Postal Voting

Gareth Snell Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 20th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I rise to speak against the Bill and its contents. First, though, before I am misrepresented, let me be absolutely clear that electoral fraud is a serious crime and should be taken seriously. It is important that police forces throughout the country have the resources necessary to bring about prosecutions when such fraud takes place. Along with my Opposition colleagues, I of course condemn any actions that seek to undermine the integrity of our democratic process.

As well intentioned as the Bill may be, regulation aimed at party campaigners through criminal law is not the answer. Moreover, the arguments put forward by the hon. Member for Southport (Damien Moore) overestimate the scale of the problem. The proposals in his Bill are an overreaction. Unfortunately, some Conservative Members have talked down our democracy with scaremongering stories of voter fraud. Stories of widespread voter abuse have been parroted by Tory MPs, not least by the hon. Member for North West Norfolk (Sir Henry Bellingham), whom I made aware that I would refer to him. On more than one occasion, he has attested to having evidence of multiple voting by students, but he has been unable to produce the evidence when it was requested of him.

Such stories have been used by the Conservative party to justify the piloting of restrictive identification requirements at the local government elections in May. The requirements will disproportionately affect communities with large numbers of old and disabled people and people from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities. Other regulations are being introduced for future metro mayor elections.

Voters across Bromley, Gosport, Swindon, Woking and Watford will be required to produce ID when they next go to cast their ballot. They will need a piece of photo ID, a piece of non-photo ID and their polling card—all that before being issued with a ballot paper. Those without the necessary ID will not be able to participate in the local elections. They will be denied their democratic entitlement.

One would think we were in the midst of an epidemic of widespread voter fraud, but nothing could be further from the truth. The Conservative party says that electoral fraud through voter impersonation doubled nationally between 2014 and 2016. Although the number of alleged cases of voter impersonation rose from a meagre 21 to a whopping 44, the total number of votes cast in those years rose from 29 million to 64 million in 2016.

The question is whether we need new laws to regulate how we and political parties campaign. I firmly believe that the answer is no. First, such matters are best handled by the Electoral Commission’s code of conduct for campaigners. The Electoral Commission is clear that campaigners should not be involved in the process of assisting other people to complete postal or proxy vote applications or handling postal ballot packs. The Labour party makes that very clear to our activists, and we have incorporated it into our existing code of conduct and disciplinary processes.

In a small number of instances, accessibility is improved by individual campaigners assisting people by returning their voting packs directly to the returning officer or to a polling station. That is particularly true for disabled and elderly voters, who are not provided with public assistance to complete absent votes and face low levels of access to polling stations. Indeed, according to Scope, at the 2010 general election, two thirds of polling stations had

“one or more significant access barriers”

to disabled voters. Leonard Cheshire Disability found that a quarter of the people with disabilities it surveyed found it difficult to vote in person at polling stations at the 2015 general election. My fear is that regulation would criminalise the helpful and prohibit assistance that is otherwise unavailable to those voters who need it.

Regulation of the sort suggested in the Bill would be difficult to enforce and breaches would be almost impossible to detect. It would put off honest campaigners without deterring the dishonest ones. That is not just my view, but a view shared by Alan Mabbutt, a current Conservative party board member, who said that regulations targeted at campaigners

“would do little to help. If a person is prepared to ignore the law on fraud and undue influence they would ignore laws here.”

Timothy Straker QC, a barrister who acts for the Electoral Commission, questioned the need for a criminal offence. He said that regulation would be

“unenforceable and would bring the law and the process into disrepute”.

The Electoral Commission has rightly raised the question of how we define “campaigner”. For instance, if I assist my neighbour in taking their postal vote to a polling station, am I suddenly subjected to the law that the hon. Member for Southport wishes to introduce? There is no accepted definition of “campaigner”. I understand why he wishes to codify that in his Bill, but there will always be exceptions and unanswered questions.

The Bill has many regulatory holes and too many unresolved questions. Although I do not intend to force a Division, I want my opposition and that of many of my colleagues to be formally recorded. The hon. Gentleman talked about new forms for polling staff. Like me, he has been a local authority councillor and will know that the people who man polling stations on polling day are of the highest quality and do not need a form to determine whether they understand when voter fraud is taking place. We are best leaving it to the Electoral Commission and the judgment of those staff who make those decisions on the day.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Damien Moore, Mr Simon Clarke, Vicky Ford, Eddie Hughes, Andrew Bowie, Giles Watling, Julia Lopez and Lee Rowley present the Bill.

Damien Moore accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the first time; to be read a second time on Friday 15 June, and to be printed (Bill 166).