Representation of the People Bill (Second sitting) Debate
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Lisa Smart
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Representation of the People Bill (Second sitting)
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Samantha Dixon
Q
David Marshall: They are very welcome indeed.
Cahir Hughes: To echo what David said, canvass reform is essential in Northern Ireland, so that measure is welcome. Automatic registration will also play a significant part in improving access to electoral services in Northern Ireland, and we are working closely with David on the practicalities of that.
David touched on the electoral administrative side of the Bill, as you would expect, but I want to highlight something in relation to the political finance side. The rules on political donations for registered political parties are slightly different in Northern Ireland, in that parties can accept donations from permissible Irish sources. The Bill says that that will continue, and that principle was enshrined in an agreement between the British and Irish Governments back in 2006, to allow Irish donors to give to parties here, in line with the Good Friday/Belfast agreement. Obviously, the secondary legislation will provide the detail on how this will operate in practice, but we can already see some difficulties in checking the permissibility of donations. For example, with company donations from a UK company, we can go on to Companies House and check the donation, as can the treasurer of a political party or the elected representative who is taking the donation.
Company registration in Ireland is very different, and it would therefore not be as straightforward to verify the true nature of a donation, if it comes from a company. Not only would that put the treasurer of a party in a difficult situation, but we as the regulator are also required to check 50% of the donations that are reported to us in Northern Ireland, so that will make compliance tricky for us. We wait to see the secondary legislation, but that is a concern for us in relation to the political finance aspects of the Bill.
Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) (LD)
Q
David Marshall: This is one of those changes that should probably have been brought in when photographic voter ID was introduced in Northern Ireland in 2002 But frankly, whenever it was brought in, calling out in polling stations was removed in Great Britain as part of the introduction of voter ID there. The Government have seen fit to make it equivalent across Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which I very much welcome. We have a system for personation called “photographic ID”, and we do not need another secondary system. If necessary, we can manage any issues or concerns in polling stations by talking to polling agents at that point.
Cahir Hughes: Historically, the link was made with polling agents. When photographic ID was introduced, polling agents thought that it was very important that they still had a role to identify personation. I suspect that the legacy issues in Northern Ireland and distrust between parties and communities may have played a part in that. However, as we have discussed, photographic ID is very well established in Northern Ireland, so people are familiar with it. It provides the level of security that you would expect in polling stations. Of course, polling agents will continue to be allowed in the polling station.
Katrina Murray (Cumbernauld and Kirkintilloch) (Lab)
Q
Cahir Hughes: We made the need for canvass reform very clear to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, as it is essential. We think that a significant amount of money is spent removing 1.4 million electors off the electoral register, only for them to ask to be put back on again. Canvass reform is essential for that not to happen in 2030, and we welcome that being addressed in the Bill, including by the provisions on automatic registration, which should make things easier for voters as well. I am sure that David will touch on this, but he has a rich source of data available to him to manage the electoral register and to get people on the register, which is very welcome.
The one thing not in the Bill—frankly, I was not expecting it to be—is the issue of co-option, which we flagged to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee. That is where elected Members in the Northern Ireland Assembly or those in a local council can be replaced through the co-option system when a vacancy arises. The Bill does not address that issue, but it is something that we will monitor ahead of the combined polls next year. If need be, we will report on it, as we statutorily have to after every election.
David Marshall: On canvass reform, one important step will be that we take cognisance of the possibility of automatic registration in the context of how it is implemented. As Cahir indicated, we have a rich source of data, and every year we write to all 16 and 17-year-olds who are not currently on the register but could come on to it, but only about 30% then go ahead and register to vote.
When we hold that high-quality public sector data—national insurance data, health registration data—we would like the ability to write to those people, turn it the other way and say, “We are going to register you to vote unless you tell us otherwise.” That ought to be part of the reform of the canvass in Northern Ireland: including some element of automatic registration.
Samantha Dixon
What you are saying is very interesting, and I will reflect on it. As we go through the Bill process, I think it will become clear that the Government have considered some of the points that you have raised, but thank you for raising them.
Lisa Smart
Q
I strongly agree that we are in a moment of crisis for our democracy. An awful lot of things that I would have liked to see in the Bill are not there. You talked about the opportunity that this presents. Particularly looking through the lens of trust in politics and participation in our elections, what does your organisation, or you as an academic, believe could have been in the Bill that would have had a positive impact on trust in politics?
Harriet Andrews: The biggest thing in terms of trust in democratic institutions is the way that democratic institutions engage with the public, and with young people specifically. We specialise in connecting young people and politicians. We have evidence that we can systematically improve democratic trust, which is a fantastic thing to be able to do—not many people can do that—but that is done through loads and loads of conversations between young people and politicians, and there is not really a substitute for that kind of work. I do not know whether that is the role of this Bill, but it is definitely the role of every Member of Parliament. We also need to think about investment in places such as schools and youth groups, and ask whether they are being supported to engage with democratic institutions.
The other thing to mention is that a lot of people are really uncertain at the moment about whether they are allowed to engage with democratic institutions as part of their youth work or as schools, because they are worried about issues around impartiality. I would focus on really clear guidance on impartiality, partly so that people feel a lot more comfortable about what they can do. They can do a lot, but lots of people are scared about engaging with their local council or councillor on a local issue because they are worried about political bias. More training and support around that is needed.
Andy Mycock: I fully agree with everything that Hattie said. Contact—building a relationship at a very early age—is a critical part of this. By the time you get to secondary school, a lot of that good work is already past its time of efficacy. Primary school, when young people are socialising and their brains are growing, is proving to be, in all different aspects of growing up, the most important time. There is a stark lack of focus on primary school interventions. Much of what happens focuses on secondary school, when young people are overloaded; they are going through significant change in their lives—biologically, socially and educationally. Stretch the civic journey. Give it time to mature over time. Think about how you support young people after the age of enfranchisement, whether it is 16 or 18.
To go back to the Minister’s question, our work in Wales highlighted another thing—the voter journey. In Wales we found a lot of focus, in Government and other programmes, on getting young people to get on the electoral register and to know how to vote, but that did not get them to the ballot box. The principal reason was that they were not educated about political parties—what those parties stood for. This is not to open up the old debate about indoctrination, but young people simply did not know what the political parties stood for—they did not know how to read the manifestos, so they stayed at home.
I urge all the parties to move beyond this idea of the fears of indoctrination. The internet age has changed things. You cannot protect young people from political discourse on the internet. Our survey data is already starting to pick up that young people, particularly young men, are increasingly prone to misinformation and to populist ideas. If you do not socialise young people, so that they understand politics before they become enfranchised—whatever the age—it is likely that they will socialise themselves, or will socialise themselves in peer groups that may not be the healthiest in terms of democracy.
I would think strongly about the idea of the voter journey, and about things like automatic voter registration, or giving young people voter authority certificates at the age of 16. If they have a national insurance number, why not give them that certificate so that they have the document and do not have to look for it? Walk them through polling booths: get them used to the idea that these are not alien places. For those who come from middle-class families, it is likely that their parents will take them there the first time to vote. For those coming from maybe disadvantaged or disengaged families, it is highly likely that they will not.
Lastly, learn from other places. Australia has a wonderful celebration around elections where they have a democracy sausage, which you will have heard of now increasingly. We might not be a nation of sausages, but we are a nation of cakes. Why not think about the democracy bake? Have civil society organisations outside polling stations—turn voting into a celebratory act, so that young people feel that that first experience is positive, and that it is not a threatening environment for them to go to again.
Warinder Juss
Q
My assessment from all this has been that if those young people were allowed to vote at 16 they would be very competent in contributing to democracy, and that it would be a great idea for them to be engaged earlier in politics, and to have had those conversations earlier. A witness in the previous panel said that the earlier somebody votes, the more likely they are to carry on voting. I have two questions. First, do you think my assessment is correct? Secondly, do you think that the ability to vote early is one important step we can take to make sure that we have that engagement, and bring democracy into play?
Harriet Andrews: Yes, I do think your assessment is correct. I think young people are really keen to engage in all sorts of social and political issues. They want to have a voice—they want to be heard, right? They are just like everybody else, and they have lots to say. They are exploring the world; they have not heard something for the fifth or sixth time, they have heard it for the first time, so it is more exciting. That is something that we find a lot.
There are some hopeful reforms potentially coming in the curriculum assessment review. They have talked about making citizenship compulsory in primary schools, which really plays into that idea of starting early. The more that you do earlier, and the more you can build these skills over time and make them part of what is happening, the less of a mad rush you have to get everybody ready at a certain point. That is really positive.
One of the things missing in that education reform is, particularly, teacher training. This stuff is complicated, and teachers need support. When they have been surveyed, teachers have said that they feel really underprepared to do this work; they really want to do the work, but they want that support. That is one thing that really needs some attention. The other is the role of Ofsted—asking, “Is Ofsted taking this work seriously? Does it have a home, and does it have a place?” I know that that is not the role of this Committee, but some of the levers to make votes at 16 a real success sit with both DCMS and the DfE.
Samantha Dixon
Q
Professor Bernal: I would like to scrap it. Going from opt-out to opt-in is great for the new people coming in, particularly with automatic voter registration and the votes at 16. However, there are millions of people who did not realise what they were opting in to—or what they would have opted out of—who are still on the register. If this is going to be retrospective, and you are going to say to everybody, “Do you want to be in after all?”, maybe that would help, but it would be simpler and better just to get rid of it.
We have to think very carefully about why the open register exists in the first place, and what use it is actually being put to. The uses are primarily commercial. In the current era, so many other forms of data are available to anyone wanting commercial use of data—we should leave it to them. What we need is as clear and simple a database as possible, with a single function to support our elections. That way, we get more security and privacy, and people will be more likely to trust it.
Lisa Smart
Q
My question is about automatic voter registration and some of the civil liberties and privacy issues that we should considering as we look at this legislation. Can you help us think through some of the really important questions we should be asking, bearing in mind that, as you rightly say, a lot of the detail will be worked through in secondary legislation? What things should we be thinking about to make sure that we protect the population’s civil liberties and keep privacy where it should be?
Professor Bernal: I should outline my perspective from the beginning. When Toby asked me to come into this project, my initial thought was, “I don’t want this, because of the privacy things—I’m a data privacy specialist and that’s what I work on.” However, when I was talking to him, I began to be persuaded by thinking about this as a way to get greater integrity in the database. Privacy is not about hiding information but making sure that the right people get the right information at the right time, and with appropriate permissions and consents.
As a result, the first thing we should think about is: what will the database on which people are registered be used for? What functions will it be put to? Who is going to have access to it? What are they going to be able to do with that data? That is something that we should be doing anyway, regardless of whether we are bringing in automatic voter registration. We should be thinking about those things, particularly in an era when electoral interference is a known factor and happens in lots of different ways, and we should be working out the way to make things secure. As I see it, automatic voter registration actually gives us an opportunity to do that, because it means that we need to think about having a properly coherent and secured database. As we do so, we will think, “Who’s going to have access to this? What are they going to be able to do with it?”
One issue is that political parties will want access to this data, but they should have to produce a report on what they have done with this data and how, including who they have given it to. We need only think back to Peter Mandelson and what he was doing with his data—giving it to people who he perhaps should not have—to see that we really need to keep a proper grip on what is happening to the data. That would solve most of the civil liberties questions about this. If we make sure that we know exactly what is happening to the data, and if we have a good set of controls over who manages and runs it, and who has access to it, you do not have the problem.
The only civil liberties question left is a rather separate one: should people be able to not be registered to vote? However, that is a rather different question beyond the scope of what we are talking about here, because we have decided in this country generally that people should reply to electoral requests and so on. That is the only one, and I do not think that is a question that automatic voter registration is a problem for.
Professor James: I would draw the Committee’s attention to what happens to the electoral register at the moment in terms of, as Paul has set out, the issue of the open register potentially being a security risk, but also who has access to the marked and full registers. There is currently no requirement, as I understand it, for electoral registration officers to keep a record of who requests and uses those records. That could be introduced. The Electoral Commission could then provide a report on exactly who is accessing those registers and for what purposes.
Political parties, for example, are entitled—and this is correct—to have access to electoral registers so they can reach out to voters, but how parties themselves use the registers is an important question.
The Chair
If Members have no further questions, I thank both witnesses for their evidence and we will prepare for the next panel.
Examination of Witnesses
Harry Busz, Councillor Peter Golds and Richard Mawrey KC gave evidence.
The Chair
Obviously, you are expressing your own view there.
Richard Mawrey: I have investigated the Australians, at their invitation. I am with Peter Golds on the point that modernising the law ought to take a consolidating statute. We do that with a lot of things, like the companies Acts and so on. It would be a new consolidating statute, as the last one was in 1983 and we are now 43 years on. That opportunity should be taken, first, to rationalise all forms of malpractice that are offences and corrupt practices; and secondly, to set up a coherent system for trying electoral disputes, because the present system is hopeless. Various proposals on how to do that have been put forward.
This is not the Bill in which to do it, but this Bill should not be saying, “Well, we have done that. We can park that for the next 10 years.” It ought to be a staging post in thinking, “Right, let us sit down and produce a coherent statute that modernises not simply electoral offences, but how we deal with them.” That is what I would counter. I agree that this Bill is not the one in which to do it, but it should not be treated as the end of the road for 10 years.
Harry Busz: As an organisation, we believe there are lots of positive steps forward in the Bill. Certain aspects around automatic voter registration, and improving the performance and accuracy of the register, are really important. For administrators, such like the extension of the postal vote deadlines will enable people to return their postal votes in a timely fashion. We also think that the issue of protecting staff and including them, as well as campaigners, is really important. Since the voter ID regulations came in, there has been a bit of a shift in the way the public views presiding officers and poll clerks in polling stations, as they now have the role of gatekeeper, having to essentially turn someone away from voting if they do not believe there is a likeness with their ID or similar.
There are areas that could go further, particularly around voter ID. At this moment in time, there is an issue where if somebody does not have a form of ID on the day, unlike in other countries, we have no off-ramp, whether through attestation or vouching, so that the person is still able to participate in the election on the day. The question we see as the most challenging is how these procedures will be done on the ground, particularly inside polling stations and for administrators. As long as there is the ability to increase funding and support for the council departments running the elections on the ground, there are lots of positive steps.
Lisa Smart
Q
I have a question for all three of our witnesses. It pulls on a thread all of you have raised: the inconsistency around enforcement—whether that is local authorities, returning officers, presiding officers or different police forces enforcing things in different ways, or election law finally making it through to court should something need to be tried. I accept that this might not be the piece of legislation to address those inconsistencies, but can you say more about measures you think would be helpful to ensure that election law is applied fairly to all elections across the whole country?
Harry Busz: I would start by taking the family voting point that you specifically addressed. As I mentioned at the beginning, this is something that we saw across more than 100 constituencies at the last general election, and it is something which, as Councillor Golds said, affects all communities. It is a really important issue for lots of different people that we ensure they have the right to a secret ballot.
In terms of those inconsistencies, the areas in which we see a really positive response when family voting might be going on are those where presiding officers and poll clerks can actively step in and prevent it if they are in a less busy polling station— which obviously becomes a bit of a postcode lottery. It also depends on whether the council has the funding and the staff to have a meet-and-greet or a third person in the polling station whose job is specifically to do that work.
Different pieces of election infrastructure are used from council to council, and where polling stations can be set up so that polling booths are separate, that is very helpful in preventing some of these issues. Whether it is that or around accessibility, with all of these aspects, the really important thing we have found is that when the council feels supported—both financially and with the infrastructure they need to run elections inside polling stations—you get much better outcomes.
All staff really want to do their job well and want to step in and prevent these kinds of things, but if they do not have the funding to have a third member in there, or if they do not have the correct equipment, it becomes a lot more difficult.
Councillor Golds: I have a big thing about protecting people, safety and security—and that is everybody. That includes candidates, election staff and the voters themselves. First, I am interested in the nomination process. My belief is that if you are nominated as a candidate, you are nominated as a candidate. The address issue is something from 50 years ago—the 1973 Act, which requires your address to be public.
I spoke about this on the security of councillors, and had an email exchange with a delightful lady in Leicestershire who had heard me on Leicestershire radio. She had expressed concern for years that she gets a bus to go to work, and at her bus stop were her three local councillors’ names, addresses and phone numbers. She thought this was wrong. This is still part of the Act. When we tried to get security for councillors to protect our addresses, we were told it was very difficult. It should not be that, if you are standing for election, your address has to be public. I think it would be terribly easy to change.
I am intrigued by the issue of candidates standing and withdrawing a nomination. One of my ideas—and I think about this very carefully—is that if a candidate is standing for a political party and they withdraw their nomination, then on nomination day the proposer and seconder, or the registered political party, should have the right to substitute another candidate, so that you do not have somebody trying anything ridiculous. We also have to look at expenditure. There are too many stories that live on the internet of extraordinary issues. You are quite right to look at it, and it needs to be tightened. We have spoken about the secrecy of the ballot.
We then come to enforcement and intimidation. I do not know how we protect people. Eighteen months ago, I had an extraordinary day at the Home Office where a group of councillors went. I was the only male councillor there. We were promised an hour and a half to discuss problems. Three and a half hours later, Home Office officials asked, “Do you want to continue?” because of what women of all political parties were saying to them. This included a female councillor whose husband had given her a purple coat, and she had appeared on television wearing it. A local nutcase said that her husband was a member of the Illuminati and a paedophile, and had gone through her address on Companies House, and published his company address and the fact that he was a school governor. This is a fact of life that can be found. If you look, every council cycle I have ever been involved in—Rallings and Thrasher always talk about this—we get women elected who serve one term, not lots. This persecution must stop.
Finally, you have to do something about the intimidation of people going to vote and crowds at polling stations—that is growing and growing. Everybody has the right to walk quietly down a street and into a polling street, and then to pass their vote as they do. I have seen observers from the European Union and the Commonwealth look at British elections, and they are staggered to see mobs of people standing outside polling stations, pushing and shoving. Those are simple things that you could look at, and I believe you would help voters, candidates and, ultimately, yourselves.
Richard Mawrey: We are back to the problem of enforcement. In quite a lot of countries, every polling station is attended by at least one burly constable who keeps an eye on things and acts as a sort of enforcer, and the great thing is that they do not have any connection with the local authority.
The problem with staff at polling stations is that they are all necessarily connected with the local authority, and it is very easy for people to convince themselves that the ruling group—so to speak—on the local authority is conniving so that voters are likely to vote for them. In most cases, it is complete and utter nonsense, but it would greatly strengthen confidence in the voting process to have somebody independent—it does not matter whether it is a policeman or anyone else—at a polling station who is prepared to call out intimidation, family voting or whatever it is.
At the moment, people are not confident because they perceive—rightly or wrongly—that the rules exist, but that the rules are being broken and nobody cares. As Peter Golds said, it does not require much imagination to see how any of that can be blown up in social media to a result that is very unfortunate for the electoral process.
Interestingly, most of the arguments being put forward today are the same as those that would have been put forward in the Public Bill Committee on the Ballot Act 1872, when the secret ballot was introduced. It was introduced to stop all the sort of abuses of the electoral process that had been occurring up to that time. Some 150 years on, we are still trying to deal with it.
Sam Rushworth (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Q
Mr Mawrey, I am wondering about the degree to which personation takes place, and how much of that is a problem. We are hearing other people express doubts about the use of ID and whether this is robust enough. To what extent is that a real issue?
Harry Busz: On the data that we have collected, we will always have two observers inside polling stations who are observing together, because they will have more time to see whether people come in, see a sign, turn around and go out, or whether somebody is stopped by a teller or an extra member of staff who might be directing them to the polling desk. We see a number of people who are turned away from voting initially, but we do not collect data on whether those people come back in the same way that the Electoral Commission does.
At the general election in 2024, we saw that 1.37% of all voters were initially turned away, compared with the Electoral Commission’s figure of 0.25%. We believe the main reason for that difference is that we are seeing other voters who do not get to the actual presiding officer’s desk. The Electoral Commission’s data was collected from the ballot paper refusal list, which the presiding officer has to sit down and sign when a voter has that situation.
The Chair
Q
Dr Power: I would only add that I concur. The one slight concern I have with the “know your donor” requirements is overly burdensome regulation. The thresholds for conducting those requirements should align with the thresholds for the person having to undertake them, because you could end up with a situation where a regulated entity is looking at three different thresholds. I would want the Bill to be clear that these align, and I know that the Electoral Commission shares that concern.
Lisa Smart
Q
You talked about reducing discretion, and there are proposed amendments that would clarify who is no longer a permissible donor. I agree that clarifying some of that would be helpful for political parties. However, may I invite all the witnesses to talk about what is currently in the Bill on money coming in from overseas? The Government have been very clear that they want to take steps to tackle foreign interference, and we are looking at the recommendations from Philip Rycroft’s review. Could you say whether the provisions in the Bill are robust enough to stop foreign money being funnelled through UK entities? If not, what steps would you recommend to tackle that?
Duncan Hames: We certainly welcome the valiant efforts that officials in the Minister’s Department have been making to address this issue, and there are some welcome steps, particularly on unincorporated associations, to ensure that they are not used as a back door. However, we do not have any prohibitions in this country on people who are not entitled to vote in this country owning companies that trade here. Therefore, it would be entirely possible for someone who you all agree should not be allowed to donate money in British politics to none the less acquire a company that does that job for them, which would comply with the provisions as currently set out in the Bill.
Our view is that, hard as we might try, so long as people are determined to find a way, it is very hard to be absolutely confident that you have shut this door. That is why we think the lack of any kind of cap whatsoever on how much any one person can put into British politics means that the risk of money entering British politics and getting round these controls is uncontained. We would argue that these measures need to be accompanied by some kind of donations cap.
Dr Susan Hawley: It is absolutely a risk. I believe the Rycroft review is looking at whether you make sure that the regulated sector and financial institutions in the UK are playing their role. There would definitely be scope for a joint intelligence unit where they could share transactions that appear suspicious with law enforcement. Obviously, that relates to whether the enforcement set-up is sufficient and whether the laws are sufficient. In relation to enforcement, this also comes down to having proper donor declarations and beefing up the section 54A donor declaration to address some of those risks and make sure that the money is not coming via permissible donors in the UK, but from abroad.
Dr Power: We also have regulated and unregulated periods at which different levels of scrutiny apply to donations to different regulated entities. Of course, some of those entities are less regulated or unregulated during unregulated periods.
As a thought experiment, if I were a malign foreign actor, I would probably focus on the unregulated periods as the times when I could use my money wisely, as it were. There is a good case for considering, within reason, how we can move towards a system with year-round regulations, taking into account the importance of a vibrant democracy, such that we do not end up with money being spent and donated during relatively unregulated times.
Lisa Smart
I am working with the Public Bill Office on an amendment that extends the regulated period. Given the narrow scope of the Bill, that is a way of thinking about that.
Lloyd Hatton
Q
Dr Susan Hawley: The Electoral Commission needs to come up with robust guidance on that. It needs to look at industry standards from the regulated sector to tackle money laundering. I want to come back to the donor declaration, because that is also critical to this. We have heard from law enforcement that it is not clear to them that the proceeds of crime are not allowed as donations, for instance. If you have a situation where proceeds of crime can be donated, that is pretty extraordinary. We need a robust section 54A that puts some onus on the donor and makes a false declaration a criminal offence.
I do not know whether that answers your question, Lloyd, or whether you wanted me to talk more about “know your donor”, but I think they complement each other. You have “know your donor”, which is about what parties do, but also the donor declaration, so that you are putting some onus on the donor to actually be honest about where that money comes from.
Paul Holmes
I find it interesting that most of the people who we consider to be academics, and have made their life’s profession the integrity of the election system, are not in favour of it, but the Government are choosing to go ahead with it anyway. We will look at that further in line-by-line scrutiny. Thank you very much for your time this afternoon.
Lisa Smart
Q
It is clear from all the evidence we have heard today that all the witnesses welcome a number of the steps in the Bill, but a number of them expressed disappointment that the scope had been written so narrowly and that it does not stand up to the moment of crisis and peril that our democracy faces. If the Government think that first past the post is the right system, why not have a national commission on the voting system to test that thesis?
Samantha Dixon: The Government believe that the voting systems that we use to elect our representatives are really at the heart of our democracy; they are of fundamental importance. We welcome views and feedback on how democracy can be improved. I am grateful for the interest that you have shown in this particular area, but I can confirm that we are content with the voting system that we currently use in general elections, and we have no plans to establish such a commission.
For UK parliamentary elections, we believe that the first-past-the-post system establishes a really strong link between the constituency and the representative. Although it may not be perfect, we believe it is well understood by the electorate and the communities that we represent. When a seat needs to be filled in Parliament or a council, for example, that link between the representative and those they represent is important. First past the post is appropriate for that system.
There are occasions for other voting systems for wider electorates, and this Bill will make provision for them. For example, for a mayoral election, we are in the process of bringing forward legislation to revert that system back to supplementary voting. When it is a broader constituency—a mayoral area that may cover many constituencies—we accept that that voting system is more appropriate. But at this stage, for council wards and parliamentary constituencies, we remain of the view that first past the post is the best system.
Lisa Smart
Q
Samantha Dixon: The view of the Government is that companies that pass all of the other tests and want to donate to a political party may on occasion be in a position where they are not making profit. For example, if they are taking investment decisions across a particular year, which mean that they are in a non-profit situation but their revenue is still working, they should not be excluded from donating to the political system. That is why the Government’s view is that the test should be revenue, as well as the other tests in place, which we feel are very robust, around UK residency of the persons of particular interest but also the UK headquarters rules and the “know your donor” rules.
The raft of measures that we are introducing make it far more difficult, notwithstanding the evidence and views of those we have heard today. We feel that it brings in protections that currently are not there and will protect our electoral system. It may be that Philip Rycroft comes forward with measures around this, which we will listen to as well as the evidence that we have heard today.
Lisa Smart
Q
Samantha Dixon: We have not designed these measures around specific individuals. I am not sure that the hypothetical illustration that you have given would pass the “know your donor” test, but I am happy to come back to you on that point.
David Simmonds
Q
Clause 47 is also silent on the use of virtual cards. We know many banks issue payment cards that are online, so quite a lot of people have their payment card on a mobile phone and do not have any physical item with them that would meet that standard. Are the Government open to amendments to clause 47 to try to address that and at least bring clarity to what is meant by a bank card, so that polling staff, who may have to have that conversation with people, know exactly where they stand?
Samantha Dixon: You mentioned digital ID. For example, we have introduced the digital veterans card as a form of ID. It has the holographic clock in it, which means that it cannot be screenshotted or used fraudulently.