Elections: Personation

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My noble friend invites me to make comments way above my pay grade. I am a humble Lord in waiting and spokesman for the Cabinet Office and the Government have made it absolutely clear that they have no plans to introduce ID cards. I will, however, make sure that my seniors in government are aware of my noble friend’s question.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, my majority when I was first elected was just nine. Is the Minister aware that in the London Borough of Bromley this May, at least 154 could not vote as they did not have the appropriate ID when they tried to do so? Mortgage documents were acceptable as ID but rent books were not. Freedom passes were okay but student travel ID was insufficient. Does this not add up to discrimination on a gerrymandering scale?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

No. If the noble Lord looks at the evaluation carried out by the Electoral Commission, he will see that it says:

“The number of people who did not vote because they couldn’t show identification was very small”.


The vast majority who came without the right identification returned later with the correct identification. If he looks at the percentage of all voters who never returned, he will see that the percentage varied between 0.06% and 0.4%. In no way does that constitute what the noble Lord calls “gerrymandering”. Finally, the evaluation concluded that there was,

“no evidence to suggest particular demographics were more affected than others”.

So I wholly reject his assertion that gerrymandering is involved in introducing this recommendation from the Electoral Commission.