Elections Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

3rd reading
Monday 25th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

I thought it was. I thank those noble Lords for their constructive interest in and engagement with these measures. We have not always agreed—sometimes we have—but I have been grateful for their willingness to work with this side and our Bill team on these matters. As a result of this willingness to reach compromises around the House, the Bill leaves your Lordships’ House improved and strengthened.

On our Benches, I thank my noble friends Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, Lord Holmes of Richmond, Lord Hayward and Lady Noakes for their input, which has led to amendments that I also believe have enhanced the legislation. I am astonishingly grateful to my noble friend Lady Scott, who seems to step into every breach when I fall or, if you like, am not sufficient. She has such an impressive capacity to pick up the technical issues and work at pace, and I have been so grateful to her for her good humour and tireless work. It is much appreciated. I also thank my noble friend Lord Howe, who is not here, for stepping into the breach when I unfortunately had my lights punched out by a Covid headache and worse. I fell short then of a promise to all noble Lords that I would be here every hour of every debate. Of course, that could not be helped, but I assure your Lordships, as someone who likes to live up to his word, that it will be a source of annoyance when I look back on this.

Finally, we all want to go, but I cannot let anyone go—I know that people on all sides of the House understand this—without mentioning the extraordinary hard work of the Bill team and the policy officials behind the Bill, many of whom have worked for what may seem like half a lifetime to them on preparing it and putting it together. There are so many of them that it would be invidious to name them all, but many of your Lordships have had direct personal contact with them. They have been enormously professional, good humoured and patient—which you have to be if you work with me—and have lived up to the very highest standards of the UK Civil Service and the quality of public service that we all admire. So, my final thanks are to them.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, perhaps I may remark to my noble friend Lord Rennard and the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, that in the process of this Bill I have appreciated that it is possible to be quite astonishingly, nerdishly expert on the details of elections to the degree to which the two of them and one or two of our colleagues on the Labour Benches are. That goes far beyond my limited experience, having fought only five elections in my life. They really understand the details in all sorts of ways. I have done some of my electioneering in some of the more difficult parts of the United Kingdom.

I thank the many pro-democracy organisations that have helped and advised us and lobbied about the Bill as it has gone through: Best for Britain, Unlock Democracy, the Electoral Reform Society, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Democracy Defence Coalition. I particularly thank Elizabeth Plummer in our Whips’ Office, who has done superb work with others around the House to make sure that the amendments are there on time.

It is difficult to welcome this Bill. It came to the House accompanied by a number of very critical reports, including one from the constitutional affairs committee of the House of Commons, which said that the Bill in its current form was not fit for purpose. We have improved it a little—we now face ping-pong on some of those improvements—but it is still not entirely what is needed.

As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said, rather powerfully, this is a constitutional Bill on which there was an absence of cross-party consultation or consensus on the fundamentals of our constitutional democracy—that is a worry. We will have to return to this. The next Parliament, whenever it comes, will have to undertake the job of simplifying and clarifying electoral law, which is what we should have been doing—and have failed to do—with this Bill. Perhaps there are some improvements, and there are certainly some necessary changes in this Bill. There are a number of other areas which we on these Benches bitterly regret and, for that, I can make only moderate thanks to the Minister and the Bill team for what has been achieved.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by saying that I agree with the noble Lord the Minister that this Bill is improved and strengthened having gone through this House. This Bill is a clear demonstration that your Lordships’ House can really prove its worth when a Bill comes that is not really good enough. I thank the Government and the Minister for bringing forward some important changes and concessions which have improved the Bill considerably.

I also believe that your Lordships’ House has sent a very clear signal to the Government about concerns around, in particular, photographic ID and the independence of the Electoral Commission. I thank my colleagues, my noble friends Lord Collins and Lord Khan, for their support and all the work that they have done on this Bill. I also thank Ben Wood, in our office, who has worked like crazy on this Bill and others, providing really important support.

I thank the many noble Lords who have taken part in debates on this Bill and who have contributed to making it the better Bill that it is today. In particular, I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, for his important work demonstrating our concerns around the Electoral Commission. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord True and the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for their time and consideration of our concerns. They have given us a lot of time and some of the concessions that we have had are extremely gratefully received and have made the Bill much better. I also thank the officials, because they also gave us that time to try to improve things in this way. I join the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, in thanking the many organisations that have provided time, briefings and the detailed information that has helped us to understand some of the complicated areas of electoral law.

I just end by saying that I hope that we can continue to work together constructively to address the outstanding areas where we believe we can still make more progress.