Elections Bill

Martin Docherty-Hughes Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 7th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chloe Smith]

The hon. Lady shakes her head, but that is what it does, and that is important.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

We discussed this matter in Westminster Hall back in 2019. As one of my colleagues reminded us, in 2019, the Conservative party received £400,000, with one donation coming from the household of a former Russian Minister under Vladimir Putin eight months after the Salisbury poisonings. There was also money from a personal friend of the President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad. Does the Minister not agree that this does not go far enough to stop this happening again?

[Chloe Smith]

I have three points. First, this Bill does the right thing, as I have just explained. Secondly, the Conservative party does the right thing with regard to our donations, as I am happy to explain and defend at any time. Thirdly, I am already having to pass through so many pages in my briefing to find the bit about the SNP because there are quite a few points about how it handles its donations as well. I do think it is important that a person gets their house in order before they accuse others.

Let me move on to the important matter of notional expenditure. We are talking here about measures that will deliver better transparency for voters and candidates. I am sure that many in this House will welcome the clarification of the law on notional expenditure that is included in the Bill, which will ensure that candidates and their agents can continue to conduct full campaigns without the fear, as found by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee,

“of falling foul of the law through no fault of their own”

and inadvertently causing candidates to exceed their spending limits.

I will go on now to the new electoral sanction of intimidation. A free choice for voters means that anyone entitled to stand as a candidate must feel able to do so. Without a broad range of candidates for voters to choose from, we diminish representation in this country. I am sad to see a rising number of incidents of people trying to exclude others from the debate through violent or illegal behaviour. Voters do not expect violence in our elections. People should not be fearful of expressing their views or standing up in public service. That is why the Bill introduces an additional sanction that will bar an individual found guilty of intimidating a candidate, campaigner or elected representative from running or holding office for five years on top of their sentence.

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[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

Can I first say to the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution that I am glad to see them back at the Dispatch Box? I also commend them for their passion for the legislation they are bringing forward on behalf of the Government. I do not necessarily agree with the vast majority of it for very simple reasons, and I want to bring my words to three specific points on voter identification, assistance for excluded groups and the regulation of expenditure.

First, on voter identification, I am glad that the right hon. Member for—I can never remember his constituency. [Hon. Members: “Haltemprice and Howden.”] Exactly. It is double-barrelled and it always gets me. I am glad that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) is here on voter ID. I do not necessarily share the same opinion, for a very specific reason. One other hon. Member, the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke), has already mentioned the OSCE report on voter ID. There has been a failure to recognise in the debate so far not only that the vast majority of nations that use them have used them for a long period of time, but that some of them—for example, Estonia—not only use them to allow a citizen to go and vote, but to allow them full access to the vast majority of records the state owns on them. Therefore, your ID card—your digital ID card—will allow you to read your medical records, your police record and a vast swathe of public information held on you, the citizen. Their digital ID is yours; it is not the state’s.

The idea that also needs to be discussed and highlighted quickly is the idea that we do not have ID numbers in the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland. The vast majority of us over the age of 15 have a national insurance number and the vast majority of us have an NHS number. Those of us representing Scottish constituencies also have our community health index—called the CHI. The issue about voter ID-specific cards is therefore a worry to me. Why are we duplicating a specific voter ID card when ID numbers already exist? Why go to the expense of creating and duplicating existing structures? I am afraid that I did not hear the answer to that in the Minister’s opening speech, and perhaps they will come back to it, if they wish, in their conclusion.

I think the onus in the legislation is on local government to provide the cards. Where does the ownership of the card reside: is it with the Government or with the local authority? The Minister mentioned the fact that it would not be connected to any databases, and that gives me the idea that it is owned not by the local authority, but by the Government. Therefore, there needs to be clarity about that ID in that it is not connected to any other single database other than someone’s voter number on the voter roll. That needs clarification.

On assisting those who are excluded, there has been no mention so far, for example, of the Gypsy, Traveller and Roma community. A proportion of the Gypsy, Traveller and Roma community still lead a nomadic lifestyle, and they will find it extremely difficult—moving from local authority to local authority or between the nations of the United Kingdom—to access a specific local authority to give them a specific voter ID. Perhaps the Minister can say a few words about that in summing up because the Gypsy, Traveller and Roma community in recent months has found some of the legislation that has gone through this place very difficult.

Then we come to the regulation of expenditure, and I referred in my intervention on the Minister to unincorporated associations. Much has been made by Government Members about the independence of charities, for example. Not all charities that use the word “charity” are actually registered charities; they are usually unincorporated associations. They are the small organisations in each of our constituencies that go about their business doing civic duties and civic activity. But the unethical and unprincipled element of the unincorporated associations which needs to be clarified in this Bill is about how they are utilised to undermine democratic principles and fund political organisations by the back door.

There needs to be clarity in the Bill. The Minister needs to identify why we cannot use existing ID numbers that we already have, and how we can tackle the issue of the Gypsy, Traveller and Roma community and also make sure that unincorporated associations are not a back door to undermining the very principles of democracy across these islands.

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[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

Much of the opposition to the Bill has been focused on concerns about voter ID, but there are broader concerns that I wish to address.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights has produced a detailed report of the human rights implications of voter ID, and I commend it and our recommendations to the House. I believe in evidence-based policy making, and from the evidence the Committee heard we concluded that the voter ID measures risk making voting less accessible to some people and will have a discriminatory impact on some voters with protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010, including the disabled, certain ethnic minorities and Gypsy and Traveller communities.

We on the Committee want the Government to explain why they have concluded that a voter ID requirement is necessary and proportionate, given the very low number of reported cases of fraud at polling stations; the even lower number of convictions and cautions; the potential for the requirement to discriminate against voters with protected characteristics; and the lack of any clear measures to combat potential discrimination faced by those groups, including disabled people and older people. I hope that I might hear from the Minister the answers to those question, which were posed by a cross-party Committee of MPs and peers.

Many Members ask why the Government are focusing on voter ID, given the lack of evidence that it is a significant problem. I wonder whether perhaps it is in the Bill to distract us not just from what else is in the Bill that should not be there but from what is missing. Part 4 seeks further to regulate third-party campaigning in elections, but an opportunity to comprehensively update our rules on transparency in political finance has been missed. As other Members have said, the lack of transparency in respect of donations from unincorporated associations is a particular concern.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

The Bill fails to understand the total degradation of democracy through unincorporated organisations. Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that the Government need to grasp that thorn and deal with it?