Elections Bill

Lord Adonis Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, the figures that the noble Lord gave will of course be of concern to the Committee and to any reasonable person following our proceedings. I have just been reading the Ballot Act 1872, Section 2 of which makes it clear that the vote shall be secret. It makes no reference to anybody conducting a voter and is particularly scrupulous, because of the great concern that there might be intervention by public authorities, that the presiding officers and staff in polling stations are kept completely apart from the act of voting; all they can do is check that the official mark has been made. The noble Lord’s point is well made, whether it is the Electoral Commission or the Secretary of State—although one would hope that the Secretary of State would be acting on the Electoral Commission’s advice on this matter anyway.

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[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I will follow on from the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, on undue influence. I think that a large part of this stems from Richard Mawrey’s judgments in the Tower Hamlets case. Anybody who has not experienced what the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, has clearly seen in places such as Bradford and Kirklees and I witnessed in Tower Hamlets will not appreciate what one is talking about, which is a serious problem. The first time I went to an election in Tower Hamlets a friend of mine, Councillor Peter Golds, to whom my noble friend Lord True referred, identified this: “See those people there? See that person there?” We are talking about people standing 100 metres to 150 metres away from a polling station. They walk alongside people going to vote. They stop people going into the polling station. When complaints are made to the police, the police feel that they are powerless to intervene. Anybody who has not experienced that sort of undue influence cannot appreciate the intimidation involved. I welcome the clause and the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, because it is an important change to electoral law.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, the underlying issue here clearly might lead to concern in certain circumstances, but the point I took the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, to be making is that this is a very new category of injury. I have never seen in legislation before the concept of “spiritual injury” or individuals being placed under “spiritual pressure”. Could the Minister give us any precedents for these terms in legislation so that we can get some idea as to what other matters they have referred and how they might actually be applied?

Although we can understand the issue, how do we define what counts as spiritual pressure? If, for example, a religious group put out literature supporting one candidate or another, as often happens, would that count as undue spiritual pressure? There could be a freedom of speech issue here, which I do not think we want to get into, so it would be useful if the Minister could explain to us other contexts in which this has been used so that we can get some idea of what a proportionate judgment on “spiritual injury” and “undue spiritual pressure” might be.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

I want to follow on from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, because his concerns were also mine. I am not clear what the definition of some of these issues would be in law and how they would be taken by the courts. Are there issues like this in legislation elsewhere and has there been interpretation by the courts, particularly regarding spiritual injury? For example, if someone was to stand up in a Catholic church and ask for people not to vote for candidates who supported abortion, would that constitute spiritual injury? Would that be undue spiritual pressure in determining which way people vote?

This is a very finely balanced issue, and I have not come across it before. Therefore, the Minister needs to explain very specifically where the lines and the boundaries are. It is a balance between people having the right to freedom of speech and of faith—I say that as somebody who does not have a religious faith—and the issue of them not being unduly influenced or forced to go against what they believe in. It would be really interesting to hear a clear definition and clear examples from the Dispatch Box for us to be able to determine exactly what this means in legislation.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

I shall give my noble friend an American example, which has been debated in the United States very recently. There have been Catholic bishops who have suggested that President Biden should be denied communion, as a Catholic, because he is not prepared to be sufficiently anti-abortion. That, it seems to me, would be undue spiritual influence—although the spectacle of a Catholic bishop or archbishop being prosecuted for undue spiritual influence would be quite an interesting one.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

I will elaborate on the noble Lord’s point. There is a difference here, in the ordinary reading of the words, between pressure and intimidation. I took the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, to be referring to intimidation, which is clearly something that we want to guard against. But what constitutes spiritual pressure? As noble Lords have just said, would a sermon in a church constitute pressure? A reasonable person might think that it would; after all, it is not serving much of a purpose if there is no pressure. This is a lay man speaking, but I think there is a difference between pressure and intimidation. We want to guard against intimidation, but we absolutely do not want to curb freedom of religious speech.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

This is unexpectedly lively, but the focus really is on new sub-paragraph (3)(e). I think most of us would say that there is, if you like, a simple lay person’s interpretation of new sub-paragraph (3)(a), (b), (c), (d) and, for that matter, the catch-all of new sub-paragraph (3)(f), which is

“any other act designed to intimidate a person”.

In the light of new sub-paragraph (3)(f), it may be that the difficulties of new sub-paragraph (3)(e) are best avoided by their omission, because if such spiritual injury was demonstrated, it would come under new sub-paragraph (3)(f).

I just point out that the preceding activities have “using or threatening”, “damaging or threatening”, “causing or threatening”, but new sub-paragraph (3)(e) has “causing spiritual injury”; not “threatening” to cause spiritual injury. Obviously, it depends on one’s personal understanding of what spiritual injury might consist of, but the threat is surely going to be offered far more often than the reality will be delivered, if I may put it in those terms, although it does not mean that it is not effective. There are some problems in the straightforward interpretation of what new sub-paragraph (3)(e) really says, why it does not say “threatening” to cause, as does new sub-paragraph (3)(c) and (d), for instance, and why it is necessary, separate from the catch-all of new sub-paragraph (3)(f):

“doing any other act designed to intimidate a person”.

I want to bring a little bit of local colour to new sub-paragraph (4)(e). In 1992, I stood for the Liberal Democrats in Hazel Grove. On the Sunday before polling day, every Catholic church in the constituency had a letter read out from the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, which clearly expressed the view that a vote for me would be a major spiritual error. I failed to win that seat by 923 votes. I do not attribute the result to that letter, but noble Lords will understand that I had a sense of grievance for some time afterwards that this letter had been read out.

This brings me to my second critique of new sub-paragraph (4)(e)—it is a little bit in the eye of the beholder. If that provision had been there in 1992, I would have gone straight to the returning officer to say that this was a clear case. It would be an invitation for people to complain about things which were in fact simply within the bounds of free speech, fair comment, and so on—even if it was unfair in the opinion of the recipient.

There is a double problem. First, what is “spiritual injury”? Secondly, do we mean causing it, or threatening to cause it? Do we think that the injury is to the voter who is deterred from voting for a candidate, or to the candidate by virtue of the voter not supporting them? I suggest that we are not very clear what we are trying to pin down. The Minister might like to carefully consider what the disbenefit would be of removing new sub-paragraph (4)(e) and simply relying on new sub-paragraph (4)(f) to deal with cases where “spiritual injury”—or threats of it—was part of the reason there had been intimidation.

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I hope that these explanations are helpful to your Lordships. I repeat that the balance has to be articulated, and has always been articulated, in case law, alongside more recent protections provided through the European Convention on Human Rights.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I was not absolutely clear from what the Minister said whether the phrase “undue spiritual pressure” exists in existing legislation. He may not have the answer to that, but could he write to us about it?

[Lord True (Con)]

Yes, I had better write at this hour. I had it somewhere, but I have lost it in the folder. I will certainly write to the noble Lord. I tried to answer the question. If I have not, I will write; sorry.