Political Parties, Elections and Referendums

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Simon Hoare)]

I beg to move,

That the draft Electoral Commission Strategy and Policy Statement, which was laid before this House on 14 December 2023, be approved.

It is a pleasure to be able to present this important strategy and policy statement for parliamentary consideration this afternoon. We may disagree on many points, but one point on which I hope we can agree is that there are plenty of issues in our political life to raise the blood pressure. Let me say respectfully to the House that this strategy and policy statement is not one of them, for reasons that I shall set out.

The Electoral Commission Strategy and Policy Statement was laid before Parliament on 14 December 2023 for approval by resolution of both Houses within a 40-day period in accordance with section 4C(9)(a) of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. Let me start by asserting clearly and unequivocally a concern which I know many right hon. and hon. Members have had, and which I wish to nail from the outset. This statement, this strategy, in no way undermines or challenges the robust, legislatively underpinned independence of the Electoral Commission. The commission plays an important part in our national life. It has a key and important role, and the House and, I believe, the country recognise that.

The statement gives the Government no new teeth or power. How, if and when the commission faces into the guidance is up to it and the scrutiny of Mr Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, whose role is exercised on behalf of the House. The commission, as is set out in the 2000 Act, only has a “duty to have regard”. We are not saying—not least because we cannot, and do not wish to—that the commission “will” or “must”. We create no new duty to report to the Government, only a duty for the Speaker’s Committee to maintain its relations with the commission. The commission will continue to report only to Parliament, as it has done since its creation in 2000. The statement—I want to make this very clear, because this is a twin approach of independence—does not politicise Mr Speaker’s Committee or the Office of the Speaker in respect of its commission functions.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

I have been listening to what the Minister is saying with a bit of disbelief. If the commission will not have to take any notice of the statement or act on it, but need only have regard to it, what is it here for? If “having regard to” means “taking seriously and doing something about”, that applies both to the commission and to Mr Speaker’s Committee, which has to oversee the commission and its work. Does that not compromise the neutrality and independence of Mr Speaker as well as the Electoral Commission? This is a very serious matter.

[Simon Hoare]

If that were true, it would be a serious matter, but I must say to the hon. Gentleman—for whom I have huge respect, and who chairs the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee with much distinction—that I do not see it that way, and neither do the Government. However, he takes me from my explanation of what the statement is not, to explaining why we are approving it. That is the nub of this issue. We see—I see—the role of this Government and of any party that has the honour to be in government in the United Kingdom as that of a pro tem custodian of our democracy. That is why we have election law, and why I am the elections Minister. Democracy is, as we discussed last week in the Holocaust Memorial Day debate, a fragile flower under huge pressure.

We believe that the statement is timely, not least because of the raft of changes that have flown through and been delivered by statutory instrument from the recent Elections Act 2022. We are also hugely cognisant of the threats to the robustness and resilience of our democracy presented by overseas interference, fake news, deepfakes, and artificial intelligence. The solemn role of pro tem custodian, and holding the flame of democracy while we serve in government, are important.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

rose—

[Simon Hoare]

It is important to underpin, rather than undermine, the work of the commission by standing shoulder to shoulder with it in the important work that has been set before it, which I will come to when I have taken the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention.

[John McDonnell]

I am a member of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, and we warned in our report about the threat to the independence of the commission from the Government’s legislation regarding the strategy statement. I can understand where the Minister is coming from when he says that we are not using the expression “must” because that would be a direction, but the Government are repeatedly using the expression “should”. The question in my mind is: if the commission ignores this “should”, what happens? There is an implied threat around the “should”.

[Simon Hoare]

The right hon. Gentleman helpfully takes me to the next part of my remarks about “should”, “would” and “must”. Let us just canter through, with some degree of attention and seriousness, the priorities set out in the statement. In all seriousness—I hope the House knows me well enough to know that when I use that phrase it is not just parroting a line; I am serious in what I am about to say, because it is important—I really would question whether any hon. or right hon. Member of this House, of any party, would take exception to anything in the statement.

[John McDonnell]

Will the Minister answer my question?

[Simon Hoare]

If the right hon. Gentleman will be a little patient, he will have his question answered. He asks his question in his way and, in the words of Frank Sinatra, I shall answer it in mine.

The first paragraph rehearses this key point:

“The Electoral Commission is the independent regulatory body responsible for giving guidance and support to Electoral Registration Officers and Returning Officers in undertaking electoral registration and conducting elections and recall petitions effectively and in accordance with the law.”

Anybody disagree with that? No. Paragraph 2 states:

“The Chair of the Commission has the responsibility in law for acting as the Chief Counting Officer at national referendums in the UK…and the staff of the Commission support the Chair in that role, when it is required, to work through local electoral authorities to deliver such events.”

The delivery of smooth and seamless referenda is not, I would suggest, a revolutionary power grab by His Majesty’s Government.

Paragraph 3 states:

“The government believes the Electoral Commission has an important role to play in maintaining the integrity of our elections and public confidence in that integrity.”

I do not think that point will get the Division bells ringing. In answer to the question from the Chair of the Select Committee, paragraph 3 continues:

“The duty to have regard does not require the Commission to give lesser priority to, or to ignore, any of its other statutory duties. The Electoral Commissioners and the Commission’s executive leadership will remain responsible for determining the Commission’s strategy, priorities, how it should discharge its duties (including day-to-day operations) and the allocation of its resources, as agreed by the relevant parliaments. It will be for the Commission to determine how to factor the Statement into its decision-making processes and corporate documents such as the Five-Year Plan.”

Paragraph 4 states:

“One of the government’s policy priorities is ensuring our democracy is secure, fair, modern and transparent.”

One could easily transpose the word “government” for “Parliament” there. Who will argue with ensuring that our democracy is secure? Who will argue that our democracy should not be fair, modern, or transparent? Paragraph 4 goes on to say that it is a priority to ensure

“that those who are entitled to vote should always be able to exercise that right freely, securely and in an informed way;…that fraud, intimidation and interference have no place in our democracy;…that we are the stewards of our shared democratic heritage which we keep up to date for our age.”

That is my custodian point again.

Paragraph 5 states:

“One of the leading government objectives is tackling electoral fraud”.

Anyone in this House in favour of electoral fraud? I did not think so—and rightly so. Paragraph 5 goes on to state that the commission should

“support continued effective delivery of voter identification by raising public awareness about the requirement to show an approved form of photographic identification before taking part in UK parliamentary elections, local elections in England and elections in Northern Ireland”.

It has done that in Northern Ireland for the last 20 years or so. This issue was raised in close questioning from the Lords Constitution Committee just the other month. The important role of the Government, the commission and other agencies in raising the profile and public awareness of voter identification was a matter that we discussed at some length.

[Mr Betts]

I am listening to the Minister reading out a list of the things that the commission is obliged to do by law anyway, so why he has to restate them in this paper, I do not know. The clear advice to the Committee and to the Speaker’s Committee was that if certain items were identified as priorities for the commission, other things would per se be of lesser priority. For example, overseas voter registration is a priority, but the registration of voters in this country, where 8 million people are not on the register, is not listed as a priority. This skews the work of the Electoral Commission, whether the Minister likes it or not.

[Simon Hoare]

The hon. Gentleman was obviously so busy trying to find his rebuttal point that he did not listen to my answer to the first question. I set out clearly that the duty to “have regard” does not require the commission to give lesser priority to, or ignore, any of its other statutory duties. The electoral commissioners and the commission’s executive leadership will remain responsible for determining the commission’s strategy and priorities, and how it should discharge its duties. The statement in no way undermines, countermands or double-guesses any work of the commission.

The paper goes on to talk about tackling electoral fraud, which I know we would all wish to do. Crucially, it also talks about the role of the commission in working with returning officers and others to ensure the maximum opportunity for those with disabilities to take part in the ballot on the day and in polling stations. Nobody in this place, or the other place, would think that was not a noble aim.

[John McDonnell]

rose—

[Simon Hoare]

And at the very mention of noble aims, I give way to the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington.

[John McDonnell]

I come back to the fact that this statement in effect sets priorities for the commission, and that has not only operational consequences but budgetary consequences. What are the consequences for the commission if, like me, it thinks the Government’s statement is daft and completely ignores it?

[Simon Hoare]

I just do not see that happening, because the commission understands the importance of the statement. It is not a directional document; it is an augmenting document. It says—because there are difficult things facing our democracy, as the right hon. Gentleman knows—that the Government, not a party Government but Government as an entity, are in lockstep with the commission, in full support of the work that it does to preserve, protect and enhance our democracy. We felt that it was timely for the Secretary of State to provide a statement to augment and clarify matters that flow from the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 Act and subsequent statutory instruments.

The hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) is right to say that the commission is, in any case, doing the things set out in the statement, in whole or in part. It will be entirely up to the commission to set its priorities from the list, and to give greater or lesser attention to matters as needed. For example, it could say, “Well, that has already been done, and this is all in hand, but we really need to augment this matter here.” The voter authority certificate is a prime example. There are things that we would all expect the commission to spend a certain amount of time on, in order to raise awareness of them.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

The Minister is doing a commendable job, given that he has clearly inherited a piece of legislation from a different era that was part of a different agenda. He said that things might need clarifying, and then mentioned the voter authority certificate. Can he give us examples of other things that need clarifying? What does he think the Electoral Commission is doing that is wrong, and that needs to be righted by this statement?

[Simon Hoare]

Nothing. If the hon. Gentleman is looking for that, then he has completely misunderstood the purpose of the statement and the operational independence of the Electoral Commission, and apportioned malign intentions to the Government. I know that he wants to say, “Oh, this is mission creep because that is something else, and the Government are trying to take over an independent body”—it is nothing of the sort.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I know that others wish to speak. They can read the statement for themselves, but I hope that the examples I have given indicate that the strategy and policy statement augment what the Electoral Commission does. My Department and I have good relations with the commission. We never seek to direct. We admire and respect the work that the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission does in discharging its duty. I have the honour of being a member of that Committee, as do the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East; the hon. Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins); the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith); and others—so it is not even weighted in His Majesty’s Government’s favour.

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

rose—

[Simon Hoare]

This is a benign statement, supporting the commission in its work, addressing the changes introduced post the Elections Act 2022 (Commencement No. 7) Regulations 2023. It is all part of our process to ensure that our electoral system is resilient, open, transparent, secure and has the maximum access to all who have the eligibility to cast a vote on whichever election day it may happen to be. How they vote is entirely up to them; how the commission sets its priorities is entirely up to it. Mr Speaker and his Committee will hold the commission to account, not Parliament. There is no mandate in the statement that the commission has to provide a statement or report, annually or quarterly, to my Department or to the Secretary of State. The usual communication channels between the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission and the Electoral Commission remain.

Given the fragility of our democracy and the outside pressures facing most western democracies today, I suggest to right hon. and hon. Members that, in trying to ascribe ill intention, Machiavellian motivation and some sort of surreptitious purpose of undermining democracy to this benign statement of good will, they demean themselves and they demean and weaken democracy.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the shadow Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Betts]

Yes, perhaps the Government ought to pay more attention to those problems rather than to one that seems not to exist. The Minister has not told us what problems the statement is intended to address.

[Simon Hoare]

rose—

[Mr Betts]

I think the Minister is going to help us with that.

[Simon Hoare]

I politely ask the Chair of the Select Committee where in my remarks opening the debate I talked about other regulatory bodies and tried to rank them pari passu with the Electoral Commission. I will tell him where I did it: I did not.

[Mr Betts]

The Minister’s right hon. friend the Member for Norwich North raised it, and she was the Minister who took the Bill through Parliament, so it is worth taking seriously what she had to say.

The Minister did not tell us what problems the statement is meant to address. It would be helpful if he did so. [Interruption.]

[Mr Betts]

I am sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am just trying to encourage the Minister to be helpful to us. Obviously I am struggling in that regard.

[Simon Hoare]

rose—

[Mr Betts]

Is the Minister now going to be helpful?

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hoare]

I am trying to be helpful. Read Hansard. I have answered the hon. Gentleman’s question three times. If he neither understands nor can hear the answer, that is not my fault.

[Mr Betts]

The Minister is clearly trying to be helpful but not succeeding.

In the end, it comes back to the point that the Electoral Commission’s priorities do not have to be the Government’s priorities, and the Government have no right to direct the commission in its work. Again I ask: what problem is the motion designed to address? If the Minister cannot articulate what the problem is and how the statement will change the behaviour of the Electoral Commission, frankly every Member of this House is busy and has lots of things to do. Have we just wasted 90 minutes of our time, because in two years we will come back and find that today’s motion had no impact? I rather hope that that is the case, because the other scenario would be that the Government are interfering in the Electoral Commission’s work, which is the worse of the two ways of looking at this.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hoare]

First, I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions this afternoon. To address the last part of the speech made by the hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler), I have been very grateful to colleagues on the Opposition Benches who have said some rather nice and kind words about me personally. I will not press to a Division the question of whether I deserve those nice and kind words—I am not sure how my side of the House would vote.

I say this in all seriousness: I hope the House knows me well enough to know that if I thought the intentions that sit behind this statement, the Elections Act, or any of the statutory instruments that have flowed from that Act were what hon. Members have asserted they were, I would have tendered my resignation to the Prime Minister. As a democrat—as somebody who has stood in elections, who has lost and won elections, and who has served in this place, if only for eight and a half years—I can say that there is nothing malign or mission-creep in anything that we are discussing today. I am not expecting that sentiment to change the votes of Opposition Members, but I say it sincerely. A number of Members have asked where the statement came from. Its genesis is, of course, to be found in sections 4A to 4E of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, inserted by the Elections Act 2022—that is where it comes from.

I will try to address some of the comments that have been made. My shadow, the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi), said that there was a political agenda; there is not. We paid full regard to the submissions of consultees, and we took a different view from them. That is perfectly fine. It does not undermine the system, nor is it a dangerous politicisation of the commission.

I believe my right hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), a distinguished former elections Minister, was right when she referred to this as a reasonable vehicle. She asked about my discussions with the commission. I have had a very useful meeting with its senior team, at which we discussed a range of issues and how we can work together to support and buttress our democracy. Those conversations will continue. The statement is iterative and organic, and it can of course be refreshed to reflect issues and challenges as they arise in the field of AI, overseas involvement and so on. The House will notice that I use the word “as”—as they arise—not “if”.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady)—I call him an hon. Friend because he is a friend—asked: where is the parliamentary sovereignty? When the Division bell rings, that is the exercise of Parliament’s sovereignty, and he will vote accordingly.

The hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), in an rather confusing way, said he thought the statement was wrong because it did not mandate the commission or tell it what to do, and then went on in almost the same breath to say how frightful it would be if the statement could do that. I am afraid the hon. Gentleman is proving to be, on this issue and on this issue alone, a little bit of a pushmi-pullyu, because the independence of the commission is absolutely safe and sacrosanct.

Let me read back into the record from the statement that the

“duty to have regard does not require the Commission to give lesser priority to, or to ignore, any of its other statutory duties. The Electoral Commissioners and the Commission’s executive leadership will remain responsible for determining the Commission’s strategy, priorities, how it should discharge its duties”,

and so on and so forth, within its five-year plan. The commission will not be reporting to me, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, No. 10 or the Cabinet Office. It will continue to report to Parliament through Mr Speaker’s Committee, using the functions it has.

[Mr Betts]

Will the Minister give way?

[Simon Hoare]

I hope the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, but I will not, because the House has a lot of business today. Let me address the points that have been raised by others, because I want to give due attention to the points they have made.

The hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) really should have a word with her own Front Benchers about overseas voters. Let me quote from her hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall on the statutory instrument we took upstairs on Wednesday 6 December 2023, when, from the Labour Front Bench, she told the Committee:

“We do not oppose the principle of overseas voting and giving citizens who still have a strong connection to the UK a voice in our elections, and that includes people who still have a strong connection to our local services and communities”.—[Official Report, Eighth Delegated Legislation Committee, 6 December 2023; c. 6.]

So the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood is entirely out of step with her hon. Friend on the Front Bench.

[Cat Smith]

I thank the Minister for giving way this time. I wish to object in that the Minister is very much misportraying the point I made in my remarks. The point I made is that it is a political decision to decide who gets to vote, and I was comparing 16-year-olds in the UK with someone who had lived outside the UK for 16 years. That was the point I raised, and I do not think it is at all inconsistent with those on my own party’s Front Bench.

[Simon Hoare]

I heard the hon. Lady very clearly say that in principle she was opposed to overseas voters. If I misheard her, then I apologise, but that was certainly the thrust of the remarks she made.

The hon. Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) describes the statement as a political agenda. Is improving disabled access having a political agenda? If so, or if that is the charge, I am going to plead guilty. Is cracking down on electoral fraud? If that is the charge, clap me in irons. Is ensuring that the rules of registration and the importance of voter ID are promoted? If so, take me off to the Tower. I plead guilty as charged.

[Mr Betts]

The Minister rather misportrayed what I just said. I said that this statement either seeks to change how the Electoral Commission operates, in which case it is interference with an independent body, or does not seek to do that, in which case, what is the point of it?

[Simon Hoare]

The point, as I have consistently said, is to augment and buttress the work of the commission, and to give some reference tools in Parliament’s assessment. I also want to take issue with the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood—again, I hope I heard her correctly—who prayed in aid the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, as if it was an ancient symbol of our democratic function that we have repealed. It sat for five years as a way of giving confidence to the markets that a coalition of two parties could deliver the clean-up strategy for what her party had left behind in 2010. So its repeal was not a dismantling of some great, permanent piece of our democratic architecture.

The hon. Member for Brent Central seemed to refer to this as a vendetta against the commission. Let me just invite her—[Interruption.] She referred to it as a vendetta—I wrote the word down. The record will say that she thought that Mr Johnson, as Prime Minister, was waging a vendetta against the commission because the commission had said something with which he disagreed; that was the word the hon. Lady used and I will play it back to her advisedly. I took a contemporaneous note of the word as she used it. Let me just invite her to consider that if we wished to wage a war against the commission, we could neuter it, fetter it, force it to report to us and we could abolish it, but we haven’t and we won’t. Why won’t we, why aren’t we? It is because we know that the commission is important, we respect its work, and we honour, cherish and guard its independence. We believe that this statement and the previous legislation that this House has put through will augment the accountability of the commission to Parliament and, in so doing, serve this as its sole and only purpose: to build on Parliament’s and the public’s confidence in its work. The commission was and is independent, and it will continue to be independent. I commend this motion to the House.

Question put.