Elections Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Moore, on his very amusing maiden speech. I ought to be pleased that one fewer Conservative vote will be cast in the next general election, but I have to tell him I think it is a complete anachronism that your Lordships are unable to vote, and I hope that at some point we will put that right.

I have great respect for the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, who has just spoken. We have had robust and often constructive exchanges in the past, and I respect greatly the action he took in relation to Tower Hamlets. But this evening we have to be extremely careful that, with the measures we take to overcome whatever problems we currently have within the system—and we should address them—we do not give the impression out there in this country that there is a serious problem with our electoral system. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Moore, that that is precisely the insidious worm that got into the Republican Party in the United States and led decent people to start mouthing platitudes about the ballot being rigged and the fraud within their system. If we get that here we will be in real trouble. So let us address where there is clear evidence of fraud or misuse and try to identify the problem. Who is in favour of the change in the problem, as was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace? Do the measures we will debate tonight and in Committee achieve the goal that has been set out? If we can answer those questions honestly and clearly, we might get somewhere.

I have very little time, and I know people will be waiting to speak later in the evening, so I want to say just two things. First, I thank my noble friend Lady Hayman and the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, for their mention of those without sight seeking to exercise an equal vote on the same terms as anyone else, and I hope we will be able to put that right. My main thrust, however, is to pick up on the speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, which I thought, as with other Opposition Front Bench speakers, was extremely powerful. What we do through this Bill will have implications for our standing and reputation internationally. We should not underestimate the danger of meddling with and undermining the independence of the Electoral Commission. Of course there can be improvements in how it operates, and we should concentrate on those. But, as the noble and learned Lord said, handing over to government the strategic and policy priorities of what is supposed to be an independent body goes to the very core of our democratic process.

On 9 September last year, we had a debate in this House on the issues around public life. We debated the first interim report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which has reported further since. At that time, in what I thought was a very thoughtful debate, there was a consensus that it is really important that no political party misunderstands its role.

When a political party becomes the Government, it does not automatically embody, on behalf of the nation, its party and its ideology. The Conservative Party and the Government are not one and the same thing, and we should avoid them becoming so, any more than the Bolsheviks thought that taking power meant that that held them as the voice of, and the only voice of, the nation. I mention the Bolsheviks because, of course, someone giving £1.8 million might have an interest in the well-being of our country but their husband may have a different interest altogether.

Let us be absolutely clear this evening: if we interfere, as this Bill does, with the independence of the Electoral Commission, we will send a signal not only to our own country and our own people but across the world. Disentangle the Conservative Party from the running of this country on behalf of the whole of this nation, and then we might get it right.

Elections Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Thursday 10th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

Abomination.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

Thank you; I am grateful that I have some friends around here who are far more literate than I am. We will do everything we can to make sure that this abomination of a Bill never becomes an Act.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

Will the noble Baroness give way?

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

Go on, defend it. The noble Baroness used to be in the Communist Party.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

Very good, well done everyone, carry on.

Elections Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Thursday 17th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I did not intervene in the last serious and lengthy debate. I understood how seriously many Members of your Lordships’ House took the issue. I had some peripheral dealings with clubs from the three major parties during my review and I have to say that the political affiliation was probably rather less important than the quality of the club, its community sense, the price of a beer and the nature of the bingo—all of which are very important—but the weight of political influence being placed on the clubs was not borne out by any evidence I received. That is not to undermine the point being made, but I would not place on the clubs the weight that I heard some noble Lords putting on them in the last hour and a quarter.

I turn to Amendment 54A and I am very grateful for the support of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, who I am delighted to see in his place. This is the most important of the series of amendments that I have tabled on the third-party campaigning system. It takes us to the heart of the various concerns about the impact of the present regime on third-party campaigning, in particular—the phrase we have become familiar with, having heard it many times in sittings of the Committee—“the chilling effect” of the 2014 Act.

The problem for third-party campaigners is the lack of certainty in key aspects of the current regulatory regime. There are two particularly important areas. The first—I come back to it—is the intent test. The key phrase—I say it once more—is

“reasonably regarded as intended to promote or procure electoral success at any relevant election”,

which is essentially the linchpin of the whole third-party campaigning regime. It is interpreted by the Electoral Commission, which decides whether a course of action infringes that phrase and makes the decision on its own authority entirely. Although I absolutely recognise that the electoral commissioners work hard and successfully to reassure civil society about its fears, and I applaud that, the kernel of doubt and concern remains there to gnaw away at the confidence of third- party campaigners.

When we debated Clauses 14 and 15—I do not want to repeat the remarks I made in those debates—my noble friend the Minister faced very heavy criticism of the extent to which the Bill, as currently drafted, would undermine the independence of the Electoral Commission. As I listened to the debate, the argument seemed to be that the Electoral Commission should be made more independent, given more freedom of action. As I explained in an earlier sitting, I am concerned about such a development. Just as noble Lords did not believe my noble friend would have malevolent intentions, it was argued that he would not be in post for ever, and who could tell who might succeed him and what his successors might do with the powers that the Bill gave them? Similarly, I am not criticising the current Electoral Commission; I make that very clear. I recognise, as I said, that it worked hard with third-party campaigners to reassure them of the practical implications of the intent test. However, the commissioners too will not be in post for ever, and who knows who might follow them?

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, was among those who led the charge and was most critical of the Government in that debate. He and I have made common cause about the inadequacy of the present procedures for scrutinising secondary legislation and I do not resile from that at all. However, the criticism of the Government, if followed through, would create an organisation that would be making tertiary legislation. It would be promoting, making and enforcing regulation in key areas of our electoral system without any vestige of democratic control at all. I argue that this is undesirable.

There is, however, a way to restore this and to restore a decent element of parliamentary—and by parliamentary I mean, parliamentary, not executive—control over the Electoral Commission. This would be achieved by means of codes—codes of practice which have to be approved by both Houses of Parliament. Crucially, as a result, compliance with the code would give a statutory defence, so ending the uncertainty that has caused so much concern about the present regime.

The amendment therefore introduces a new clause that would require the Electoral Commission to prepare statutory codes of practice—powers, by the way, it does not have in the current legislation. The areas to be covered are listed in proposed new Section 100A(1)(a) to (d). Two areas are of particular importance: first, the intent test—the Electoral Commission will be required to produce a code explaining how it proposes to operate that test—and, secondly but no less importantly, we need clarity on what constitutes a member of an organisation. This is important because, once you are a member of an organisation, communicating with you ceases to be a qualifying expenditure for the purposes of the Act. So a third-party campaigner can build membership quickly and have an increasingly wide reach without any commensurately increasing expenditure being imposed on them.

In today’s hyperconnected modern world, it is astonishingly easy and cheap to email hundreds of thousands of people about an issue and put on the bottom of the email, “Please tick this box if you want to be a member”. I regard this as potentially a very dangerous opening, offering, in particular, the prospect of third parties holding views at the outer fringes of our society being able to build up so-called members, who can then be communicated with free of charge. This would offer such groups a campaigning reach far beyond their real level of support. The Electoral Commission currently has a series of categories—including “committed supporter” and “the public at large”—and I am afraid I am far from convinced that these stand- alone terms will be able to meet the pressures of an age of ubiquitous social media. We need a code for what constitutes “the public”—namely, the opposite of a member—and this is provided for in proposed Section 100A(1)(b).

The rest of Amendment 54A is concerned with process, laying out a list of the groups that have to be consulted by the Electoral Commission: the devolved Administrations, on matters concerning them, and a representative sample of civil society groups. The Electoral Commission must then provide a draft and present it to the Secretary of State, who may approve the code or modify it. If he chooses to modify it, he has to explain why he has done so, so that the difference between what the Minister and the Electoral Commission think is clear. A series of procedures for obtaining the consent of both Houses is then laid out in the latter part of the clause. Crucially and importantly, proposed Section 100A(13) reads:

“It is a defence for a person or third party charged with an offence under this Act to show that any guidance for the time being issued under this section was complied with in relation to Part VI of this Act.”


Amendment 54A could provide, first, a high degree of certainty and, therefore, reassurance on certain key issues of the regulatory regime and, therefore, to third-party campaigners. Secondly, by using secondary legislation, it offers the opportunity to keep regulations up to date, reflecting changes in society, social media, public attitudes and campaigning methods, thus reducing the dangers of evasion. Thirdly, it introduces a proper degree of democratic or parliamentary control of the Electoral Commission, thereby perhaps offering the Government part of a way out of the troubles in which they have found themselves in Clauses 13 and 14.

It is a common phrase that the law is too important to be left to the lawyers. I submit to the Committee that electoral law, which goes to the heart of our democracy, is too important to be left to an untrammelled Electoral Commission. I beg to move.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I put my name to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, in full knowledge of his long-standing commitment to plurality and his excellent report on the previous restrictions placed on third-party campaigning, including by charities, where he rightly pointed out that the chilling effect that has been referred to is as much a danger as the detail of what people are expected to do—in other words, the reflection of what people think they cannot do rather than the actual restriction laid down in the law. Codes of practice will be extremely helpful in the future when we have sorted out the Bill and, I hope, eliminated the attack on the Electoral Commission inherent in Ministers taking power over its policy and strategy direction.

Codes of practice are for clarity and enabling people to do what they do best, which is to take part in civil society in a pluralistic democracy, whether they are engaged in the formal political processes that we have debated under Clause 52 or whether they are involved in the political processes that make up a democratic process within a democratic society. That is civil society action. People will be clear as to what is and is not acceptable. They will adhere to those processes and be able to play their full part.

I was going to say that we have long Committee sittings followed by shorter programmed and amendable sessions on Report, but I heard what the Minister said about listening. Let me make it clear in my short contribution that Committee sessions of this House are valuable only if they impact on whether the Government are prepared to change their mind, and listen to and reflect on the expertise, knowledge and experience of Members of this House. Otherwise, we are spending hours and hours, with some people here into the early hours of the morning, not being listened to by anyone. I therefore appeal to the Minister to fulfil what he committed to in the debate on the previous group and be prepared as a senior Minister, a Minister of State, to take back to colleagues the deep disquiet over a number of areas in the Bill. Otherwise, I hope that this part of the legislature, this House, will stall the Bill. Parts of it are a fundamental attack on our democratic processes.

However, this set of amendments moved and spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, is a clarification and strengthening of the power while bringing about greater accountability in relation to the operation, as opposed to the destruction, of the Electoral Commission. I hope that the Minister will reflect on that.

[Lord Kerslake (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak in favour of my Amendment 54 B. There is a lot to commend in the amendment of the noble Lords, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts and Lord Blunkett. It is a serious attempt to establish a new accountability framework for the Electoral Commission. I am conscious that we had some debate in the previous group on the issue that I want to touch on. With the benefit of hindsight, it might have been part of that discussion, but I should like to make other points.

My amendment proposes inserting a new clause in the Bill that would require political parties to report on the amount of controlled spending incurred by third parties as targeted spending on their behalf. This is a relatively simple and straightforward amendment in an extremely complex area. It would increase transparency for voters and other campaigners by making it easier to identify in spending returns how much targeted spend has been incurred.



I tabled this amendment for two main reasons. The first reason is to highlight the importance of the report Regulating Election Finance, produced by the Committee on Standards in Public Life. There have been a number of comments and contributions on that report, and I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, is in his place. He is too modest to say it, but for me this was an exemplar of how to bring forward a balanced, informed and measured approach to the complex and fast-moving world of election finance.

Elections Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 25th April 2022 Lords Chamber

That is a cross-party view in the other place and of course I agree with it. I urge the House that we should protect the Electoral Commission from this proposed newly minted augmentation of executive power. I beg to move.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the noble and learned Lord in his amendments, to which I have added my name. We have a cross-party understanding, I believe, that, whatever their intentions, the Government have got this wrong. When the House has the kind of unanimity that it has in relation to the Electoral Commission’s powers and the strategy and policy statement process, it is incumbent on any Government to listen and to learn.

The noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, in his dignified and honourable resignation from the Front Bench—I believe we unanimously regret that he felt he needed to resign—said in his resignation letter that we have to take into account how others see us.

The noble and learned Lord referred to the legislation in 2000. I was a Member of the Cabinet at the time. We had a majority of 179. We could have pushed anything through, but the outrage which would have emerged universally across our media, as well as from the Benches opposite, would have driven us back inevitably to a situation where we would have had to think again. I ask the Government, with less than half that majority, to think again. It is not what might be intended, it is how that intention might be perceived—as well as the real outcome. There is the potential for a Trojan horse to lead us down a path which could be regretted at length as part of our constitution. Crucially, this will be seen from outside the country in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, perceived in relation to the rule of law.

Gideon Rachman from the Financial Times has written a book called The Age of The Strongman. In it, like many others who have written on this subject, he poses the real and present challenge of the international democratic process being undermined by the clash between the strong autocratic leadership of those outside the democratic fold; those within the purview of the democratic fold who are leading their nations into autocracy and the diktat of the centre; and the participative democratic world, which involves people being listened to, not just in parliaments but across the nations, and taken notice of.

I am afraid to say that the clauses with which we are dealing this afternoon are a measure of a Government who have not understood that they should be on the side of the participative democratic processes which defend us against the creeping autocracy we see internationally at the moment. It is as serious as that. The Electoral Commission and the electorate as a whole, who were polled over the weekend, have demonstrated their concern. Most people will not understand the detail of the Electoral Commission—why would they? However, they do understand when a Government start to believe that their party and their place in government are one and the same thing—they are not.

I tried to put this across in recent legislation in other areas of public policy. The Government govern for the nation as a whole; they do not govern for a particular political party. Of course, they will want to implement their manifesto and the mandate they have been given by the electorate. By the way, there is no mandate at all on this; there is no suggestion, as there has been in other parts of the Bill, that the Government had indicated, in their manifesto and during the election, that they wished to deal with the Electoral Commission in this way. There have been suggestions from one or two Members of this House at Second Reading and at Committee that somehow the Electoral Commission attracted the notice of the Government—or the Conservative Party, I should say—in terms of what happened in the 2016 referendum. This was backed up by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox; I was sat next to her at the time, and it was a rather half-hearted effort to defend the Government on this particular set of clauses.

There is no argument for it; there is no problem, as the noble and learned Lord explained. What we have is a solution in pursuit of a problem which does not really exist. Fundamentally, we have a vision and message going out from this legislation that will be rued by us all if we do not get this right. I have a very simple appeal to the Government: take these amendments and accept them when they go back to the Commons tomorrow; withdraw the proposal because it does not have support anywhere in this House, in the other House, other than the three-line Whip, or across the country; and allow us to unify on consulting properly on whatever perceived problems the Government—or the Conservative Party—Labour, the Lib Dems or the Cross Benches might have about the operation of the Electoral Commission. Consult properly, undertake this in a democratic fashion, understand how we are seen as a country and get it right.

I ask the Government to please understand this afternoon that some of us, at least, will go to the wire on this one. So let us be prepared to go into next week if we have to, to ensure that we defend our democratic processes and practices. If we do not, somewhere in years to come, someone should ask each of us, “Where were you? What did you do? Did you understand what you were passing? Were you in favour of it? If you were not, why did you not vote against it?”

--- Later in debate ---

The proposed removal of Clause 16 is also put to your Lordships. It was noted in Committee that the Electoral Commission is already accountable to Parliament through the Speaker’s Committee—this again takes up the point made by the noble Baroness. However, the Speaker’s Committee’s existing remit is narrowly restricted to overseeing the commission’s finances, its five-year corporate plan, and the appointment of Electoral Commissioners. The purpose of Clause 16 is to expand this remit to enable the Speaker’s Committee to perform a scrutiny function similar to that of parliamentary Select Committees. As the noble and learned Lord acknowledged, that committee does not have an inbuilt government majority. By allowing the Speaker’s Committee to scrutinise the commission’s activities in light of its duty to have regard to the strategy and policy statement, we will give the UK Parliament the tools to effectively review the commission and hold it accountable.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

Can the Minister list which Select Committees have Ministers as members?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord knows, the Speaker’s Committee is sui generis. Obviously, it has senior representation from political parties in the House of Commons. I have enormous respect and affection for the noble Lord. It is not reasonable to impugn the integrity of a Speaker’s Committee and I do not think that he was doing so—

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

I was not, in any way, impugning the Speaker’s Committee. I was picking up the point that the Minister had just made about the corollary of a Select Committee.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad that the noble Lord rose. I had started to make it clear that I was not making any such proposal. The analogy I was using is just a mechanism in terms of the way that the committee will be able to conduct its reviews, effectively holding the commission accountable on a broader range of its activities than is currently allowed in law. As I sought to explain to your Lordships, that remit is currently narrowly restricted.

For the reasons that I have set out, I urge that my noble friends and noble Lords across the House oppose the amendments put forward by the noble and learned Lord, and that Clauses 15 and 16 stand part of the Bill.

Elections Bill

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Wednesday 27th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

I support the noble and learned Lord’s amendments. I will be as brief as humanly possible, first because of his brilliant and forensic analysis of where we are and the importance of the amendments and, secondly, because there has been a tendency over recent times for noble Lords to filibuster their own amendments—I have seen it again and again. Therefore, I just want to comment on the second part of the amendments before us, the recusing of Ministers in dealing with the statement drawn up by the Secretary of State.

The Minister, in dealing with this element, talked about elected Members having traditionally been on the commission. I do not dispute that for a minute, but we are back to where we were when debating this earlier in the week: there seems to be a sad misunderstanding of the difference between Government and Parliament, and the role of Ministers representing a Government dominated by a political party and the role of elected Members, and therefore the commission, in carrying out their duties independently. This is a substantial constitutional matter; I am sorry that there are not more Members in the Chamber to hear it because, obviously, the troops outside will be rallied at the appropriate moment. Given that this is so fundamental to the way in which we conduct our democracy, election processes, and therefore the transparency and trust that people should expect, I believe that we should vote on this tonight. I am surprised that the Minister has not been able to convince his colleagues in the other place that they have got this very badly wrong. I promise them that it will come back to bite them.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

I speak to Motion B1. We have already agreed in this House that compulsory photo ID at polling stations is not necessary. At no stage in any of our debates have the Government presented any evidence that compulsory photo ID is necessary, or proportionate, to what they try to claim is a risk of impersonation. In fact, there is proof that impersonation at the polling station is not a significant problem. The number of replacement ballot papers issued in the last general election, mostly because of a clerical error in crossing off the wrong name, was just 1,341 out of over 32 million ballot papers issued. That is an average of two replacement ballot papers in each constituency, or just one for every 30 polling stations. Mostly, they were issued due to clerical error, not fraud. Therefore, spending £180 million over the next 10 years to make photo ID a requirement to be allowed to vote is wholly disproportionate and unnecessary.

In an earlier debate, it was stated by a Minister that if someone claimed your vote, they had stolen it and you could not get it back. However, the replacement ballot paper system means that this is not the case. Unlike someone stealing a parcel of yours at the Post Office, you can get a replacement ballot paper if one has already been issued in your name and an investigation is made, if necessary.

The Minister referred to Northern Ireland and the recent increase in turnout, which I am sure is not due to the popularity of photo ID. If we look back to when photo ID first came in for the 2003 Northern Ireland Assembly election, we see that estimates were that around 25,000 voters did not vote because they did not have the required ID, and almost 3,500 people—2.3% of the electorate—were initially turned away for not possessing the required ID. There are 20 times as many people in Great Britain, so you can do the maths.

However, there is a sensible alternative to the Government’s proposals. It should be seen as a sensible compromise. It would safely address any legitimate concern that the Government claim to have about impersonation at the polling station. Perhaps significantly, it would also fulfil what was in the Conservative Party’s manifesto in 2019.

In addition to the documents considered acceptable to the Government as proof of identity, there is a document already issued to every voter by the official electoral registration officer. That document is the official polling card. In the local election pilots conducted under the Government’s own rules, the poll card was deemed an acceptable form of voter ID in some council areas and was chosen by 93% of voters where it was an option. This compares with 5% choosing to use their driving licence and 1% choosing their passport. Most significantly, the number of voters turned away from polling stations was half the level of that in areas requiring photo ID. That is the real point of the Electoral Commission’s analysis of those pilots.

Every voter on the electoral register is issued with a polling card. There is therefore no additional cost in making it an acceptable form of ID. A fraudster would have not just to impersonate someone at a polling station but to have stolen their poll card in advance. In the unlikely event of it being stolen, it could be replaced, and someone using the original could be arrested at the polling station for using it. So let us offer this compromise from this House. It offers greater security but no discrimination and no great expensive additional bureaucracy.

I believe that we do not require substantial further debate on this issue tonight, but we do need to act to prevent abuse of a majority in the other place.