Local Government Elections

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, on securing this debate. We have all enjoyed the reminiscences of noble Lords as they wandered around the country, seeking to secure votes for themselves and their parties. The last time I stood in a local election was 46 years ago, so my experience is not quite as up to date as that of other noble Lords. I certainly do not recall, as I wandered around the streets of Brixton and Lambeth, getting the sort of extensive hospitality that many candidates appear to have received in other parts of the country. I welcome the opportunity to address the important issues that the noble Lord and others have raised today. I will try not to go off-piste; this particular one is a black run anyway, so I will not take any further risks by straying off it.

We are committed to ensuring that the law that governs our elections is clear and operates effectively. I agree with many of the points that have been made: there are areas where we need to make progress, and I will touch on those in a moment. We want to ensure that electors have the opportunity to engage fully and express their views on issues that concern them at a local level.

We take the security of our electoral system very seriously. One point that has not been made is there are now more elections at local level than there used to be, because we now have mayors and police and crime commissioners. It is now even more important that local elections are conducted properly and that we maintain their integrity. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, that by any international standards the integrity of the electoral system in this country is good, but that does not mean that we cannot make progress.

We are currently working to strengthen the integrity of our elections, including the piloting of voter ID in polling stations at local elections next year. I will say a little more about that in a moment. As background, I reassure noble Lords that we consider policy for and issues arising in elections at both the local and national levels on an ongoing basis. That is not an issue that has been parked and will be forgotten about; it is something that we are actively engaged in. We are working with the Electoral Commission and other interested bodies, including Solace and the Association of Electoral Administrators, to consider the development and improvement of existing processes.

We are also working with the Law Commission on its proposals for changes to electoral law but, as I listened to this debate, it seemed that the task was even bigger than I thought. A number of issues have been raised, such as nomination, registration, imposters, assisting voters, polling day arrangements and validation of signatures on postal vote application forms. On imposters, someone in Ealing, Acton, changed their name to George Young before one of the parliamentary elections, which caused some confusion. I survived. Of course, there was a time when our parties did not appear on the ballot paper. You stood as yourself. That added to the confusion. Anyway, we survived that particular challenge.

The Government’s view is that electoral fraud is unacceptable at any level. It is vital for our democracy that voters are able to cast their vote safely and securely, and that the outcome of any poll has the confidence of the public. It is important that the law ensures that measures and safeguards are in place to uphold the integrity of the electoral process, and that those who seek to undermine the voting process are identified and dealt with appropriately.

The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, mentioned the report of Sir Eric Pickles, who conducted a review of electoral fraud last year. His final report, Securing the Ballot, was published last August and set out a number of recommendations covering various aspects of the electoral system. We welcome the report, and I was asked what progress has been made. We published our response, which outlined our intention to work with stakeholders to improve public confidence in the integrity of our elections. A number of those recommendations have already been addressed through guidance issued by the Electoral Commission. We intend to bring forward further measures that will protect anyone who is at risk of being bullied, undermined or tricked out of their vote and democratic right. We committed in our manifesto, in order to ensure that voters have confidence in our democracy, that we will legislate to ensure that a form of identification should be presented before voting. I will say a word about that in a moment.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, focused his remarks on treating. He is quite right to remind us that under the 1983 Act it is an offence for a person to treat a voter through providing food, drink and entertainment, and there is a similar offence in relation to the bribing of voters. The Pickles report acknowledges that treating,

“is a serious issue and a potential risk of corruption”,

so there is an element of agreement on that point. That report also referred to the Law Commission’s recommendation that the offence of treating be abolished and that of bribery be clarified and strengthened. We continue to work with the Law Commission and others on how best to implement the recommendations of its review of electoral law. I take on board the points that the noble Lord made about bribery. He was good enough to mention that this was not a problem confined to one party, and I will ensure that the particular incidences that he and others have referred to are taken on board in the ongoing discussions between the Government, the Electoral Commission and other stakeholders. On any particular case, if anyone believes that an offence has been committed, then they should of course report that to the police. Again, I take on board the point made by the noble Lord about the response of the police to the particular allegations that he made, and I will ensure that that is also fed into the process.

The Electoral Commission has issued guidance to candidates on spending and donations. That makes it clear that if a candidate does not comply with the legal or regulatory requirements, they may be subject to criminal sanctions. We are considering a way forward on the other recommendations made by Sir Eric Pickles, and will continue to see how we can improve the integrity of electoral processes more generally.

On voter identification, we agree with Sir Eric that the options for asking voters to present identification should be explored through a number of pilot schemes. As many noble Lords will know, that is to be tested at the May 2018 elections. That will shed some light on the concerns expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, on the potential disincentive to vote if you have to produce some ID. The whole purpose of the pilots is to test the impact on all aspects of elections in Great Britain of asking voters to present some form of identification at polling stations before collecting their ballot papers, and to identify the best way to take that new requirement forward. The prospectus on ID pilots, published in March this year, has set out in detail our plans for delivering and evaluating pilot schemes, so that they may meet the objectives of reducing the opportunities for fraud and enhanced public confidence in the security of elections in this country. The Cabinet Office is currently working on the details on how the pilots will be run, and is continuing to work with local authorities which are preparing to pilot voter ID in May 2018. We are also in discussion with local authorities who are still considering participation in the scheme for next year, but are not yet fully committed. We will make an announcement later in the year on the planned pilot schemes, once we have confirmed which local authorities are participating.

On registration, the Government have actually done quite a lot to encourage people to register. There have been particular initiatives focused on those groups who are under-registered. The introduction of online registration has made it much easier to register to vote. You can do it in a few minutes, and in fact it is now the preferred form of registration. I hope that that will help to drive up registration. Those of us who were in the debate on the Higher Education and Research Bill have heard about experiments by some universities to drive up registration, and those initiatives are being taken forward. So we are working hard to reach groups that historically have not registered.

I was asked about the boundary commissions. I read the Times, whenever it was. Noble Lords will know that the legal position is quite clear: the Electoral Commission is on a route to complete its report and present it to Ministers and then to Parliament by September next year, and it would require primary legislation to stop that. It would also require primary legislation, having stopped it, to reboot it with a different target of, say, 650. The Government have no plans to change that; our legislation is in the open air. Any initiative would have to take place quite soon if the whole process were to be completed by 2022. Of course, if we do not go forward with revised boundary commissions there is a real risk that the next election will be fought on boundaries drawn up in the year 2000, which I am not sure would be in the interests of democracy. I am not sure I can add to the body of knowledge that people have on the boundary commissions, but the legal position at the moment is quite clear.

Sir Eric made a number of recommendations to strengthen the integrity of postal voting, a point raised by some noble Lords, including limiting the period for which a person may have a long-term postal vote to three years. I will also consider some of the points raised today.

On the Law Commission, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, is quite right, as always, in identifying the date when the Law Commission published its interim report in February last year. I do not think anyone has any difficulty with the key recommendation that the current laws governing elections should be rationalised into a single legislative framework, as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, described, that is applicable across elections, subject to differentiation due to some justifiable principle or policy. We consider that that would make elections easier to administer and therefore more resilient to errors or fraud.

I cannot add to what I said in earlier exchanges about the timetable but I reassure noble Lords that I have listened very carefully to this debate. I do not know whether this is off-piste, but I detect some impatience in your Lordships’ House to get on with these important initiatives in order to make progress with enhancing the integrity of our electoral system.

This part is in the script. This has been a very interesting debate and I am grateful to noble Lords for the contributions that they have made. We will continue to work to eliminate fraud and tackle improper practices to ensure the integrity of our electoral system and that our democracy is secure and works for all voters.