Elections Bill (Eleventh sitting)

Debate between Fleur Anderson and Patrick Grady

Committee stage
Tuesday 26th October 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Fleur Anderson]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard.

Part 4 and its provisions are a brazen attack on our democracy. They will undermine the ability of civil society organisations, charities and trade unions to engage and campaign in our democracy—that is why they are so controversial. We need to spend additional time considering them, and I hope that all Committee members will take up our amendments, which are reasonable, represent an improvement and come very much from civil society.

The provisions in question will infringe the rights of working people to organise politically or campaign on pay or rights at work, and they risk silencing the very people who got our country through the pandemic. They are an unnecessary and disproportionate reaction. They will not add to the integrity of our elections, but only have a chilling effect on democracy.

In a free and open society, democratically elected Governments are scrutinised by Opposition parties and civil society, often campaigning on single issues. Part of what makes democracy healthy is the freedom for civil society to challenge those in power, which the Government are seeking to curtail with the clause and which we seek to amend with amendments 71 and 72.

The clause will allow a Cabinet Office Minister to define who may legally campaign at elections, giving them the power to amend or remove the types of organisations that are allowed to spend as little as £700 on election campaigning across the whole UK. It also doubles as the list of organisations that are allowed to register with the Electoral Commission and spend more than £10,000 at elections. The Minister may now be able to ban charities that are critical of Government cuts to foreign aid, ban local community groups protesting against planning reforms, ban unions that might work with a political party for workplace rights, and ban anyone convicted of a public order offence. In conjunction with the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which makes it much easier to criminalise protesters—even a protest involving one person—this would disproportionately impact on the Government’s most vocal and active opposition, who may have already been criminalised for protesting. That is a terrifying prospect and, as far as I can see, quite unprecedented.

The Bill is not about influence. It is a way for the Government to stifle their critics before elections and cripple them during elections. Giving the Government such power over their opposition during elections is completely at odds with free and fair elections. It is deeply inappropriate and offensive to our democratic tradition. Unions and other campaign organisations have a right to engage in our democracy and already face a highly regulated landscape, which is why the clause is unnecessary.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

The hon. Lady says this is the Government stifling their opposition. Actually, civil society, trade unions and charitable organisations are all our opposition, because they put equal pressure on all candidates and parties that stand in an election, as they want to achieve policy change. Obviously, some organisations are more closely affiliated with political parties than others are, but many of them are party-neutral in that sense, because they want to drive a policy change rather than see one party be successful in any given constituency or general election.

[Fleur Anderson]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. It is a range of political opinions and opinions about different issues that are not necessarily the main bread and butter of political parties, but which are so vital, especially in an election time, when we are talking about the future of such a wide range of policy decisions that are about to be made on behalf of the electorate. Unless we accept the amendment, we face the risk of some groups, individuals, community organisations and single-issue campaigns being unnecessarily banned from taking part in the electoral process. There will be scandals ahead unless we accept the amendment.

Labour’s amendments 71 and 72 seek to temper the clause. Amendment 71 will delete the unprecedented and dangerous powers to remove categories of permitted campaigners while respecting the Government’s stated intention to future-proof electoral law by allowing the addition of novel categories of campaigner. It is flexible and can still respond to new issues and campaigns as we go forward, but it does not have the draconian and heavy-handed influence of only the Minister choosing who is on the list. Amendment 72 requires the Government to obtain the recommendation of the Electoral Commission before removing or varying categories of permitted campaigner, and I hope all Members will agree that it is a very reasonable amendment.

Both amendments are necessary to prevent a Minister from having the unprecedented ability to interfere in a free and fair election. They also have significant civil society support, including from Bond—British Overseas NGOs for Development—which represents over 400 organisations, ranging from small specialist charities to large, international non-governmental organisations. It has many supporters in all our constituencies, with a worldwide presence, and believes that:

“This is an extremely broad power which could be open to abuse by future governments.”

I would add that it could be open to abuse by the current Government. Bond has urged that it be amended, and so do I.

--- Later in debate ---

[Patrick Grady]

The Minister said in her previous speech that the measure was partly intended to avoid a situation arising comparable to the US super-PACs that spend millions of dollars with very little regulation. It is impossible under current UK electoral law for a situation anything like that to arise in this country. The notion that small local charities that want to lobby their local candidates to stop the closure of a swimming pool, a school or a library are somehow comparable to the dark money seen in other parts of the world, which has been reported as potentially having an increasing impact in this part of the world, is completely extreme.

It is not impossible that there will be a general election in February 2022, because as the Minister has admitted, the Prime Minister will have that option when the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 is finally repealed. As soon as that happens, the next election campaign will effectively start, which is delightful for all of us because of the rare snap elections that we have experienced twice in the last three years.

Under the terms of the clause, if an election came that early it might be the case that some organisations would have already reached the threshold without knowing it, not least because they are in the process of holding us to account for pledges that we made in 2019 that they have not had much opportunity to lobby on. Organisations that are organising a big lobby day—there are several coming up—that involve a lot of logistics such as the hire of the hall and the transportation of people, and that are related to pledges that Members may have made at a general election and therefore could reach the threshold, may find that they are already in breach without knowing it.

It is an awkward clause that relates to the overall package of reform that the Government are bringing in through the Bills that we have mentioned throughout the progress of this Bill, including the repeal of the 2011 Act, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, and the other aspects of electoral and political law that are being amended. The Minister is falling back on the idea that it affects everyone, but that does not really answer that point. In a sense, it does affect all of us and we may already be in the run-up to a general election campaign but we just do not know because of the power grab that is being exercised by the Conservative Government, of which this clause is another example.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 24 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 25

Joint campaigning by registered parties and third parties

[Fleur Anderson]

I beg to move amendment 74, in clause 25, page 36, line 19, at end insert—

‘(2A) In section 85(2) of PPERA, after “incurred”, insert “(in the case of a parliamentary election only after the date of the election has been set or fixed)”.’

This amendment would limit regulated periods for UK Parliamentary General Elections to the period between the announcement of the election and the close of polls.

Clause 25 is about joint campaigning by registered parties and third parties and sets up the necessary amendment to have joint plans registered by those registered parties and joint parties when they are campaigning together. It clearly focuses mainly on suppressing the unions’ ability to campaign with parties. The Opposition oppose clause 25 in its entirety, as I will come to later.

On amendment 74, we have just been talking about deadlines and dates and how, if there is confusion about who can campaign, there is confusion about what has to be registered financially and who that has to be registered with. Then there is a lot of red tape. On top of that, there is confusion about the dates and the period that we are in: is it an election time or not? That will all, jointly, have a huge suppression effect on campaigning, which is the lifeblood of our elections and our free and democratic society.

Elections Bill (Seventh sitting)

Debate between Fleur Anderson and Patrick Grady

Committee stage
Tuesday 19th October 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Patrick Grady]

I do beg your pardon—it was the hon. Member for Peterborough. They will need to fix the lighting for the next round of parliamentary photographs. I do apologise, but the point stands that it is an experience that we have all had. We knock on the door and people say, “I’ve lost my poll card. How can I vote now?”. Currently, we can reassure them by saying, “You don’t need your poll card. Simply identify who you are and your name will be ticked off the list.” That shows the attachment that people have to their poll card. A lot of people think that their poll card is required as a form of ID to vote. As campaigners standing at polling stations, we see people turning up to vote and bringing their poll card with them because of the attachment that they have to it as a document. It helps to inspire their right to vote, so in that sense it works in both directions.

Now when we are on the doorstep, we will have to say to voters, “You need to bring a form of identification with you to vote.” Under the schedule, that has to be a particular form of voter identification. If we were able to say, “You’ve got your poll card. That’s great. You can take that down. That will verify your identity and you’ll be able to take part in the poll,” that would make it even easier for people to comply with the legislation that is under consideration.

On the notion that people could go around harvesting poll cards from university dockets—not to go back to the original clause, Sir Edward—we have heard that instances of that are extremely few. It is already a crime. If someone turns up with more than one poll card, that is personation. I have every faith that in our current electoral system, individual polling clerks will realise, if a voter turns up with two cards, that they are only one person, and they will not be allowed to cast two votes. They would there and then be done, and were it determined that a candidate had been responsible for encouraging them to do that, the candidate would be disqualified from the election.

The amendment, and those that we will discuss shortly, would help as many people as possible to comply with the new requirement that people have a form of identification in order to cast their vote. Opposition Members are trying to expand people’s opportunities to comply with that requirement, and the Government’s opposing it demonstrates what the real intent is behind the clause and the Bill as a whole, which is to make it more difficult for people to vote, which is a dangerous route to go down.

[Fleur Anderson]

I echo your words, Sir Edward, and those of the Minister, about Sir David Amess. I send my sincere condolences to his family, his staff and his constituents. We all feel his loss greatly. Sir David chaired many debates that I took part in. As a new MP, I do not know an enormous number of MPs, but I felt that I knew Sir David, so that was the measure of him.

I am disappointed that the Government will not accept the amendment, but I urge the Minister to please look into and assess the impact on voting when the Bill comes into force. It will have a big impact. Can we please continue with the pilot so that we can assess the impact of not being able to use a polling card, and keep the door open to make sure that there is the potential for everyone to vote by using a polling card?

Question put, That the amendment be made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Patrick Grady]

I am sorry—they absolutely could not. First, I do not accept the force of the previous argument, although I accept the Committee’s decision to reject the amendment. Secondly, there is no way that someone from the same household could turn up because, by definition, they would be voting at the same polling station with the same polling clerks and with the same party candidates and activists standing outside. If one person turned up with two birth certificates, utility bills or whatever, that would be a clear case of personation. I have sufficient confidence in the integrity of our current system to trust the poll clerks on duty in a station to identify that same person from the same household trying to vote on behalf of two people.

I find it slightly ironic that my parliamentary pass, issued to me by the House of Commons on account of my being elected three times by the electors of Glasgow North, lets me get on a plane, and I can cast votes on legislation with it, but I do not think it is good enough to vote in a general election under the Bill. I am therefore happy to support the Labour party’s amendments.

[Fleur Anderson]

We would like to press the group of amendments to a vote, if it is possible to vote for them together.

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[Kemi Badenoch]

We believe that the amendment is unnecessary. The Bill already outlines that there must be three evaluations of the effect of a requirement to show identification on voting, and those will consider the effect of the new policy on electors’ applications for a ballot paper. Committing to further evaluations annually and in perpetuity would be disproportionate and an inappropriate use of taxpayers’ money.

The Government will consider how best to gather information relating to the impact of the policy on all parts of the electorate. Although some data will be collected at polling stations under new rule 40B, and used for evaluations, it is important to note that it would be inappropriate to collect information on protected characteristics at the polling station directly. Electors would not expect to have to answer questions about their race, sexual orientation or gender identity before receiving their ballot and might not feel comfortable doing so. We will consider how best to gather that information without such intrusion.

[Patrick Grady]

This is a very reasonable request from the Opposition. One of the most robust evidence sessions we had was when we discussed the impact of the Bill on minority groups and people with protected characteristics. I would have thought it would be in the Government’s interests to try to gather evidence to show the minimal impact—or indeed the positive impact—they expect the Bill and the requirement to show voter identification at the polls will have on those groups.

The Labour party makes a perfectly reasonable request. As the Minister said, there is already a certain amount of evaluation built into the Bill; an additional round of evaluation is not going to cause too much difficulty. No one is suggesting that people should be quizzed before the ballot box. There are perfectly acceptable and valid ways to conduct research, at academic or Government level, without having to put people under pressure at the moment they are carrying out their votes. We have seen some of that research already, as some of it was commissioned to help inform the Bill. The Opposition are entitled to make the points they have and can expect our support if they push the matter to a vote.

[Fleur Anderson]

This is the third Public Bill Committee I have taken part in, and no amendment has yet been accepted. I tabled 200 amendments to the Environment Bill. Hoping against hope, even when I stood up for the last time to speak to the 200th amendment, I thought that might be the one to be accepted. What is the point of sitting in Committee, going through a Bill line by line, for the Minister to say, “Don’t worry—we are going to look into this”?

There are ways to find out the impact on different parts of the electorate. There are definitely ways to find out the impact very quickly after an election, so that we can learn as we go on and prepare for the next election. I am very disappointed that this measure will not be taken up. It leaves the electorate wondering what the Government have to hide.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fleur Anderson]

We will vote to remove the requirement for the reapplication for postal voting every three years and return to the status quo of postal votes lasting an indefinite period, because we believe that the requirement is disproportionate, costly and confusing. We strongly oppose moves to force those using a postal vote to reapply.

Clause 2 is another Government provision that has left me scratching my head and very concerned. These pointless changes will make the process of voting more complex and bureaucratic, forcing lifetime postal voters to reapply every three years. The Minister may think that mandating re-registration every three years is making our electoral system more secure from postal vote fraud, but that is mistaken and based on flawed assumptions about where postal vote fraud is happening. It is at variance from what we heard in evidence.

In evidence, we heard about the highly concerning case of postal vote fraud in the 2004 local elections in Birmingham. However, the main concerns raised by the commissioner included the deadline for postal voting packs being close to the election—six working days before—and the lack of checks on whether applications were made by the named voter, which made it difficult to detect fraud. Clause 2 does not address that.

Following that case, the Electoral Commission made a number of recommendations, including using personal identifiers for postal votes, moving the deadline for applications from six to 11 working days before polling day and making falsely applying for a postal vote an offence. The Electoral Administration Act 2006 was passed by the Labour Government in response to criticisms and has addressed a number of those concerns already, including a system of personal identifiers for postal ballots. What is the evidence that clause 2 will address the postal fraud that has been identified in the cases about which we have heard? The measure is not based on good evidence.

The second thing we are deeply concerned about is that the changes will reduce flexibility for voters and risk imposing yet another barrier to voting, which damages our democracy. Ministers should direct their energy towards changes that make voting easier, not putting up barriers. The change will suppress voting and erase the positive improvement in postal voting seen during the pandemic. It is unnecessarily bureaucratic.

We have seen a gradual rise in the use of postal voting over recent years, as an easy and flexible alternative for those who prefer not to visit the polls in person, even more so during the pandemic. In 2001, 1.8 million postal votes were issued; in 2012, 6.3 million; and at the last general election in 2019, 7.3 million postal votes were issued. As has been mentioned, in his review, Lord Pickles concluded that

“the availability of postal voting encourages many legitimate electors to use their vote effectively”.

But forcing people to keep reregistering so frequently—too frequently—could risk disenfranchising people who are not aware until it is too late that the rules are changing and that they need to reapply for their postal vote, when they have only had to do it once before. Changing the rules is confusing.

We oppose moves to change the law to limit who can hand in postal votes at polling stations. That change could create barriers for some voters who genuinely need assistance. My other concern is the sheer cost; as we mentioned, the Cabinet Office’s own impact assessment published with the Bill estimates the cost of the new requirement for postal voters to register every three years rather than five at between £6 million and £15 million. This will cost millions of pounds, and do we even need it? That estimate is in addition to existing costs and is based just on the cost of sending out the additional letters, let alone the extra administration and advertising costs. Can the Minister explain how she will pay for those additional costs?

There is also a capacity issue for local councils. It will inevitably prove hugely burdensome on local authority election teams, who are already overburdened and under-resourced. The Association of Electoral Administrators agrees with that assessment. It believes that reapplying for a postal vote every three years rather than five will bring an “additional burden to Electoral Registration Officers, creating more regular peaks of demand.”

There is the confusion between different election systems in the devolved nations Currently, neither Scotland nor Wales has diverged from existing legislation on postal voting. Postal votes on demand are available indefinitely, as they currently are in England, and signature refreshes are also required every five years. If the current measures in the Bill are approved, a complex, messy system of divergent requirements for different sets of elections will be created. I cannot imagine having to explain that multiple times on the doorstep, and for councils to have to explain that: one local election will be like this, but a general election will be like that. It will be very confusing.

Confusion stops people voting and gets in the way of our democracy. For instance, someone who has chosen to vote by post permanently in Scotland and Wales will be required to reapply every three years for their postal votes for the UK parliamentary elections, and will also separately be required to refresh their signature for postal votes in devolved elections every five years. It will create a huge administrative and bureaucratic nightmare that will be highly confusing for voters, who do not look in as much detail as we do at postal votes and when to sign for them and apply for them. I have yet to hear the Minister’s solution to that, and I hope to hear it now.

The clauses are pointless and arbitrary; they will not achieve what the Government is setting out to achieve. As usual in the Bill, they are disproportionate. There is very little evidence that they are necessary. They will hit the already disenfranchised the hardest. They will cost the taxpayer millions of pounds, pile the pressure on our already overstretched electoral staff and conflict with the frontline service delivery of our local councils. I urge colleagues not to let the clauses stand.

[Patrick Grady]

I will echo many of the hon. Lady’s points. The renewal of a postal vote comes up on an annual basis when the check of who is registered at the household comes through the post. It indicates whether electors are postal voters. If they wanted to change at that point, the opportunity would be there. But the Bill is putting on a separate new requirement. When a voter moves house, a fresh check is done—I know that from recent personal experience. When a voter moves house, they are asked to reapply for a postal vote at their new address.

The move to expand postal voting over the years has undoubtedly helped to increase turnout and participation. The Labour spokesperson explained that, where there have been difficulties, measures have been taken to stop them. That is not an argument to make it more difficult in general for people to apply for and exercise the right to vote by post.

The point about the risk of procedural complication is particularly acute. There is an interesting question about why the renewal has been set for every three years rather than every two, four or five years. Maybe the Minister can explain the evidence base for that when summing up, because that would help to align it with the parliamentary cycle of elections, although there is no cycle of elections at the moment—they are just happening on an almost annual basis. The effect of that is the real risk of someone who thinks they are registered for a postal vote actually being caught out because their postal vote expires while they are away for whatever reason has already inspired them to apply for a postal vote. They may then find that yet another snap election has been called and they are left effectively disenfranchised.

I echo the point about divergence across the United Kingdom. My hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute and I have no problem with divergence. We have a solution to people in Scotland getting confused about voting in Westminster elections, which is to stop that from happening and for Scotland to be an independent country. If Members on the other side of the House and indeed our good friends on the Labour Front Bench do not want that to happen, perhaps they need to think about the divergence and different franchises that are being established across the United Kingdom, and about the different voting systems and the increase in differences. Quite how that makes a case for a strong and stable Union—well, it is not a case for me to make. We fully support the Labour party in opposing this clause and I look forward to hearing how the Minister responds to the points.

Elections Bill (Sixth sitting)

Debate between Fleur Anderson and Patrick Grady

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Patrick Grady]

This is an incredibly valuable amendment, and the hon. Lady can be sure of the SNP’s support if she presses it to a vote. We have seen in recent months the Government handing out private contracts in a quite relaxed way to people they are particularly friendly with. That is absolutely the last thing we would want to see happen in the production of voter ID cards.

[Fleur Anderson]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. Trust in outsourcing has recently been shaken among the electorate and constituents. Building it into the Bill would be a mistake.

The voter ID card will be an individual’s ticket to democratic participation, which is their voice; it is sacrosanct. It is therefore a process that the Government and the public sector must retain control of. Otherwise, we risk undermining trust in the entire system.

Elections Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Fleur Anderson and Patrick Grady

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Patrick Grady]

There is a bit of a challenge. People do get put off by long queues. Under social distancing in Scotland, the queues were even longer and it was taking even longer to vote. I commend people who are prepared to wait, but imagine the frustration of someone who has waited all that time in a queue and then finds out that they do not have a valid ID, or they thought it was in their pocket, but it turns out it was not, and there is no provision to even cast a provisional ballot, which we may get on to later.

The system that exists just now, pre this Bill, is the system that got us elected. There is a real danger that what is going on here is undermining the confidence in that system. If confidence in the system is undermined, people will simply not turn out at all, irrespective of whether they have a voter identification. They will sit on their hands and say, “You’re all the same—a plague on all your houses! My vote doesn’t make a difference,” and they will not turn out at all.

[Fleur Anderson]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s concern that this is a disproportionate Bill and that it will stop people turning out—they will just sit on their hands. We will not know whether they have gone or not. From the research we have on the pilots, there was an indication of a real disparity between different areas, age groups and other groups in terms of the inclination, or disinclination, even to go and vote. For example, in Woking nearly all electors said it would be easy to access ID and they would trundle down with it easily, but in Pendle only seven in 10 people said it would be easy to access. For non-voters, only 88% of people said they would find it easy; for those who vote, it is 95%. That is a real disparity. White electors were more likely than BME electors to think it would be easy to find identification for future elections, by 92% to 87%—another huge disparity. Younger electors, too, were less likely to say they would find it easy to access identification for future elections: 84% for 18 to 34-year-olds, compared with 93% for 35 to 54-year-olds. As a mum of adult children who should be allowed to vote but often cannot find their ID, I agree with the differences there are between different parts of the electorate.

[Patrick Grady]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right, and it is interesting that we have not heard more about the detail of those pilots from the Government. They were their own pilots—it was the Government who ran them. They seem happy to pick up evidence of electoral malpractice in any areas that cause them concern, but less interested in picking up the outcomes from the pilots that they themselves commissioned.

As the hon. Lady mentioned some of the disparities in terms of voting ID, I will pay tribute to Maurice Mcleod, who gave very impressive evidence to the Committee under the most sustained and pressured questioning of any of the witnesses we heard from. He said, and he was quoting the Government’s own data, that

“while 76% of white people hold a form of relevant photo ID, such as a driver’s license or a passport, when it comes to black people, about half do: 47% do not hold one of those forms of ID.”––[Official Report, Elections Public Bill Committee, 16 September 2021; c. 89, Q134.]

The statistics the hon. Lady quotes from the pilots appear to be borne out by other evidence we have heard.

Elections Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Fleur Anderson and Patrick Grady

Committee stage
Thursday 16th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Patrick Grady]

Thank you. That is really helpful.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

Q Thank you, Mr Millar. It is a pleasure to see you this afternoon, and thank you for your evidence. Can I just ask about the relationship between this Bill and the European convention on human rights, particular the right to vote, obviously? Concerns have been expressed, for example by the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community, among others, that the Bill will reduce the ability to vote and will therefore contravene article 3 of the first protocol, which states that conditions imposed by the state must not curtail the rights in question in any way. Do you think that the voter ID scheme set out in the Bill is compatible with the European convention on human rights? Does it risk not being compatible? You have said that the law is unclear in some ways—is it unclear? If someone went to a polling station on election day without voter ID and was unable to get it, because the council was swamped by other such requests, and so they could not vote, could they then return to the European convention on human rights and say that their right to vote had been curtailed? Is that possible under the Bill? If there should be changes, what changes would you make?

Gavin Millar: This strand of convention law—by which I mean, whether a piece of domestic legislation is incompatible with the provisions of the convention—does not work on an individual case-by-case basis. It works on the basis that if you have to look at compatibility in a court case, it is at the impact of the domestic rule of law—here, the voter ID provision—across the piece and the whole of the electoral system in the contracting party.

Is the impact of that legislative provision one that can be justified as being compatible with the convention? The convention—Strasbourg—has its own internal set of rules for saying what is and is not compatible. Very few rights are absolute, which is why you can have laws that prevent certain people—criminals and so on—from voting for a period, but to be compatible with the convention they have to be justifiable, in the sense of achieving a legitimate aim, one that is legitimate in that country for that political system and that voting system. It has to be a proportionate means of achieving that aim.

The question here—I accept that it would be assessed by the impact on individual groups of people, such as the Roma, whom you mentioned, but it would be much broader than that—is, if you try to justify what the Government are proposing to do across the electoral system as a whole, can it be justified as meeting a legitimate aim? Is there a problem that is so bad that it needs addressing in this system in this way? Is this a crude or a proportionate way of addressing it? The problem I have with clause 1 is that I cannot see the problem and, even if there is a problem, I cannot see that this is a targeted and proportionate way of addressing it, because it would just sweep out of the franchise somebody who did not happen to have a card or voter ID but was properly on the electoral register and entitled to vote when they turned up.

Why do I say that there is not a problem? You are all politicians, you have been elected and you know how this works, but you may not have looked at this from the point of view of an election lawyer, a criminal lawyer or someone looking at election fraud, which for my sins I have spent a lot of time doing for the past 20 years. The sort of fraud we are talking about here is called “personation” under the RPA. It is an electoral offence—it is impersonation, but misses off the “im” in the statutory historical categorisation. Personation is A turning up at the polling station pretending to be B, who is validly on the register.

It is not a problem of any great consequence in our system, and I speak from experience. Personation cases are almost non-existent. There are reasons why it is not a problem. First of all, it is extremely risky for anyone to try that. You are liable to be caught because somebody spots you and knows you are not that person. It is also ineffective because there is the alternative possibility that that person turns up and votes later, or indeed has already voted and is marked off the register when you try to impersonate them. If you are going to do it, you have to be absolutely certain that the person is dead or is not going to come and vote, and that you will not be found out that way. It is also hugely inefficient compared with other forms of fraud that have been perpetrated, particularly since postal voting on demand. You have to get a range of people, or yourself, to go around different polling stations at different times in the day, and all you get out of each criminal offence you commit is one vote. It is just not efficient or effective as a fraud, so it does not happen.

As I understand it, this came from the 2014 Tower Hamlets mayoral election. There were a whole range of election offences pleaded in that case and looked at by the court. One of them involved some personation at polling stations, but it was not the core problem. If that were the reason we had got to this point, this would be an example of a hard case making very bad law, and I would counsel against that. The fraud that exists in our system, or has existed since 2000, that everybody has read about and knows about, is a very different type of election fraud. One possibility is what is called roll-stuffing in Australia, where you put additional voters on the register who are not entitled to vote in a concerted fraud before the election, and then vote in their name. You normally apply for a postal vote for those non-existent voters at a particular address, and you pick up the postal vote papers and you vote.

There are various other postal vote frauds that were recounted in the cases that have been cited. That form of fraud has been made much more difficult by Parliament and by the administrators because of the cases over the past 20 years, and there are less cases even of that form of fraud, but it is not a form of fraud that would be addressed by this piece of legislation, so what is the problem? What is it achieving? Why is this a proportionate way of addressing it? I have no answers to any of those questions, and of course in a situation where, by common estimates, we have something like 17% of eligible voters not on the register, one wonders why our efforts are not being concentrated on voter registration measures—getting more people on to the register and facilitating them in voting—rather than making it more difficult for them to do it by imposing this requirement, which we have never had.

I appreciate that advocates of the Bill will say, “It is not a lot to do, to get a piece of photo ID or have a piece of photo ID and bring it along to the polling station,” but we need only look at the Windrush scandal to see how many poor people and ordinary people in our society have difficulties with that sort of thing, not to mention disabled people and other discriminated-against groups who do not want to engage with obtaining this sort of identification, for fear that it will open them up to other scrutiny and investigation of an unjustifiable kind. It is wrong on every count, really.

To answer the question, yes, there will inevitably be challenges to this as incompatible with the European convention on human rights if it is introduced, and it seems to me that there is a strong case for doing that. The impact would be considerable, by all accounts—although somewhat unquantifiable—but I just have not seen the evidence that you would be required to produce at a judicial review or at a case in Strasbourg to justify this as an appropriate state interference with the right to vote.

Elections Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Fleur Anderson and Patrick Grady

Committee stage
Wednesday 15th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Fleur Anderson]

Q How many additional staff do you have?

Virginia McVea: During an election period, we could have around 70 additional staff. We have a core staff of 30. So you can see why, when there is no electoral purpose, we need that six-week turnaround. Most cards do not take that long, but we give ourselves that space. In an emergency, such as the death of a loved one, when someone needs to travel and has no other photographic ID, we will turn the card around in 24 hours. The standard is to allow ourselves six weeks, and it is the significant scaling-up of staff during electoral periods that allows us to turn around the ID cards so quickly.

[Patrick Grady]

Q This issue came up in an earlier question by one of our Labour colleagues, but I would like to ask Virginia to say a little more about the practical process of applying for the electoral ID card in Northern Ireland, and in particular what identification is needed to be issued with the voter ID card.

Virginia McVea: Many of the applications are done in person. We do ID clinics, where we take an image of the individual, and then they fill out an application form so that we can verify their data across the data sets in Northern Ireland. We work using date of birth, national insurance number and so on.

Elections Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Fleur Anderson and Patrick Grady

Wednesday 15th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Fleur Anderson]

[Patrick Grady]