Elections Bill (Seventh sitting)

Paul Bristow Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 19th October 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Paul Bristow (Peterborough) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady recognise, like me, that one of the most common experiences on the doorstep is someone saying that they have lost the polling card itself and have seen that as an entry into voting? Nine times out of 10, when someone has lost something it has been the card itself. I say to them, “You don’t need that—you just need to say your name and address.” Has she had that experience?

[Fleur Anderson]

Different people will have different ID. If we open up the forms of ID that people can take, we make it more likely that they will vote. Many people will have lost their photo ID. Some people do misplace their polling card in their pile of post and so do not have it to hand. We can say at the moment that they can just go down to the polling station, but the Bill introduces an extra barrier of people having to find their photographic ID—their passport or driving licence. If a polling card is a high barrier, photographic ID is even higher. My amendment would lower the barriers to voting and enable more people to get involved in democracy, which in the end would make decisions better. The Bill would increase the barriers.

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[Patrick Grady]

I will echo many of the hon. Lady’s points. The renewal of a postal vote comes up on an annual basis when the check of who is registered at the household comes through the post. It indicates whether electors are postal voters. If they wanted to change at that point, the opportunity would be there. But the Bill is putting on a separate new requirement. When a voter moves house, a fresh check is done—I know that from recent personal experience. When a voter moves house, they are asked to reapply for a postal vote at their new address.

The move to expand postal voting over the years has undoubtedly helped to increase turnout and participation. The Labour spokesperson explained that, where there have been difficulties, measures have been taken to stop them. That is not an argument to make it more difficult in general for people to apply for and exercise the right to vote by post.

The point about the risk of procedural complication is particularly acute. There is an interesting question about why the renewal has been set for every three years rather than every two, four or five years. Maybe the Minister can explain the evidence base for that when summing up, because that would help to align it with the parliamentary cycle of elections, although there is no cycle of elections at the moment—they are just happening on an almost annual basis. The effect of that is the real risk of someone who thinks they are registered for a postal vote actually being caught out because their postal vote expires while they are away for whatever reason has already inspired them to apply for a postal vote. They may then find that yet another snap election has been called and they are left effectively disenfranchised.

I echo the point about divergence across the United Kingdom. My hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute and I have no problem with divergence. We have a solution to people in Scotland getting confused about voting in Westminster elections, which is to stop that from happening and for Scotland to be an independent country. If Members on the other side of the House and indeed our good friends on the Labour Front Bench do not want that to happen, perhaps they need to think about the divergence and different franchises that are being established across the United Kingdom, and about the different voting systems and the increase in differences. Quite how that makes a case for a strong and stable Union—well, it is not a case for me to make. We fully support the Labour party in opposing this clause and I look forward to hearing how the Minister responds to the points.

[Paul Bristow]

In response to some of the points made by the hon. Member for Putney, I would argue that this change is perfectly reasonable. If someone is trying to renew something as precious as their postal vote, it is perfectly reasonable to be asked to do that every three years. As it happens, I personally think it should be done every year. Households have to renew who is on the electoral register every year. It is not that much of a leap to apply yearly for something as precious as a postal vote. This is a perfectly reasonable request.

I would like to draw Members’ attention to the evidence we heard from the chief executive of Peterborough City Council. It was argued earlier that some of the restrictions about who could hand in postal votes to a polling station were unreasonable. I would ask, what is reasonable about people walking up to polling stations, indeed to the town hall the night before, with plastic bags full of postal votes?

[Cat Smith]

I thought I might help out the hon. Gentleman, because I think he might be straying into the next schedule to the Bill. The hon. Gentleman said that he thought that he would like to see postal votes renewed every year. Why did he not table an amendment to the Bill on that?

[Paul Bristow]

Because we have to start somewhere. As a start, considering the evidence and arguments we have had, renewing every three years is a perfectly reasonable thing to ask someone to do. We should look at what happens after three years and maybe in the future we can see where we are. It is perfectly reasonable to ask someone to apply for something as precious as a postal vote every three years. We have talked about how important the privilege of voting is. If it is important, it is perfectly reasonable to fill out a form every three years. Evidence from my constituency suggests that we have wards in Peterborough that are twice as high as the national average for registered postal votes. I am not saying that that is done for any particularly nefarious reason, but clearly considerable postal vote harvesting and postal vote recruitment have been seen in Peterborough.

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend recall the reasons Lord Pickles gave in his 2016 report in favour of this measure? He said, first, that it

“would provide an opportunity for up-to-date checking of the application against other data at the local authority,”

secondly, that

“it would help to reduce scope for redundant postal votes to continue to go to an address which the elector has left”,

and, thirdly,

“it also provides anyone with a postal vote who feels they are subject to coercion or undue influence with an opportunity to cease having a remote vote.”

Does he agree that the third of those reasons is the most important?

[Paul Bristow]

I absolutely do. The evidence comes from Peterborough, Tower Hamlets and many other parts of the country. It is not isolated to a handful of local authorities; it is much more widespread than Opposition Members would believe. A lot of the evidence we heard in Committee about fraud—Opposition Members have made this argument time and time again—was that the issue was postal votes. Here is an opportunity to try to do something about it, and I urge hon. Members to support this element of the Bill.

[Kemi Badenoch]

I will respond briefly to Opposition Members’ points, which can be summarised as, “This new measure is burdensome.” I thought it would be helpful to let the hon. Member for Putney know that any additional costs on local authorities or electoral returning officers relating to these measures would be covered under the new burdens doctrine. She also mentioned administrative burdens on devolved Administrations, and the answer to that is that they could easily align what they are doing with what we are doing if they felt it was overly burdensome on them.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 2 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 2 agreed to.

Clause 3

Handling of postal voting documents by political campaigners

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

[Kemi Badenoch]

Clause 3 introduces a new criminal offence and bans political campaigners from handling postal voting documents issued to others. This is designed to address activities and behaviour that have been a cause for concern at previous elections. The Pickles report into electoral fraud found that there had been episodes where party activists had used the ploy of canvassing or answering inquiries from voters about completing postal votes to collect or harvest the votes of other postal voters. There is a real risk that voters could be coerced into completing their postal voting statement before handing the ballot paper unmarked to campaigners to be taken away and filled in elsewhere.

The Pickles report also highlighted that concerns have been raised about party activists taking completed ballots and then choosing not to submit them if they are not completed in a way that suits the campaigner’s aims. Clearly, these are very concerning matters and show that there are weaknesses in the current arrangements that have been, and could be again, exploited by persons seeking to undermine the integrity of the electoral system. That is why the Government in their manifesto committed to stopping postal vote harvesting.

The Electoral Commission’s code of conduct for campaigners is clear that campaigners should never touch or handle anyone else’s postal ballot paper.

[Paul Bristow]

Hear, hear!

[Kemi Badenoch]

However, the code does not have legal force. We believe it is time to put it on a statutory footing, and make it a criminal offence for political campaigners to handle postal votes.

The clause sets out details of the postal vote handling offence and makes the offence a “corrupt practice”. Of course, it is perfectly reasonable that a political campaigner might, like many others, want to offer help to a family member, perhaps offering to drop their household’s completed ballots into the post box. This measure makes provision for that, creating exemptions to the offence where the handler is a listed family member or carer of the postal voter. We do not wish to deny legitimate support, but we must be clear, as the Bill is, that systematic collection of votes is unacceptable. This measure will strengthen the integrity of postal voting and give protection to postal voters from those who would seek to subvert the postal voting process.

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[Cat Smith]

Clause 4 is about the handing in of postal vote documents—not necessarily by party political campaigners, but by anyone. It is about setting out requirements for the handing in of postal votes to the returning officer and at polling stations, including setting a limit on the number of postal voters on behalf of whom a person may hand in postal votes, and postal votes being rejected if not handed in in accordance with the requirements.

The new rules could create barriers for some voters who genuinely need assistance. For example, the new rules will limit, perhaps, care home staff being able to hand in, say, a dozen postal votes from residents in the care home. This leaves us in the bizarre situation whereby a care home worker could drop a dozen postal votes into a postbox but not hand them in at a polling station, so I raise that as a potential loophole with the Minister. There is something of an inconsistency. As has just been said by the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Glasgow North, perhaps some level of prelegislative scrutiny with a draft Bill could have allowed us to look at ways to deal with such matters. Given that we can find consensus on many issues in relation to elections, we might have been able to iron some of these matters out before we ended up in Committee.

Let me deal with amendment 69. In its current form, the Bill, as I have just set out, contains numerous holes. Our amendment asks the Government to provide draft regulation that would include greater detail about exactly how the new limit would be enforced, and I would like to put a few questions to the Minister. Could she outline whether polling station staff will be asked to enforce the new limit, and if so, how? What level of training does she envisage polling staff will receive in order to be able to, potentially, enforce this legislation?

[Paul Bristow]

I want to repeat the point that I probably made rather presumptuously in my previous remarks. I want to know what the hon. Lady’s thoughts are on the evidence proposed by Gillian Beasley, the chief executive of Peterborough City Council, when she described a practice of people turning up with plastic bags full of postal votes either at polling stations or at the town hall the night before the election. I want to know whether she thinks that a reasonable practice.

[Cat Smith]

That is exactly why prelegislative scrutiny would have been useful. This is about the distinction between political campaigners and voters. There are legitimate reasons why some voters may wish to hand in more than two postal votes at a polling station.

I gave the example of a care home, but equally, in the current context of covid, a family of three may not have posted their postal votes and ask neighbour to deliver them. If two postal votes can be handed in by an individual but three postal votes cannot, and someone turns up with three, how do we know if that third postal vote is an individual postal vote? There are various holes in the legislation. I am putting these questions to the Minister and I hope she will be able to answer them.

For example, with the limit of two postal votes, if someone were to turn up at a polling station with three postal votes to hand in, and they are able to hand in two for other people and one for themselves, how do we know which is which, given that when they are sealed there is no way of identifying whose votes they are? If the person says, “That one is mine. That is my postal vote so I can legitimately hand that in, and these are the two that I can legitimately hand in,” how would a polling clerk know that those were two postal votes that were being handed in on behalf of other people and one that was for that individual, if the envelopes are sealed and there is no way of identifying them? Can the Minister clarify how she envisages a polling clerk can make that assessment?

According to the explanatory notes accompanying the Bill,

“regulations may require a person seeking to hand in a postal voting document to complete a form containing specific information, which the government anticipates would include, among other information, the name(s) of the postal voter(s) whose ballot papers are being handed in. Regulations may make provision to require the “relevant officer” receiving the ballot to reject the document if the person fails to complete the form.”

The Minister will know that, once completed, a postal vote does not have a person’s name on the front of the envelope, for obvious reasons to do with the secrecy of the ballot. How does the Minister see this being enforced or policed? It would be impossible to know if the postal vote being handed in actually belongs to the person recorded on the form.

I leave the Minister with those questions. It would be helpful to have some clarification on these matters, in terms of how the Committee might progress and whether or not to accept this clause as part of the Bill. I draw the distinction between political campaigners, whose actions were the subject of the clause we previously debated and who I believe should be held to rights, and members of the general public, who might be handing in postal votes on behalf of a neighbour or family member, or be a care home worker handing in ballots on behalf of residents of a care home.