Elections Bill (Sixth sitting)

Paul Bristow Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Fleur Anderson]

That is an important point. I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman, and that is why I said that it must be delivered by the Electoral Commission in conjunction with local authorities. Local authorities know the best place to open up their surgeries, or wherever they will be delivering the cards. They know the best times and the best ways to do it locally, so having a national system that is delivered locally in conjunction with local authorities would work best. I agree that there has to be local provision, because local authorities know their local people best.

It is important to place this issue in the context of the past 10 years. From 2010 until the onset of the pandemic, local authorities lost 60p out of every £1 that the Government provided to spend on local services. Already cash-strapped councils will suddenly be expected to oversee and administer hundreds of thousands of photo ID cards, in addition to processing last-minute applications. We saw in the pilot and know from experience that, unlike us, a lot of people do not spend a lot of time thinking about elections; they think about elections on the day. There was a huge surge of additional applications in the run-up to the election, so there needs to be surge capacity, including on the day itself. Will councils be adequately resourced to do that? Will they have recourse to the Electoral Commission to get the support they need to deliver the cards?

[Paul Bristow (Peterborough) (Con)]

What was the hon. Lady’s reaction to the evidence we heard from Gillian Beasley, the chief executive of Peterborough City Council, and the returning officer of Birmingham City Council, who both said that they felt well placed to administer this change?

[Fleur Anderson]

I was as surprised as the witnesses from Peterborough and Birmingham councils when the chief electoral officer from Northern Ireland said that she needed 70 additional staff during the election period. Up until then, the evidence from Birmingham and Peterborough was that we would need a handful of additional staff through the year to give out ID cards, and then a surge, but to hear that 70 additional staff were needed in Northern Ireland was, I think, illuminating and concerning for some of the council staff who were giving evidence. It is a good point, well made.

Will the Government resource our local councils to deliver this policy? Can the Minister guarantee that there will be no cuts to frontline services because of the need to transfer resourcing to the production and delivery of ID cards? All year round, young people especially will be getting this card. At the moment, they have to buy a provisional licence to be able to go to a nightclub, so they will definitely want this card. It is a free resource all year round, so there will be demand for it all year round, but in the run-up to an election there will obviously be an additional surge. Will that fall on the local councils? Can it be guaranteed that Government funding will cover that? Local authorities and electoral registration officers will potentially be burdened with the additional time and money required to enfranchise 35 million overseas voters, at the same time as creating a whole new requirement for processing free voter ID cards for domestic voters, and that is on top of the Boundary Commission changes and all the other burdens being put on our electoral registration officers.

On top of that, the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill, by its very nature, creates uncertainty around the timing of general elections, as the Prime Minister will be able to choose the date. The extremely short timetable in the lead-up to elections, as well as plans to shorten that window, has the potential to completely bury the administrative system behind elections, which will potentially result in those very precious electoral ID cards not being given out and people not being able to vote.

Local election authorities are already discovering that there is an increasing burden, and all the returning officers in the May 2019 voter ID pilots had to recruit extra staff, so it is not controversial to say that others will have to do so. It is not always straightforward. Mr Connelly from Birmingham City Council told us in evidence last week:

“As it is, we struggle to recruit and retain staff, who come to the polling station literally for one day a year.”––[Official Report, Elections Public Bill Committee, 15 September 2021; c. 61, Q96.]

Recruiting and retaining staff all year round will be a challenge. All those staff will need to be trained, and that requires more time and money.

This Bill needs to guarantee two things. First, it needs to guarantee that the responsibility for delivering the voter ID programme falls on a central body that ensures consistency across the country. The amendment would make it the Electoral Commission. The responsibility should not be squarely on the shoulders of local returning officers and electoral registration officers, who are already stretched to their limit.

Secondly, the Bill needs to guarantee that local electoral authorities are properly resourced and given what they feel they need to carry out their new duties and responsibilities. During the evidence session I was concerned to hear that local authorities had not already been asked for their estimates of what that would cost. The Government cannot yet know what it will cost to fund that adequately because local authorities have not been asked. If they are not properly funded and staffed, they will collapse under the weight of the new electoral regime; it will not work.

In her response, I would like the Minister to assure not just me but returning officers and registration officers up and down the country that she understands the concerns and limited capacity of local election registration teams. I would like her to guarantee that they will be given all the resources that they will need, and to emphasise that no frontline services will be cut.

I should also be grateful if the Minister would shed some light on the following questions. Will there be a national IT system for producing the ID cards? What will be the role of the Electoral Commission in supporting local authorities as they gear up to deliver this? How much will one elector ID cost the taxpayer? We heard that, in Northern Ireland, costs differed when production was outsourced and when it was insourced, but what is the estimate for the rest of the UK?

Has the Minister consulted local authorities? I know that she has not been in her place for very long, but have there been consultations with local authorities about how elector IDs will be administered and physically printed? Will local authorities need special printing facilities, for example, or will a normal colour printer be sufficient? Such things will make a big difference to local authorities. Will voters have their photos taken at the local authority when applying for the card? How will that work? Will women wearing face coverings be forced to take them off, and has that been built into how the system will be administered?

The evidence that we have heard so far demonstrates convincingly that a centralised approach to administering voter ID is cheaper, is more consistent and efficient, ensures that local authorities will not be pushed over the edge but can deliver the system, and ensures that every single person who can vote is able to vote. I hope that the Minister will take amendment 24 seriously and commit at least to embedding these principles in the Bill and the guidelines that follow.