Local Elections: Voter ID

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. There will be an independent statutory evaluation of the pilots conducted by the Electoral Commission. That will be published by the end of July, and it will inform the ensuing debate.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, we recognise the validity of the concerns of the EHRC, but we should know by the summer whether the Government were correct in their assessment or whether those concerns were legitimate. Meanwhile, what exactly are the new safeguards to prevent electoral fraud in postal and proxy voting that are being tested in the three pilot areas referred to by the Minister in the Commons yesterday? The Minister also assured my Liberal Democrat colleague there that the number of registered electors who are not permitted to vote in person, for lack of appropriate ID, will be recorded and reported. What will happen if that number exceeds the margin of victory in a particular ward?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Lord is quite right: three local authorities are piloting new procedures for voter ID on postal votes—Tower Hamlets, Peterborough and Slough. I said a little about that in my opening remarks. Some local authorities are not only making people more aware of the incidence of electoral fraud and encouraging them to report it where necessary to Crimestoppers, but are following up after the election—contacting certain electors who have used the postal vote—to make sure that nothing improper has taken place.

With regard to turning up at a polling station and not being able to vote, in one local authority—I think it is Swindon—if you do not have the necessary documentation on polling day you can take along someone called an “attester”, who has the necessary documentation and is registered in the same ward, and if the attester vouchsafes your identity you can then vote.