Elections Bill

Lord Desai Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Desai (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have a very different view of what the Government are proposing and the whole election business. I find the election process in this country severely out of date. It is like a penny farthing machine, if not something worse. Had the Labour Government been allowed to have identity cards as they proposed— Nick Clegg talked about privacy and some said it was too expensive—none of these problems would arise.

People say that that is against our tradition. In India, which had 900 million people on the electoral register last time round in 2019, everybody has an identity card. All 1,300 million people carry an identity card. I have seen them. Everybody can produce their identity at any time—ignorant people, illiterate people, tribals, women, blacks and whites. Again and again, people here make this drama about it being the poorest who are illiterate or unintelligent and cannot get a photo ID. Why are we so patronising about our own citizens?

My children and grandchildren laugh at the fact that we have to go to a booth and sign something there. They have a smartphone; they should be allowed to vote directly online on a phone. We used the smartphone during the pandemic for a number of things and relied on it. It was very useful. Which world do we live in so that, for elections, we have to go through a very old- fashioned system with people counting votes all night? In India, with 900 million people voting, once the ballot boxes are gathered it takes one and a half hours to declare the national result, because we have electronic machines to count the votes. You do not need people sitting there all night putting little pieces of paper by their side and throwing things away, and us then having to rely on the BBC exit poll to know what will happen over the next 36 hours.

Why do we tolerate this peculiar system? I know that we have a great love for treating politics as a medieval system; that is our pride. That is why our parliamentary Chambers have to be overcrowded; we cannot really have seats to ourselves or equipment on each chair so we can vote sitting on our seat. No, that is not in our tradition; it is not in our tradition to have people sitting comfortably in parliamentary seats. No, we are an old democracy, we are the best democracy; therefore, we must be made physically uncomfortable to be able to be in Parliament. Look at the House of Commons. It is so crowded. If every Member of the House of Lords turned up, half of us would not be able to sit. Why do we tolerate that, and why, each time anybody suggests a change, does everybody say, “Oh my God, we cannot have this change, because somebody somewhere will be deprived”?

The Government should have proposed an identity card scheme and implemented it quickly before the next election. We all get an electoral registration note every month or two that says, “Please certify that you are at this residence”. I do not know why it has to be done that many times but, okay, I do it. Of course I have lost my vote by coming here, but I still dutifully fill out the form and send it back because that is my duty, but it should not be necessary.

If we had an identity card, it would have all the information required in one little thing. It should be on your smartphone. My smartphone knows more about me than I myself know. It tells me where I have been. We really ought to think about this whole process and much less patronisingly about those who are deprived. We should ask: what is the best, most efficient and fastest way to get people to vote, and the most comfortable way? They should not have to go to a polling booth; it is completely unnecessary, because we can create an identity—a number with a picture—which can be accurately determined to give that person a vote. We are discussing an antiquated thing and passionately want to keep it antiquated. I do not think I can make any difference to that logic, but perhaps in another 25 years somebody will do it.