Elections Bill (Second sitting)

Nick Smith Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 15th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Thank you. I call Nick Smith.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

Q This question is to Ailsa Irvine of the Electoral Commission. Imprints and identification of publisher are important safeguards in our system. I have been a party agent previously, and we are well aware of the importance of fair comment and our libel laws. However, are digital imprints sufficient to improve transparency and prevent interference or misinformation, particularly from overseas?

Ailsa Irvine: Requiring digital campaign materials to include an imprint is something that we have been calling for for a number of years—it has been widely called for for a number of years—and it should go a long way towards providing voters with some information and clarity about who is paying to target them with campaign information. Given the massive boom in the number of people campaigning online, it is something that we know has concerned voters, and voters are telling us that currently they do not feel that they have confidence about where that information is coming from.

This requirement will go some way towards that, although the detailed provisions that are in the Bill at the moment will have some workability challenges around them—for example, by not requiring any unpaid campaign material from those that are unregistered to include an imprint. Although the Bill will bring more people into the category that will require them to register as a campaigner, there is still potential for unregistered campaigners to spend significant amounts of money on creating material and then disseminate it organically, and that would not be required to have an imprint. There is still a bit of a risk and a challenge around the provisions as drafted.

The inclusion of an address in the imprint is an absolutely critical factor, and that will help to demonstrate where a campaigner is based, and whether they are in the UK or otherwise. Again, if there is any activity taking place from outside the UK, although it would be transparent in these instances from the commission’s perspective, and we would have a role in regulating this in relation to non-party campaigners, our remit stops at the UK’s borders. We would not be able to go beyond that.

We have just got experience from the recent elections in Scotland where digital imprints were introduced for the first time. What we saw was that we have a community of campaigners who generally want to comply with the law. We did see good levels of compliance there, with people putting an imprint in place. When we became aware of any instances where that was not the case, we took steps to call up the campaigners to try to bring them in line with compliance. We saw that this was something that can make a real difference to voters.

[The Chair]

Virginia and Peter, would you like to add anything to that? No. I call Fleur Anderson.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fleur Anderson]

Q Rob, I would like to go back to the practicalities and your thinking about how you would roll out voter ID. How many additional staff do you think you would need all year round for the applications that come in? We heard earlier that Northern Ireland has ID clinics. How many additional staff do you think you would need for the election period and on the day itself?

To add to that, which groups are you concerned might be disenfranchised by this measure, meaning that you would be working harder to include them? We have had representations from organisations representing older people, people with disabilities, people who are black, Asian or minority ethnic, and women fleeing domestic violence, for example. Are you concerned about those groups, and might other groups be disenfranchised?

Rob Connelly: First, in terms of staffing numbers, I do not know the honest answer to that. We are trying to figure that through. I am already very much leaning towards saying that this cannot sit with my core elections office, because it is too big. What I would worry about is that they become swamped and that they will not be able to deal with their core election job: delivering the election itself.

I was interested when Virginia talked about 70 additional staff at the time; I had not even thought that it would be that high. To be honest, that is going to have to be a corporate response from the whole local authority. It is not something that returning officers can do in isolation. I am absolutely certain of that now. We have tried to figure out what that could look like, but until we know a bit more detail it is quite difficult. One of the questions that I have raised is, as I have 10 parliamentary constituencies, do I just have one core centre, or do I have to have something in each constituency to ensure that I do not have any barriers to people coming in? Why should they have to come into the city centre? I do not know.

In terms of who it potentially disenfranchises, that is a really good question. Back in November, I brought a report to one of my committees in the city council, just to flag that voter ID was potentially going to be introduced. They are better placed than I am to identify the vulnerable groups within their communities, so I am going to push the burden on them a bit to tell me who those communities are—older people, students or vulnerable people. I get on my hobbyhorse about students, because my son is 19 and at university. He has already lost two forms of ID, and that was during lockdown—[Laughter.] My advice to him would be: go to your local elections office and get an ID card. I know that it will not have any date of birth, as I understand it, but you have to be 18 to vote, so over time that could itself drive demand.

The other, related scenario is that my son is registered in Nottingham and in Birmingham. If he had lost his ID—like his passport—would he have to come back to Birmingham to collect something and then return to Nottingham to vote? The way the Bill is currently worded is that you will potentially have to make a declaration that you have no other forms of photographic ID. That is just one of those little areas that I had not given much thought to until my son was asking for something to replace his driver’s licence. We automatically assume that, because they are younger, students have ID, but that is not always the case. We have to be a bit wary of that.

Some of my members have said to me, “I don’t have any current form of photo ID.” These are people in their mid-30s or mid-40s. Again, until we actually get into the nitty-gritty of it and put it into practice, I am not sure whether we will entirely know—until the day or week itself.

[Nick Smith]

Q Louise, my sense is that you are pretty sceptical that much voter personation actually occurs. It was interesting to hear Mr Connelly talk about the difficulties that young voters may have in having voter ID easily to hand. My view is that simple systems boost participation and simple messages are key. What measures do you think you will have to use across the UK to inform our diverse communities that they will need voter ID, and what are your concerns?

Louise Round: I think that it will need to be tackled on a whole range of fronts. There will be a national campaign, and obviously the Electoral Commission will have a massive role to play in relation to that. However, if you take the vaccination programme, which was the most recent analogous experience, our experience is that small and local works. In Merton, as in many other councils, we used local community champions, in some cases from the same ethnic backgrounds as some of the harder-to-reach groups: younger people and older people who can actually talk to people who may be less inclined to, or may not even know that they need to, apply for voter ID in a language and with experience that those people can tune into. It will take a huge concerted effort by the Government, the Cabinet Office, the Electoral Commission and local returning officers.

To pick up what Rob was saying about voter ID cards not being an electoral services responsibility, teams in London range from three to five people, so there is no way they can take on issuing voter ID cards in the middle of an election—as I said, I suspect that, however long the run-up, that is when all the pressure will be piled on. This is a corporate responsibility, and returning officers, generally speaking, are senior managers or chief executives in councils, so they will need to mobilise all their colleagues and make sure that everybody puts all hands to the pump so that we do not disfranchise people.

[Peter Gibson]

Q I have two questions for Rob. In her evidence, the returning officer from Peterborough outlined that they had explored using CCTV in their polling stations. Could you comment on whether you have done the same and on whether that would be of benefit? Could you also outline whether all your polling station clerks are fully trained in the applicability of tendered ballots?

Rob Connelly: CCTV is something we explored in around 2010 or 2011, but we had a number of concerns, including that it might go the other way and affect people’s confidence in the system, in that they might be worried that we were spying on them or would be able to identify how they were voting. We opted not to go down that route. We invested more in additional training for our staff. We even considered looking at CCTV outside polling stations for people who were entering. Again, we did not think, if there were allegations of personation, that that would really help us. We had discussions with West Midlands police about the evidential side of that, and CCTV would not necessarily help you identify who had committed any crime of personation or when. We know it would have been very difficult to prove. As I say, we invest more in our staff who are delivering the ballot papers, and what have you.

In terms of the question about tendered ballot papers, that is something we make sure we reiterate every election. We introduced a form for our polling station staff. If they gave out a tendered ballot paper, they had to give an explanation as to why—what was the reason? We would then spend some time collating that information post-election. That would do two things. One, if there were particular problems with particular polling stations and polling station staff, we could pick that up with them to find out why they were doing those things and fix that for next time. Two, we would then report that back to our members and give out numbers over the whole city, saying that x number of tendered ballot papers had been issued and giving the reasons why. I will be honest with you: there were times when they were probably issued wrongly, but that helped identify the issue so we could eliminate that from the process.