillor who was serving as a member of the executive was caught voting twice in a local election. He accepted a caution from the police after claiming ignorance of the rules. This was a senior councillor who was still sitting on Rochdale Borough Council.

The rules should be clear and properly enforced. The idea of taking ID to the polling station is not a radical one. In fact, it is quite common around the world. Unless we are seriously saying in this debate that countries such as Germany, France and Canada are failed states or oppressive regimes, it could just be that we are the international outlier. I can speak only from my own experience, but on more than one occasion when I have been canvassing I have been asked by somebody whether they need to take their polling card with them to the polls, and on more than one occasion when I have been outside telling, I have been handed a polling card because people legitimately assume that they have to prove who they are when they go to vote. When told that they do not need to, many of them say, “You should probably do something about that.”

The idea is not even new to the UK. Voters in Northern Ireland have been providing proof of their identity since the 1980s, with no difficulty in the smooth running of elections. As long as there is access to a free recognisable form of photo identification that identifies that a person is eligible to vote and, more importantly, eligible to vote where they are attempting to, there should be no adverse effect on participation. It is even reasonable to assume that increased confidence in the integrity of our elections could encourage some of those who abstain to re-engage with the democratic process.

Voter suppression is a vile and unconscionable act, and accusations of it being levelled without a good faith basis are scurrilous and unbecoming. Voter fraud is sinister, and we have evidence of it already. A simple change requiring additional checks at the polls will go a long way to bolstering our political process, and we should, in short, welcome it.