Elections: Personation

Lord Naseby Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Lord is quite correct to say that there are relatively few convictions. According to the Electoral Commission report for the past year there were 200 allegations of personation in the past four years. He asks the good question: why is it difficult to prosecute? If you think about it, if you go to a polling station and try to vote and you find that somebody else has already voted in your name and you are disfranchised, it is quite difficult to find out who voted in your place. That may be one reason why there are relatively few prosecutions in the case of personation. The introduction of voter ID would of course reduce the risk to a minimum.

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

Is my noble friend aware that there is still one weakness on the register, namely that of students who are on the register both at their university and at home? Should this not be looked at? I talk as a former honourable Member for a university town who at the time had a majority of 142.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I remember that election well: my majority was 808. My noble friend raises the important issue of students. There were many allegations that some students at the last election voted twice. This issue was raised by Ministers with the appropriate body within the National Police Council, which is pursuing it. There is, I think, a small number of issues outstanding. In many cases, where a student voted twice, on one occasion it would have been as a proxy for another student.