Electoral Spending Limits: Wales

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am not quite sure where my noble friend is taking me with that question. The cost of the Electoral Commission is roughly £30 million a year. Like all public bodies at a time of downward pressure on public expenditure, it should seek economies in the way it runs its operations, but it has an important role to play in monitoring the health of our democracy and, where necessary, in enforcing the law on elections.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, in India, with 800 million voters in elections, the electoral commission is all-powerful during elections. It runs elections over a period of three weeks, using electronic voting in a very rigorous manner. Why can we not catch up with that over here? Secondly, as a businessman, if I advertise my brand and I make a statement that is not true, the Advertising Standards Authority asks me to pull it down straightaway. The Electoral Commission is toothless and does not seem to have any power over misstatements in elections, such as £350 million on the side of a bus. Will the Minister tell us why?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

On the first point, I think my party is committed to continuing to allow people to vote by pencil on a ballot paper. If one were to introduce electronic voting at the same time, there would of course be the extra costs of running two systems in parallel. At the moment, we are not committed to doing that. We are interested in pilot schemes, however, for example on voter identification. On the second point, I am not sure that the Advertising Standards Authority or, indeed, the Electoral Commission would like to get drawn into the heat of party-political battles during a general election.