Ballot Secrecy Bill [HL]

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 15th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I am also taking advantage of the gap to make a brief contribution. The Chartist demand for a secret ballot was one of the essential ingredients of today’s modern democracy and it is, as has been mentioned, 150 years since the Secret Ballot Act was passed, which is a bedrock of our system. I listened carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, in his introduction to the Bill and, although I am cautious about changing the law in this area, I appreciate the point he makes about the need for clarity. Therefore, I give the Bill a cautious Second Reading welcome, but some issues need to be considered further in Committee, and I shall mention just one or two.

The phrase in subsection (1)(b), “intention of influencing” will need further probing. I, like many noble Lords, have been in polling stations over many years. At what stage might it be considered in the mind of a presiding officer that someone is positioning themselves too close with the intention of influencing someone’s casting of a ballot? We do not want our polling stations full of police. They routinely go round to check that everything is all right, but we want to make sure that polling stations are not changed in a way that would render the business of voting less straightforward.

I also welcome subsection (3) about the Bill not applying to people under the age of 18, for a very simple reason. I may not be the only person in this Chamber who has taken their children to vote when they were younger. It was 30 years ago this year that I took my daughter to vote. I think it must have influenced her, because no less than 15 years’ later, she was selected as the youngest parliamentary candidate of either party—I was amazed. It instils in every young person a respect for the ballot process, and that is an important safeguard. No one taking their children in to enable them to see them voting is doing anything wrong.

I will leave my remarks there. As I said, there are one or two things that are worth exploring in Committee, but on balance I am here to vote in favour of the Second Reading.