Grand Committee

Monday 21st March 2022 Grand Committee

Monday 21 March 2022

15:45

Arrangement of Business

Monday 21st March 2022 Grand Committee

Announcement

15:45

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, it seems a little unnecessary to make the following observation, but I will make it none the less: Members are encouraged to leave some distance between themselves and others, which everybody seems to have done. If there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting, the Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and resume a few minutes later, having allowed time for Members to record their votes.

Direct Payment to Farmers (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2022

Monday 21st March 2022 Grand Committee

Considered in Grand Committee

15:45

Moved by

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Direct Payment to Farmers (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2022.

Relevant document: 30th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee

[The Minister of State, Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park) (Con)]

My Lords, I hope it will be useful to your Lordships if I speak to all the instruments, beginning with the draft Direct Payment to Farmers (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2022, which were laid before this House on 3 February 2022. The matters in these instruments are closely related. Made using powers under the Agriculture Act 2020, they implement important aspects of our new agricultural policy, as set out in the agricultural transition plan published in November 2020 and updated in June 2021. The three instruments apply only in relation to England.

The Direct Payments to Farmers (Reductions) (England) Regulations 2022 apply progressive reductions to direct payments to farmers in England for the 2022 scheme year. By doing so, it continues the process of phasing out direct payments in England which began in the 2021 scheme year. The Government remain committed to phasing out direct payments in England over the seven-year agricultural transition period. We are doing so as area-based payments are unfair: they go primarily to larger landowners, artificially inflate land rents, stand in the way of new entrants to farming getting access to land, and offer little return for the taxpayer.

To help farmers plan, we initially committed in 2018 to phase out direct payments. The specific reductions provided for in this instrument were announced in November 2020. As was the case for 2021, higher percentage reductions will be applied to payment amounts in higher payment bands.

Although direct payments are reducing, total funding to farmers is not. We will make money from the reductions available to targeted schemes, which will increase farm productivity, improve the health and welfare of animals, and enhance the natural environment. In the coming year, that reallocated money will be used to meet the rising demand from farmers for countryside stewardship, our current environmental offer, which has seen a 40% increase in applications. That funding will also be used in the launch of the first of our new environmental land management schemes: the sustainable farming incentive. Further, we will also fund the initial wave of the landscape recovery scheme, with projects focused on supporting native species and restoring rivers.

We are also making available free business advice to farmers and will continue to offer a range of popular grant offers so that farmers can invest in their businesses and become more efficient and sustainable. We will also be offering a new suite of opportunities for farmers, supply chains and researchers to collaborate on researching and developing innovative but practical solutions to the challenges and opportunities that farming faces. This is an essential reform that puts England on track to meet its legally binding environmental and net-zero targets, while creating a thriving and self-reliant farming sector.

The Agriculture (Financial Assistance) (Amendment) Regulations 2022 amend the Agriculture (Financial Assistance) Regulations 2021, approved by this House on 22 March 2021. Those regulations put in place financial data publication and enforcement and monitoring requirements for four new financial assistance schemes established under the Agriculture Act 2020. This amending instrument extends the range of financial assistance schemes covered by the 2021 regulations to ensure that any new financial assistance scheme launched in 2022 and thereafter is subject to the same checking, monitoring and enforcement requirements that applied to the original schemes launched in 2021.

The 2021 regulations gave Defra the opportunity to test, refine and develop these new requirements. The amendments made by this instrument will now allow the Government to move on to the next stage of agricultural policy set out in the agricultural transition plan.

This instrument also strengthens the investigative powers in the 2021 regulations to ensure that where there are suspicions of offences in connection with financial assistance —for example, fraud offences—the Secretary of State can, where appropriate, fully investigate the matter. The amendment will allow the Secretary of State to investigate not only agreement holders but applicants, and in certain circumstances the employees or agents of an applicant or agreement holder. These investigative powers mirror powers Defra holds in relation to CAP schemes, while allowing Defra to use them in a more proportionate manner, reflecting the objectives of the Agriculture Act.

This instrument also removes a reference to grants in Regulation 13 of the 2021 regulations. The amendment will ensure that “financial assistance” is not limited to grants and can include other forms of assistance, as provided for in Section 2(1) of the Agriculture Act.

In drafting the 2021 regulations, Defra engaged with key stakeholders in a targeted consultation exercise between 4 August and 1 September 2020, giving stakeholders the opportunity to review Defra’s proposed approach and express their views. Feedback gathered during the consultation exercise was used to inform the content of the 2021 regulations and this amending instrument.

I turn to the Agriculture (Lump Sum Payment) (England) Regulations 2022. As part of our wider agricultural reforms, we want to support farmers who wish to leave the industry, as well as those who want to stay. We know that some farmers would like to retire or leave farming but have found it difficult to do so for financial reasons. That is why this instrument allows a scheme to be introduced in 2022 which provides lump sum payments to farmers in England who wish to leave the sector. These payments will be in place of any further direct payments to the recipient during the remainder of the agricultural transition. This is not new money and will not impact the funding of other schemes. This scheme should also free up land, creating more opportunities for new entrants and farmers who wish to expand.

These instruments implement provisions in the Agriculture Act 2020. They continue the transition away from the inefficient direct payments model of the CAP and they build upon the already implemented financial assistance framework to cover new schemes, in line with the agricultural transition plan. I beg to move.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for introducing these regulations. I would like to put one or two questions about each in turn.

Could my noble friend the Minister clarify an issue that has been raised? The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said at Blackpool, if I have understood correctly, that farmers have more than made up for any income lost since these new provisions came in—or, in fact, since we left the European Union. My contacts told me over the weekend that is anything but the case. It would be welcome to know the basis for the Secretary of State’s remarks; perhaps there is something I am misunderstanding.

Regarding direct payments to farmers, the subject of the first regulation before us, as my noble friend said, this is putting us on the path to reducing the direct payments until we eventually come into ELMS. What has been identified, I think by the CLA especially, is that there will potentially be a 50% gap in the funding that farmers have been receiving between the regulations before us this afternoon and the end of the transition period. If that is the case, and I am sure my noble friend’s department will be aware of that, I would like to understand how that gap will be filled so that farmers do not lose out.

I am concerned that there is a lack of understanding. We are meant to be levelling up the economy and unleashing the rural economy. I think, at the moment, the rural economy is performing below par. One reason is that we simply do not have the tools.

I will take the North Yorkshire moors as an example, or the Yorkshire Dales, where my brother lives: we still have woeful broadband internet connections there and the mobile signal contacts are often potentially extremely dangerous. We learned at a recent meeting that masts have apparently been put in by two providers—I believe it is O₂ and EE—but these have not been linked up in this rather broad area of North Yorkshire. My noble friend’s department is responsible for rural affairs—it is in its title—so perhaps he could use his good offices to ensure that, as we leave direct payments and move to an alternative form, farmers will be given the tools to do the job.

To conclude on the first regulations, there is also a lack of understanding that tenants are unable to qualify under the new schemes. I would be interested to know to what extent that is reflected in contacts that the department has had with tenants. I know that our honourable friend the Farming Minister in the other place, Victoria Prentis, is aware of this. I commend the work of the Rock review on tenant farmers, but tenants are being evicted as we speak. There simply will not be that many of them left, if we carry on at this pace, when we reach the end of the transitional stage for direct payments to farmers.

I make a plea to my noble friend: will he help me to understand how, when it is gone, the direct payments relief will be replaced for those tenants who cannot claim for anything other than farm schemes owing to the nature of their farm tenancy agreements? Those are enshrined in a great many agricultural Acts, not least the 1947 Act. Can he put my mind at rest on the plight of tenant farmers?

I add that on common land graziers and those with shooting rights are trying to compete side by side. I am sure my noble friend will be aware that there is currently an issue with food security, not least because we understand that Ukrainians have been picking most of our fruit and vegetables in the last two or three years. It appears that, added to the cost of wheat, we may perhaps soon have in this country a local shortage of such staples. I wonder how my noble friend expects to address that.

I turn briefly to the Agriculture (Financial Assistance) (Amendment) Regulations. Paragraph 7.6 of the Explanatory Memorandum says that the department will perhaps try to look more favourably and proportionately on how the offences are to be inspected; I think my noble friend alluded to this. However, the first sentence does not entirely fill me with confidence. It states:

“The instrument also expands the power of the Secretary of State to investigate suspected offences in connection with applications for, or receipt of financial assistance.”


That will not go down well, particularly with the owners of small family farms, who have said at every turn how they are finding that, if anything, the administrative burdens are increasing. I would like to hear a little more detail from my noble friend about how these regulations will applied. How will the full force of Defra be applied more proportionately?

The third and final instrument before us states clearly that direct payments are to be replaced. My noble friend referred to a lump sum payment. This might seem very attractive, particularly to older farmers. I refer again to my experience of North Yorkshire in this regard. The difficulty they have asked me about is: if they apply for this lump sum grant, how will that affect their tax situation? Did I understand my noble friend to say that it could be up to £100,000?

We have a shortage of affordable homes in the countryside. Very few new houses being built across North Yorkshire—and, as far as I can see, in other rural areas of England—are one- or two-bedroom, which would be ideal for farmers who have moved off the farm and want to stay in a village. If we do not make it more attractive for them, we will prevent newer, younger farmers coming in, which is a desire of Defra. With those few remarks, I look forward to my noble friend’s responses.

16:00

[Lord Carrington (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a farmer and landowner, as set out in the register. I am broadly supportive of the Agriculture Act and the introduction of the new system of public funds for public goods, but I need to hear what the Government have to say about the very different circumstances that apply today from when the Act was passed.

Like other noble Lords, and this was referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, I am most concerned with how the Secretary of State is reported to have said that rising input prices will be matched by rising output prices. This demonstrates a lack of understanding, particularly of businesses. The consultant Andersons has calculated that, whereas the average rate of inflation for consumers is 5.5%, it is 10% for farmers, when it is recognised that their principal inputs are fuel, feed, fertiliser, seeds and labour.

The Financial Times reported yesterday that the European Union is

“reviewing the bloc’s sustainable food strategy after a concerted push against the planned reforms by national governments, farmers and the agriculture industry.”

Is this debate happening here? Surely, in the unfolding circumstances of inflation and Ukraine it would be sensible, as a minimum, to delay the planned cuts in BPS payments for this year and maybe next. This would not involve additional government funding, only a delay to the introduction of the new schemes.

The new sustainable farming incentive support is, after all, a fraction of what farmers are due to lose in the BPS. This is important for smaller farmers with weaker balance sheets, as the stronger cash flow provided by the BPS would enable them to purchase inputs, such as fertiliser, on a more timely basis.

In this country, the Food and Drink Federation is now calling for a national food security council, which could work alongside the industry to enable a collective response to supply chain disruptions caused by immediate issues such as rising energy, CO₂ and fertiliser prices. Please could the Minister give us some indication of what the Government are doing to address all these important issues?

Finally, on the regulation on lump sum payments, I believe the payment is totally inadequate to encourage farmers to retire. It is also a disincentive for new farmers to enter the industry. A payment of up to £100,000 is attractive only if the farmer owns his own house, particularly in the south of England. This excludes most tenant farmers. Nothing is achieved if the farmer rents from the landowner the farmhouse he has been living in, at an open market rent, as this could be the same or more than his farming rent.

As a means to free up land for new farmers, this scheme suffers from the basic problem that the BPS is not available any more, while the other funding that is available is much smaller. The only likely “beneficiary”—in inverted commas—both from the reduction of the BPS and from the lump sum scheme is the well-financed larger farm. From a farming, environmental and social point of view, this is not what we want to achieve.

[The Duke of Montrose (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for galloping us through these measures. The challenge for us in this Committee is not to detain him too long, so as to allow him to resume all the work he is doing. I echo much of what the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, said. I declare my peripheral interests; my agriculture and land are all in Scotland so I am not directly involved.

The rationale for this process of cuts is the same as when this was carried out in New Zealand. All input costs and other things—my noble friend the Minister mentioned rents—dropped in parallel with the cuts in government funding. In the current economic situation, there is no way that fertiliser companies have the slack to cut prices. They are being forced up, as my noble friend the Minister will know, by 200% or more. Will the Government be monitoring how this works out in practice and will they create powers to delay the introduction? It will stretch the lump sum payments if they are the only remedy that is available, and people are going to be forced out of business.

My noble friend the Minister has promised that there will be no reduction in payments to farmers, and I am sure he believes that, but what proportion are the Government expecting to go to conservation projects that are not related to farming? Will that considered to be part of the payment or are they going to be financed from elsewhere?

[The Duke of Wellington (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my agricultural interests as detailed in the register, although they are not particularly relevant to the point I want to make.

I do not think the Minister was in this House when we considered the Agriculture Bill in 2019—I cannot quite remember but I hope I am right about that. During the passage of that Bill, there was quite a lot of comment from many parts of the House about the position of smaller farmers, particularly hill and livestock farmers, most of whom are marginally profitable, if at all, and nearly all of whom depend wholly or almost wholly on the public subsidy that they receive. I made a plea at that point for the Government to consider not reducing the lowest band of the direct payments because those are directed only at the relatively small farmer.

I see in the regulations in front of us that, in fact, the smaller farmers—that is, those receiving £30,000 or less—are to receive a cut of 20%. That seems rather harsh. Although I am perfectly aware that there is no possibility of this regulation being amended, I wonder whether the two Ministers here would discuss with their ministerial colleagues the state of the small farms in this country. I do not believe that this Conservative Government really want to see small farms eased out of business. I am really worried about them.

The larger farms will get by. They have efficiencies, they are usually better capitalised; they will probably be all right under changed circumstances. But the small family farms, in many cases tenanted farms and/or livestock farms, are struggling and will struggle even more with these proposed cuts. I just do not feel that Ministers are sufficiently sympathetic to the position of small farmers at the moment. I would be grateful if the Minister could comment on that.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction to these three statutory instruments dealing with proposals for the transition to the new financial support payments for farmers in England post Brexit.

The first SI, which deals with direct payments and reductions, has been well publicised since Brexit and during the passage of the Agriculture Bill. Farmers’ payments under CAP have already started to decrease and this year will see a further reduction in their payments, from 20% for those on £30,000 up to 40% for those in receipt of more than £150,000. This sliding scale has been well trailed and there should be no surprise among farmers about its further reduction. What is more problematic for them is the lack of the implementation of ELMS to replace this lost income. Small farmers will be hit particularly hard.

Consultation on the transfer took place back in February to May 2018 and the new arrangement is now beginning to bite. Are the Government considering a further consultation on the actual effects of the sliding scale of reduction in direct payments, especially as the implementation of ELMS is only slowly coming into effect during the transition period? Meanwhile, food security is moving rapidly up the agenda.

While it is to be welcomed that the Government are focused on biodiversity and carbon sequestration targets, the knotty issue of food production is somewhat ignored. The British farmer is very disillusioned at the trade deals with countries on the other side of the globe which have a very different landscape in which to produce their livestock and huge economies of scale that are not open to British farmers. They also have less stringent animal welfare rules than those which operate here. It is, therefore, much easier for Australian and New Zealand farmers to undercut our own hard-working farmers. Does the Minister agree that farmers are angry about the way they are being treated by the Government and undercut by cheaper imports?

I turn to the financial assistance amending SI. This seems to be all about monitoring of farmers’ financial assistance and enforcement. Over the five pages of the Explanatory Memorandum to this short SI, there are no fewer than nine references to monitoring and enforcement. The whole instrument gives the impression that the farming community is systematically and deliberately attempting to defraud the Government out of money.

There is reference to the tree health pilot scheme and annual health and welfare reviews being exempt from the publication requirements which apply to all other payment schemes. Can the Minister say why this is?

Under paragraph 6 of the Explanatory Memorandum, bullet point 5 refers to the Secretary of State being able to investigate suspected offences. Given the general tenor of this SI, what is the current level of offences? Paragraph 7.1 again refers to checking, monitoring and publication of information. In paragraph 7.3, the fourth bullet point refers to

“investigation of breaches and suspected offences in connection with applications for, or the receipt, of financial assistance”.

Can the Minister say whether wholescale fraud existed in the farming community over payments?

Paragraphs 7.5, 7.6, 7.7 and 7.9 refer to suspicion of fraud, breach of conditions, investigative powers and, again, suspected offences. It would appear that farmers are being accused of wholesale fraudulent activity over their payment claims. The whole statutory instrument wields an awful lot of stick and hardly any carrot in its treatment of farmers. Can the Minister please give the Grand Committee some clarity on just what the basis is for the tone of this statutory instrument, which I find offensive?

Paragraph 7.10 states:

“The instrument does not impose duties that are significantly more onerous than before”.


Can the Minister say, however, whether he thinks a family farmer would be likely to agree with this statement?

16:15

Paragraph 11 refers to Defra planning to provide detailed guidance for each financial assistance scheme. Can the Minister say when this guidance will be published? No impact assessment has been produced, on the basis that participation in the Government’s financial assistance schemes is voluntary. This is insufficient reason for not producing an impact assessment. What will happen if farmers decide that they simply cannot make a living out the new schemes and vote with their feet? The country will still need to engage in biodiversity, and it will certainly still need to produce food, especially given the current situation with the decline in food being imported from Ukraine and the rising cost of energy and fuel supplies.

I regret to say that I think it would be more truthful if this SI were renamed the “Agriculture (Financial Assistance) (Prevention of Fraud) (Amendment) Regulations”. British farmers are not all dishonest and on the fiddle. They are committed and hard-working, diligently and desperately trying to make a living during a very difficult time when there is little certainly for them, in an industry which is under threat in the long term. I look to the Minister to give reassurance that the ethos of this SI is misplaced and not borne out by the evidence.

Lastly, we come to the Agriculture (Lump Sum Payment) (England) Regulations 2022. It is important that new, hopefully younger, people are able to enter agriculture. Encouraging farmers to retire is important as this releases land for new entrants. I note that the SI refers to releasing land for existing farmers to expand. Can the Minister give reassurance that farmers wishing to expand will not push out the interests of new entrants? While it is important for small farmers to be able to expand their holdings when land is released, it should be in proportion to those wishing to get a toe-hold on the farming ladder.

The regulations make it clear that farmers have to release the land before they can receive the lump sum payment but may retain five hectares of land. Can the Minister say what the rationale is behind retaining five hectares? This may be standard practice but, as I am not a farmer, nor come from a farming family, it would be useful to know just what is behind this.

Paragraph 7.8 of the EM indicates that applicants who are part of a woodland creation scheme would not have to transfer their land. Can the Minister give reassurance that the woodland creation schemes do not include rapid growing conifers but the type of trees that are slow growing and likely to increase the biodiversity of the land and the return of species which have previously abandoned the area?

The instrument contains a formula for calculating what the lump sum payment will be. I readily admit that algebra is not my strong point, but can understand how this will be calculated. The maximum amount payable is £100,000 and Defra calculates that 87% of farmers will not reach this cap. This does not seem a sufficient reward to encourage farmers to leave the land after a lifetime of desperately early mornings, slogging through all weathers and very late evenings in order to supply milk, meat, vegetables and grain, often for a poor monetary return. Perhaps I am overly simplistic in my view, but I am not sure this is going to make the room for new entrants which the Government were hoping for—the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, referred to this.

This suite of SIs work together to give a package of measures across the farming industry which should bring some certainty to the farming community but which I fear are not likely to do so. Together with the existing trade deals and those currently under negotiation, it is no wonder that the British farming industry does not feel that the Government have its back.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction to these SIs, which, as he said, follow on from the detailed debates we had during the passage of the Agriculture Act, and indeed previous SIs which began to roll out the detailed proposals.

First, addressing the SI which introduces year 2 of the basic payment scheme reduction, as has been said, this is not a surprise, as the plan for this reduction in 2022 has been set out in previous documents. Nevertheless, even for the lowest category of claimants, a drop from 5% to 20% is significant. Already the farming press is reporting significant cases of hardship, and the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, recently admitted in the Chamber that it was hard to see how many upland farmers could continue to make a living under the new regime. We know, for example, that pig farmers have been particularly badly hit by what Victoria Prentis, the Minister in the other place, has described as an “exceptionally challenging period.” I therefore share the concern that several noble Lords raised about the Secretary of State’s comments last week, in which he said that the reductions in the basic payment scheme for farmers would be more than recouped by their increased income from the sale of produce. I do not think anyone of us felt that that was a reality, and indeed I very much share the comment of Minette Batters, who said

“one of us is … living in a #ParallelUniverse”.

I think she summed up the views of many when she said that. Perhaps the Minister could comment on what seems to be an unrealistic comment of the Secretary of State and say whether he agrees with it.

Of course, the Welsh Government have de-risked the changes by postponing the basic payment cut for a year to allow the farming community to adjust to the new arrangements. Can the Minister say what the impact of this is, with farmers receiving different subsidies throughout the devolved nations, and what is the impact on the internal market from the phasing out happening at different timescales?

I am conscious that this SI is for one year only, as was the previous year’s SI. In the current climate that probably makes sense given the huge traumas that are going on in the sector. As noble Lords have said, we are seeing the impact of unforeseen world events causing massive increases in the cost of fuel and gas, and shortages of feed and fertiliser. The Explanatory Memorandum in paragraph 14 makes it clear that these arrangements will be kept under review, saying that

“Defra and its agencies will monitor and review the impact of this instrument as part of its standard policy-making procedures.”

Can the Minister shed more light on what these monitoring arrangements are? I would have thought that in the current climate that is exactly what such flexibility was designed to address, and presumably at this moment risk analyses are taking place as to the impact of these huge world events. Can the Minister say what tests would have to be met before the Government agreed to deviate from the rollout of the basic payment cuts? If not now, when would they ever agree to do it?

Can the Minister also give more information about the savings being made from the first year of the basic payment cut? Again, as noble Lords and the Minister said, it has been said that no money will be lost from the overall pot of money if it is not reallocated via other ELM schemes, but we know that many of those other ELM schemes are not fully up and running yet. Can the Minister reassure us that none of the unallocated money in that first year has been reclaimed by the Treasury? We know what the Treasury is like, and it is hard to imagine that it has allowed that money to sit in a pot awaiting its allocation for future years—it is very generous if it is thinking like that. I think we would all like to be reassured that the cuts in one pot are there and can be shared and made available for this and future years. Just so that we can have some further reassurance on that, when will we be able to see the accounts to give us some factual information?

The noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, raised the split in the distribution of the ELM schemes. Can the Minister say whether it is still the intention to split it evenly between the three pillars so that a third will still be available to go to individual farmers rather than the larger projects that were also envisaged under the ELM portfolio?

The second SI tightens up the rules for checking, monitoring and enforcing the applications for financial assistance. I do not have a great deal to say on this, although I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, that the tone is rather unfortunate. Obviously, it is important that schemes are watertight and not open to fraud, but it is also important that we have the right degree of flexibility in terms of the investigations that take place. However, I point out the irony of Defra deciding to go its own way on leaving the EU, only for it to concede in paragraph 7.7 of the Explanatory Memorandum that the changes that it is now introducing

“will bring Defra’s investigative powers closer to those … previously created under Common Agricultural Policy … rules”.

I turn to the third SI on the arrangements for lump sum payments; again, noble Lords have raised a number of concerns about this. My first reaction on reading this SI was: is this it? Is this all we are going to get? I had expected a much more detailed document setting out the criteria, any exemptions and much more detail about how and to whom the land could be transferred. We understand the need for and potential benefits of having a scheme that allows farmers to retire with some dignity if they do not want to participate in managing their land for environmental benefits, but we also need to be confident that these retirement payments will transform the way that the land is subsequently managed and owned. This was very much our ambition during the passage of the Agriculture Act.

The Minister may have seen the briefings that we have been sent by Sustain, which echo many of our concerns about this proposal. A fundamental concern is that there is no priority for the land that becomes available to be offered to new entrants. In the Commons debate, the Minister, Victoria Prentis, said:

“The lump sum exit scheme sits alongside extra support to help new entrants into the industry.”—[Official Report, Commons, Delegated Legislation Committee, 15/3/22; col. 13.]


But these two schemes are not linked up. There is currently no incentive for a retiring farmer to offer the land to a new entrant. It is far more likely that, as we have always feared, the land will be gobbled up by the large landowner next door, who will have an inside track on details of the sale and will use it as an opportunity to expand their landholdings. This was the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, who also made a good point about these sums of money simply not being sufficient for people who want to move off the land to be able to buy a house away from the farm.

Another alternative is that the land will be bought up by large corporations that have no farming background but are keen to offset their carbon emissions or to use it for biodiversity net gain to offset developments elsewhere. We know that the Government are encouraging this, and in many ways those schemes have merit, but we need to know where the land will go and who will be making use of it.

If we are not careful, both those depressing scenarios —the landowner and large corporations—are very likely unless the provisions in this SI for disposal of the land on retirement are tightened up. The end result is that we will see small family farms squeezed out of the sector, which was the point made by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington.

Will the Minister look at this again and provide some reassurance about new entrants and where that land will go? Will he also look again at the very narrow definition of “connected person” in Regulation 7(1) of the Agriculture (Lump Sum Payment) (England) Regulations 2022, because, as it stands, you can transfer the land to any family member as long as it is not your partner or spouse. I ask again whether this been fully thought through, because it seems likely that the payments will be made within a family—maybe to the father—with other members of his family carrying on farming much as before. Again, we are facing a scenario where new entrants will find it very difficult to make headway in coming on to the land.

16:30

Finally, what are the specific exemptions where payments can be made but land does not need to be transferred? As the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, said, the example given in the Explanatory Memorandum is that if a farmer plants trees under a woodland creation scheme, they do not have to transfer the land. Is there not a danger that this will encourage a huge shift to planting trees, where a more holistic environmental use of the land makes more sense? Of course, we all want trees to be planted, but we want this to be, as we always say, “the right tree in the right place”. It seems very worrying that this will lead to a wholesale obsession with planting trees when we need to be more in line with the full holistic needs of that land use for the future. The woodland exemption was given only as an example. What other exemptions are being considered to avoid the land being transferred?

I find these proposals depressing, because I do not think that they will achieve the promise, set out in the Agriculture Act, to broaden land ownership and bring a new generation of environmentally focused farmers into the sector. It feels like the proposals are rushed and flawed. I am sorry to have asked a number of questions here, but I think it is important for the future of the farming community and of our environmental land that we have a substantial reassurance that our concerns are misplaced and the right outcomes will be achieved. If the Minister is not able to do so today, I hope he will feel able to write with more detail about how the retirement scheme in particular can breathe new life into the sector.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to the debate. I will do my best to answer the many questions that have been put to me without exceeding my time slot.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, asked a number of questions in relation to the reduction of direct payments. We do not plan to consult further on the reductions, but the Government have published an evidence paper, updated in September 2019, setting out the expected impacts of removing those direct payments, and that included an analysis by sector, location and type of land tenure. It provided an analysis of how farm businesses across all sectors can offset the impact of reductions in direct payments. An update to that analysis was due to be published shortly, and it has been delayed—only slightly, I hope—in light of what is happening in Ukraine and the impact this will have on farm business incomes; that point was made by a number of noble Lords. We are reviewing this to ensure that the analysis remains fit for purpose.

All funding released from reductions in direct payments in England is being reinvested into delivering other schemes for farmers and land managers in this Parliament. I hope that is some reassurance to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, as well.

The noble Baroness raised other issues about reductions to direct payments. A small number of farmers leave the industry each year; that has been the case for some years now. They do so for a whole variety of reasons. According to the data we have from the Rural Payments Agency, in 2020 around 1,000 basic payment scheme claimants in England can be assumed to have exited the industry. It is too soon to produce equivalent data following the 2021 scheme year, but for the basic payment scheme 2021, the reductions for most farmers were modest. Around 80% of claimants would have received a reduction of around 5%, which is within the scope of the year-to-year variance experienced historically in any case due to currency fluctuations.

On the impact on the internal market from phasing out direct payments, these payments are largely decoupled from production and therefore they should not be trade distorting. Within the UK, there are already significant differences in the implementation of direct payment schemes, and while direct payments currently form an important contribution to farm income, as the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, said, in many cases it is critical—the reason they are still in business. They can nevertheless hamper productivity growth in the agriculture sector and drive up land rental prices. Removing them should raise our agriculture sector’s productivity across the board, leaving our farmers in a better position to compete.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, also asked what tests would have to be met before the Government agreed to deviate from the rollout of the basic payment cuts. Defra regularly gathers and publishes statistical data on the current state of the industry; for example, the results from the 2021-22 Farm Business Survey, which will cover the first year of progressive reductions, will be published this autumn. Data is also gathered through bodies such as the Animal and Plant Health Agency and the Rural Payments Agency, and that includes information on various aspects of the sector, such as the impact of reductions in direct payments. That allows the Government to monitor the sector and to make better decisions on the future of farming.

The Government are committed to phasing out untargeted direct payments. We do not believe that they are the best way to support farmers, as I tried to explain in my introductory remarks. The noble Baroness also asked about the savings being made from the first year of the basic payment reductions. For 2021, approximately £178 million was freed by reductions to the payments. This is being redirected into delivering other schemes for farmers.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, also asked for reassurance, as I think did my noble friend Lady McIntosh, that none of the allocated money from direct payment reductions has been reclaimed by the Treasury. All the funding released from reductions in the direct payments is being reinvested into delivering other schemes for farmers and land managers during this Parliament; it is not being hoarded for long-term future use. That amounts to an average of £2.4 billion a year over the period 2021-22 to 2024-25.

We have been clear all along that we will spend money where it delivers for the environment, alongside food production, and we need to support changes across the entire farm landscape to deliver those broad and connected ambitions. That is why we have increased the countryside stewardship payments by an average of 30% and introduced the sustainable farming incentive. Direct payments are not about food production. The decoupling of payments from food production took place around 15 years ago. Our evidence suggests that the removal of direct payments in England would have only a marginal effect, if any, on overall food production.

With regard to the Agriculture (Financial Assistance) (Amendment) Regulations 2022, a shared enforcement framework was previously established by the Agriculture (Financial Assistance) Regulations 2021, ensuring that powers of entry will be exercised, and inspections carried out consistently across the schemes. This instrument extends that framework to cover additional new financial assistance schemes and broaden the investigative powers of the Secretary of State, in a manner consistent across the different schemes. Training and guidance will also be provided to those authorised with powers of entry or to carry out inspections to ensure that these are exercised in a consistent way.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, asked about the tree health pilot scheme and the annual health and welfare reviews being exempt from publication requirements; she wanted to know why that was the case. Specific location details and personal information identifying a land manager or landowner in relation to tree pest and disease findings will not be published. This information is considered to be sensitive and potentially damaging to the individuals or businesses concerned. It could also inhibit the reporting of future cases of pest and disease outbreaks. We will, however, publish aggregated data for these payments.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, also asked about the level of fraud in the farming community and overpayments. These regulations offer a range of enforcement measures to deal with fraud or breaches of scheme rules, including the withholding of financial assistance, recovering financial assistance previously awarded, and prohibiting a person from receiving financial assistance for up to two years. Appropriate sanctions will be available and applied where there are clear cases of misuse of public funds; for example, through neglect, serious cases of non-compliance or fraudulent behaviour. The noble Baroness asked for specific numbers but I am afraid I will have to get back to her on that because I do not have them, but the point she made, echoed by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, will have been heard loud and clear.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, asked when the guidance will be published for each financial assistance scheme. I understand the importance of giving farmers as much time as possible to plan. Detailed guidance for stakeholders will be published in good time ahead of each scheme being launched, giving farmers support to implement the standards and understand the new rules. This guidance will be written in plain English, which will set out and explain the detailed scheme rules and requirements. Some schemes, such as countryside stewardship and landscape recovery, are already live and appropriate guidance has been published. For other schemes, guidance will be published in good time ahead of their launch. For example, for the SFI scheme, we will publish final details of the offer for 2022 and scheme information later this spring—some might say we are in spring now, so shortly—ahead of opening for applications later in the year.

Without the Agriculture (Lump Sum Payment) (England) Regulations 2022, we will not be able to meet our public commitment to offer farmers a lump sum exit scheme this year. This would limit the options we can provide farmers as direct payments are phased out; it would also limit structural change in the farming sector. We believe that the calculation of the lump sum payment is fair. Our calculation means that, for most farmers, the lump sum will be approximately equivalent to the amount they might otherwise receive in direct payments for the years 2022 to 2027, as these are phased out over the remaining years of the planned agricultural transition.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, asked about the rationale behind the stipulation to retain five acres. Well, farmers will be able to keep up to five hectares of agricultural land. This allows, for example, a farmer to keep some land around or near their farmhouse. We feel this flexibility will help with uptake of the scheme, which will create more opportunities for new entrants and expanding farmers. In relation to the question that she asked about trees, all publicly subsidised planting has to comply with the UK forestry standards. They are based on a UN-sanctioned approach to sustainable forest management. The UK forestry standards are, in effect, a live document that is being updated all the time. At the moment, the emphasis is placed heavily on the need to use public money to deliver the maximum possible public good. This means not just having monoculture conifer plantations, but ensuring we have a genuine yield in biodiversity and numerous other public benefits, such as flood management and flood prevention. As it happens, the overwhelming majority of woodland creation supported by the Nature for Climate Fund grant schemes will be native broadleaf. That can be judged by the applications coming in, even though this very new fund is in its first year.

Returning to a question put to me by the noble Baronesses, Lady Bakewell and Lady Jones, which I realise I did not answer, we think that the lump sum exit scheme will free up land for new entrants and expanding farmers. It is about providing opportunities for farmers, rather than aiming for a particular balance between those entering the sector and existing farmers who wish to expand. We recognise the importance of providing additional support for new entrants alongside that lump sum exit scheme. Attracting new talent into food and farming is vital, if we want a sustainable and productive agricultural sector.

As set out in our agricultural transition plan for 2021 to 2024, we will provide funding to create lasting opportunities for new entrants to access land, infrastructure and support to establish successful and innovative businesses. In January this year, the Secretary of State announced the development of incubator pilots for new entrants, with council farms playing a key role. The details of the pilots are currently being designed and we hope to launch the pilot scheme later this year.

The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh made a number of comments and raised questions, some of which overlapped with points made by the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, particularly on small and tenant farmers. At the end of January this year, the Secretary of State announced an independent review, chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Rock, dedicated to looking at how Defra schemes can better support the tenanted sector, as farming in England is reformed to be more sustainable. The review period is expected to be six to nine months, and it will publish its findings and recommendations later this year. I will not go into all the details on the group of experts—who has been selected and how, or who they represent—but it is a broad range and I am happy to provide that information if the noble Baroness would like me to. I could tell her now, if she asks, but I am worried about the time.

16:45

The tenancy working group, as it is called, will collect evidence and bring forward recommendations on a whole range of issues: how scheme design can facilitate the participation of and benefit to tenant farmers in the new environmental land management schemes; what policy initiatives will secure the long-term sustainability of England’s tenant farming; how best to foster positive and long-term tenant/landlord relationships; ways to minimise any potential loss of land from the tenanted sector to avoid damaging its resilience; why it might be necessary to look for new legislative or regulatory powers in the future—I shall stop there, because the list is rather long.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I have that already. I am just slightly disappointed that the working group will not now report for nine months; it was meant to report within six months.

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I said six to nine months; I am afraid that is the answer I received. I shall check on the timescale, but I assume six to nine months is correct, since that is what my colleague, my noble friend Lord Benyon, has told me.

The noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, raised a broader point beyond tenant farmers, about small farmers. He is right: small farmers are the backbone of our countryside, and any policy that results in a reduction in the diversity, breadth and viability of our small farmers is not a good one. They are critical to the future sustainability of our countryside. Farmers will be supported throughout the seven-year transition period to the new system. We are reducing direct payments, as the noble Duke said, but that will be gradually over the seven years, which will give farmers time to adapt and take advantage of the new offer. Money saved by direct payment reductions will be reinvested directly into English farming and agriculture through our new schemes. The Government are committed to providing the same cash total to the sector in each year of this Parliament. Some £10.7 million of funding has already been awarded through the interim phase of the future farming resilience fund. That provides, among other things, free business support to farmers and land managers to help them navigate the changes during the early years of the agricultural transition period.

Upland farmers have a particularly important role to play in addition to that of food production, and that is in land management. In their contribution to alleviating the threat of floods, which blight so many communities in this country, there is almost no one in a more important position than those farmers. They are absolutely in the mix when it comes to the new system that has been designed.

I turn to the questions asked by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, and my noble friend the Duke of Montrose. My noble friend asked what proportion of the money would be spent on schemes which are not related to farming and are purely conservation. Again, I cannot give him a direct number, but there are schemes beyond the system being described today which are designed to support, for example, natural regeneration or tree planting, most of the funding for which comes from the nature for climate fund. We are talking here about a slightly different system which the nature for climate fund supports, but ultimately this is all about good land management.

The Government published a paper, which was updated in September 2019—I may have mentioned it earlier—setting out the impacts of removing the direct payments. That paper is being updated as we speak. The delay is caused by the conflict in Ukraine.

My noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, talked also about the impact on consumer food prices. The analysis that we have made in Defra suggests that any effect of direct payments on consumer food prices is limited. However, we are doing a full impact assessment on food security up to 2024, and the results will be made available and will inform future policy design.

It is important that we continue with the transition as planned. Applying reductions to direct payments frees up money which we can use to pay farmers and land managers to encourage environmental protection and enhancement, public access to the countryside, and the safeguarding of livestock and plants. We must also provide opportunities for farmers who wish to leave farming to do so in a managed way. These instruments will allow the Government to ensure that this can be done. I hope that I have answered the key questions put to me today. I beg to move.

Motion agreed.

Agriculture (Financial Assistance) (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Monday 21st March 2022 Grand Committee

Considered in Grand Committee

16:50

Moved by

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Agriculture (Financial Assistance) (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Relevant document: 30th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee

Motion agreed.

Agriculture (Lump Sum Payment) (England) Regulations 2022

Monday 21st March 2022 Grand Committee

Considered in Grand Committee

16:50

Moved by

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Agriculture (Lump Sum Payment) (England) Regulations 2022

Relevant document: 30th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee

Motion agreed.

16:50

Sitting suspended.

Electricity Supplier Payments (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Monday 21st March 2022 Grand Committee

Considered in Grand Committee

16:52

Moved by

[Lord Callanan]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Electricity Supplier Payments (Amendment) Regulations 2022.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Callanan) (Con)]

My Lords, this statutory instrument amends regulations concerning the levies used to fund the operational costs budgets for the Low Carbon Contracts Company and Electricity Settlements Company. The LCCC administers the contracts for difference scheme on behalf of the Government under the Energy Act 2013. Under the same Act, it is anticipated that the LCCC will also administer the dispatchable power agreement and support the development of a new scheme for bioenergy with carbon capture and storage within the next three years. The ESC administers the capacity market scheme. Those schemes will incentivise the significant investment required in our electricity infrastructure, keep costs affordable for consumers and help to deliver our net-zero strategy, while keeping our energy supply secure.

The contracts for difference—CfDs—provide long-term price stabilisation to low-carbon generators, allowing investment to come forward at a lower cost of capital and therefore at a lower cost to consumers. The current CfD auction, which is the fourth to date, opened in December and we are seeking to secure more capacity than all the previous auctions combined. It will allow a broad range of renewable technologies to come forward, while delivering the best deal for bill payers. To date, only projects located in Great Britain have been awarded CfDs. However, BEIS and the Department for the Economy are considering whether to extend the current GB-only CfD scheme to Northern Ireland. Funds have therefore been included in the budgets to enable the LCCC to undertake some preparatory work in case a final decision is made to enable Northern Ireland to join the scheme.

I turn to the Electricity Settlements Company—ESC. The capacity market is tried and tested and is the most cost-effective way of ensuring that we have the electricity capacity that we need now and in the future. The capacity market provides incentives in the form of guaranteed payments to eligible capacity providers to be on the system and to deliver capacity when needed by increasing generation or by turning down their electricity demand in return for guaranteed payments.

The capacity auctions held to date have secured the capacity that we need to meet the forecast peak demand out to 2025-26. The next auctions, scheduled for early 2023, will secure most of the capacity we need out to 2026-27. In the CfD and capacity market schemes, participants bid for support via a competitive auction, which ensures the costs to consumers are minimised.

The LCCC and ESC’s effective administration of the CfD and capacity market schemes to date has demonstrated their ability to deliver such schemes at least cost to consumers. It is in part for this reason that the LCCC has been working with BEIS to develop new schemes for incentivising the deployment of more low-carbon technologies. For example, the LCCC has supported BEIS in the development of dispatchable power agreements, or DPAs, under the Energy Act 2013. These agreements, which are based on CfDs, have been designed to instil confidence among investors for power carbon capture and storage projects and incentivise the availability of low-carbon, non-weather dependent dispatchable generation capacity.

The DPA will drive the private sector investment required to bring forward at least one power carbon capture and storage project by the mid-2020s. The LCCC is expected to be the counterparty for DPAs, and funds have been included within the budgets to support this role. It is anticipated that the LCCC will also work with BEIS to develop incentives for bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. Although this has not yet been confirmed, contracts for such projects could potentially be entered into following a process established under the Energy Act 2013. Were BEIS to move forward with this option, the LCCC would need to undertake activity to prepare for acting as the counterparty during the next three years. Consequently, funds have been included within the budget for this purpose.

It is of course important that the LCCC and the ESC are sufficiently funded to perform their roles effectively, given their critical role in administering the schemes that I have just outlined. However, the Government are clear that both companies must deliver value for money and, with this in mind, we have closely scrutinised their operational cost budgets to ensure they reflect the operational requirements and objectives for the companies.

Both the LCCC and the ESC are themselves very mindful of the need to deliver value for money, as their guiding principle is to maintain investor confidence in the CfD and capacity market schemes while minimising costs to consumers. They have taken a number of actions to date to reduce costs, such as bringing expertise in-house rather than relying on more expensive outside consultants. It is because of actions such as this that CfD operational costs per contract are falling, despite the growing size of the CfD portfolio. There is a similar narrative for the ESC. The company currently manages 200.8 gigawatts of capacity agreements with 1,335 capacity providers under the capacity market. For the delivery year 2022-23, this equates to 52.9 gigawatts of capacity and 350 capacity providers, an increase of 78 capacity providers compared to the 2021-22 delivery year. Despite this increase, operational costs are expected to be lower in 2022-23 than in 2021-22.

The operational cost budgets for both companies were subject to consultation, which gave stakeholders the opportunity to scrutinise and test the key assumptions in the budgets and, more importantly, to ensure that they represent value for money. The response received to the consultation noted the significant increase of budget for the LCCC but was generally supportive of the Government’s rationale for the increase. BEIS is satisfied that the operational costs budgets for the LCCC and the ESC should remain as consulted upon. Subsequently, the budgets remain unchanged as a result of the consultation. The proposed operational costs budget for the LCCC in 2022-23 is £24,210,000, in 2023-24 it is £26,978,000 and in 2024-25 it is £29,051,000. For the ESC, the proposed operational cost budget is £6,954,000 in 2022-23, £7,382,000 in 2023-24 and £7,734,000 in 2024-25.

The amendments revise the levies currently in place to enable the companies to collect enough revenue to fund these budgets. Any levy collected that is not spent will be returned to suppliers at the end of the relevant financial year in accordance with the regulations.

Subject to the will of Parliament, the settlement cost levy for the ESC is due to come into force the day after the day on which these regulations are made and the operational costs levy for the LCCC by 1 April in each of the relevant financial years.

Finally, I assure the Committee that the Government are also mindful of the uncertainties involved in setting a budget for the next three years, such as any world events that we are witnessing now which could of course impact energy demand, and in policy decisions on new schemes that have not yet been taken. Consequently, BEIS will keep the companies’ budgets under careful review throughout the budget period to ensure, as always, that the costs to consumers are minimised.

I commend these draft regulations to the Committee.

17:00

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, we on the Liberal Democrat Benches support these regulations so I will not take up too much of the Grand Committee’s time, but there are a number of questions which I hope the Minister will be able to address.

I fondly remember discussing these regulations—the previous, equivalent regulations—back on a cold afternoon last February. At that time, I asked the Minister why the review of the operation of the electricity market, which under Section 66 of the Energy Act 2013 is required after five years and so was due in 2018, had still not been completed and reported three years after it was due. The Minister said:

“We expect it to be laid in Parliament shortly.”—[Official Report, 23/2/21; col. 811.]


The Explanatory Memorandum accompanying these regulations says almost exactly the same the thing, stating that

“the findings for the review are expected to be laid in Parliament shortly.”

Can the Minister tell us what the Government’s definition of “shortly” is, and give us some reassurance that we will actually see the outcome of this review? Has it been completed? If it has, why has it not been laid yet? Had it been completed when we discussed it last year, when the Minister said it would be laid shortly? I hope that he can give us some reassurance on this matter. The reasons given were Covid and Brexit. Obviously, we understand that Covid was a big blow—although Brexit was due two years after we had voted to leave—but we really need some reassurance about when we will see the review.

I will make just a few other points. When we discussed forecasts last year, we were discussing only one year’s levy because of Covid uncertainties. The Government now say that they are confident that they can forecast electricity demand with sufficient accuracy to reinstate the multiyear format. I note that the Minister has explained how the Government expect to see demand falling, albeit modestly, over that period. I wonder whether he could say something about how the Government are factoring in all the complexities of the massive price spike, and what that might do to demand, alongside the new demands of electric vehicles and heat pumps, et cetera.

As has been noted, the operational costs are up 40% over the levy period, and that is on top of the 19% increase that we debated last year. I recognise that there has been an expansion in the CfDs that the organisation is responsible for overseeing, and we welcome it, but I hope that the relentless pressure down on costs which the Minister talked about really will be applied continuously. I wonder whether some further economies of scale can be achieved, because both these organisations, as I understand it, operate from the same address. Are there functions that could be merged to save more money?

On the subject of the expansion of CfDs, I wonder whether the Minister can tell us where we are on the CfD for hydrogen. I note that it is the number two request on the CBI’s call for measures from the Government in terms of growth—number one, incidentally, is to close the public investment gap in terms of retrofitting commercial and domestic buildings. Perhaps the Minister could tell us whether that CfD on hydrogen will be forthcoming soon.

In terms of costs on bills, the Explanatory Memorandum estimates that these will be 50p on domestic consumers’ bills and between £30 and £1,200 on business bills, depending on their electricity usage. Obviously, 50p may seem a small amount, but I am slightly confused because I believe that the Explanatory Memorandum for the last levy-setting regulations said that it would be increased by 40p. It seems odd that this is only 50p over the period. Clearly, although these are small amounts, they all add up. People are facing crippling bills at the moment, so it is important that we keep an eye on that and on how we can drive down costs.

Another point I want to ask the Minister about relates to page 5 of the Explanatory Memorandum—which was presumably prepared some time ago—which talks about inflation of 5% having been allowed and discusses omicron and so on. However, this was clearly before some of the price spikes happened, and obviously before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The CBI and other commentators expect inflation to peak somewhere around 8% to 9%, and there is increasing feeling that that level of inflation may be sustained for a longer period than was initially anticipated. In his reply, can the Minister tell us whether these new inflationary pressures in the system have been taken into account? If they have not, as some of them are fairly new, can he tell us how things might be adjusted over the period of the levy?

Finally, if there is a surplus and the money is paid back to consumers, can the Minister tell us whether there is a way of ensuring that the electricity supply companies deliver that rebate back to consumers if they effectively have to pay the charges in the beginning?

[Lord Lennie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his explanation of the regulations before the House. They are essentially non-controversial and, on this lonely side of the House, we do not take issue with them. As we have heard, the regulations update the rates for the operational costs levy and settlement costs levy, which fund the operational costs of the LCCC and the Electricity Settlements Company, respectively. As these two private companies share staff and facilities, these levies are set together.

After a single year of unpredictably and reduced electricity demand during the pandemic, first, it is welcome that this process has been able to return to a three-year system, allowing stakeholders greater visibility of the estimated operational costs, as well as reducing the administrative burdens on the two companies and on us here. Given the situation, it was sensible to reduce the periodicity, and I am glad that we have returned to normal.

Both the LCCC’s contracts for difference and the Electricity Settlements Company’s capacity market are measures that encourage low-carbon electricity generation and ensure security of supply, which is a noble intention. As my colleagues in both Houses have argued whenever these issues have arisen, since these arrangements came into place in 2013, a levy system, which will be passed on to customers by the electricity firms, is possibly the most regressive way of making these arrangements. The figures involved are certainly not large, as the noble Lord, Lord Oates, said, especially when looking only at the impact on the yearly changes, as is the case with the explanatory notice, but with energy bills increasing substantially amid a wider cost-of-living crisis, it is certainly the case that every little bit helps. Has the Minister therefore given any consideration to other methods that could facilitate the costs of these arrangements not falling on the customer?

I would also like to ask some questions about the consultation that took place ahead of the laying of this regulation, both on questions coming from it and the consultation itself. The consultation ran for four weeks and received only one response, from Scottish Power. While the perspective of this large stakeholder was welcome, I am sure the Minister would agree that having a single response to any consultation is not ideal. It is no fault of Scottish Power, but there were gaps in the responses leaving questions mostly unanswered, and inherent biases from a single respondent were unavoidable. Perhaps when this is revisited in three years’ time, the Minister could consider a longer consultation for a broader spectrum of responses to be generated.

One aspect of Scottish Power’s response that I would like to pick up upon surrounds budget lines related to providing policy support to BEIS, which Scottish Power recommended be kept under review. In their response, the Government committed to returning funds allocated here to suppliers. As this is the case with any unused funds, will unallocated funds from this aspect be ring-fenced for return, and, more importantly —as the noble Lord, Lord Oates, has said—will steps be taken to ensure that this is passed on to customers, given that any adjustment to their bills will have already been enacted?

It was also pointed out that the year-on-year budget rises are not insignificant, reaching approximately 40% over the four years from this financial year to the last of the three years this regulation covers. The Government rightly say that this is not unprecedented, given that at least in the case of the Electricity Settlement Company, the Explanatory Memorandum suggests that the body has only become more efficient, but I would be grateful if the Minister could elaborate a little on where the cost increases come from.

I look forward to the Minister’s responses to these questions.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I thank the noble Lords, Lord Lennie and Lord Oates, for their contributions to this brief debate. The noble Lord, Lord Oates, is of course quite right to raise the issue of the publication of the five-year review, especially since I told him last year that it was going to be ready shortly—I am sure there could be a big debate on what “shortly” means in the context of government. If I may fill in a little more detail for the noble Lord, I understand that updated advice on the matter is currently with my colleague Greg Hands, the Minister for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change. I think he intends to publish the review in due course—I hope, shortly.

The noble Lord also, rightly, asked for an explanation of why the review is so delayed. I can certainly say that it has of course been a government priority to deliver on our commitment to open the largest ever CfD allocation round—I am sure that is something he would agree on—and it has been announced that the rounds will be running annually from March 2023. A lot of work has gone into the preparation behind that. Schemes such as CfD are vital in developing domestic sources of renewable energy to reduce our exposure to volatile global fossil fuel markets, which are of course peaking at the moment, and to protect consumers in the longer term. Delivering on those priorities has had an unfortunate knock-on impact on the publication of the review, but we will endeavour to get it out as quickly as possible.

The noble Lord also asked for an update on the hydrogen business model. Of course, it is not part of this statutory instrument, but I would be very happy to write to him separately. I can certainly confirm that we are not intending to fund hydrogen under this particular mechanism or under the Energy Act 2013, so it falls outside the scope of today’s debate.

On the noble Lord’s questions on inflation, we have used a somewhat optimistic assessment of 5% inflation for each year of the proposed budgets. That was after careful consideration of the forecasts produced by the Office for Budget Responsibility. They probably looked very sensible when it put its advice together, but it suggested that, on balance, an assumption of 5% was appropriate.

17:15

On the question from the noble Lord, Lord Oates, on returning CfD generator paybacks to consumers, the contracts for difference scheme is working exactly as it was designed to. In the current power market that means returning some money to suppliers. Generators pay back to the LCCC when the wholesale price is above the strike price originally agreed. This ensures that consumers do not pay higher CfD support costs during periods of high electricity prices, as is currently the case. As electricity prices are so high at the moment, the LCCC has stopped collecting the supplier obligation levy from suppliers, and CfD generators have instead been paying back on CfDs since quarter 4 last year. To date, this has generated net repayments of around £205 million to the LCCC and, of that, the LCCC has paid back about £40 million to suppliers. The balance on account with the LCCC will meet future liabilities towards funding contracts for difference.

The contracts for difference scheme is working well and is vital to developing domestic sources of low-carbon electricity in Great Britain, which will help to reduce exposure to potentially volatile global fossil fuel markets and, we hope, to protect consumers in the longer term. How energy suppliers ensure they meet the different costs of government policies, including the contracts for difference scheme, is a commercial decision for each supplier and will be factored into their tariff prices. Competition between suppliers and the Ofgem price cap helps to ensure that, in their totality, consumers are offered a fair deal.

The noble Lord, Lord Lennie, raised some good points on how we fund the operations of the company. The costs of decarbonisation should be shared fairly among consumers. Levying costs to support the deployment of clean electricity in this way enables electricity consumers to pay towards the costs associated with increasing the proportion of renewable electricity supply from which they will ultimately benefit. The CfD scheme was designed to deliver value for money for consumers and it is doing so, with costs falling at every auction held to date. The CfD has now entered a new phase, in which renewable projects could reduce consumer bills as, at the moment, they are much cheaper than alternative forms of generation. It remains the case that the LCCC must be adequately funded if it is to perform its vital role to deliver the CfD effectively.

I note the point that the noble Lord raised on the number of responses we received to the consultation. Clearly one response is not ideal, but we have never received more than five responses to any of these increases in the past. Given other pressures on suppliers’ time at the moment, and the other competitive pressures that they are under, it is perhaps not surprising that only one responded to this year’s consultation, but I can inform the noble Lord that it was widely disseminated both on the department’s and on the LCCC’s website.

The noble Lord, Lord Lennie, also asked if merging the companies would result in cost savings. The ESC has no staff of its own, as the LCCC staff performs its functions. They are both based in the same premises and the costs are re-charged. I hope that, as a result, the noble Lord accepts that merging the companies is unlikely to result in significant cost savings.

As I set out in my opening speech, the companies and the Government have taken a number of steps to ensure that the proposed operational cost budgets allow the companies to perform the crucial roles that they carry out effectively, while representing value for money for consumers. I hope the Committee will accept that those twin aims will be achieved if these draft regulations are approved.

In response to points made by the noble Lord, Lord Oates, I will not pretend that the increase in the LCCC’s budget is not significant. It clearly is, but I believe that the increase is justifiable, based on the increasing workload that it will have. Let me set that out for the benefit of the Committee.

The increase in its budget reflects a number of factors, in particular the company’s important role in helping to meet our legally binding net-zero targets and the requirements of the Net Zero Strategy, while minimising costs for consumers. The CfD scheme has proven that it can deliver large-scale low-carbon generation while driving down costs. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Oates, will be familiar with this, but the cost of offshore wind, for example, has fallen by two-thirds between the CfD auction held in 2015 and the third auction—the most recent—held in 2019. The proposed budget will allow the LCCC to play its part in delivering further CfD auctions more regularly, which will help to bring forward more low-carbon electricity and push down the technology costs associated with that in doing so. That will of course bring us closer to meeting our net-zero target.

I can tell the noble Lord that funds have also been included within the budgets to enable the LCCC to support dispatchable power agreements, which will incentivise power carbon capture and storage projects, and a potential new scheme for bioenergy with carbon capture and storage projects. We believe that such projects could well help us to meet our net-zero goals and the requirements of the Net Zero Strategy.

It is also fair to point out that the company is facing a number of costs beyond its control over the budget period, chief of which is the increased uncertainty resulting from world events. This has pushed up many of its costs in a number of areas; for example, insurance premiums for the companies are expected to increase and, as the noble Lord pointed out, assumptions for inflation have also increased. It is important to consider that the budgets also include two contingencies, one focused on electricity demand and the other on legal disputes. I hope these may not be needed if a legal dispute does not arise or if demand is within forecast. If that is the case, the funds raised from the levy to cover these costs will be returned to electricity suppliers. I think that also answers the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lennie.

Noble Lords have also touched on what this budget increase means for electricity consumers. This is a critical point and I agree with both of them that we must scrutinise every penny that goes on to consumer bills. However, I believe that in this case there has been sufficient scrutiny, with a lot of discussion between my department and the companies. Therefore, given the important role that both companies play in our electricity system, a bill impact which equates to less than 0.1% for the average consumer is proportionate and justifiable overall.

I reiterate one final point to the noble Lord, Lord Lennie. Any unspent levy funds will be returned to electricity suppliers at the end of the financial year, in accordance with the regulations. Indeed, this has been the pattern to date: for example, at the end of 2020-21, the LCCC returned £1.5 million to suppliers and the ESC returned £576,000.

With the explanations that I have provided, I hope the Committee will agree with this statutory instrument. I commend these draft regulations to the Committee.

Motion agreed.

Food and Feed Safety (Miscellaneous Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2022

Monday 21st March 2022 Grand Committee

Considered in Grand Committee

17:25

Moved by

[Lord Kamall]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Food and Feed Safety (Miscellaneous Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2022.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Kamall) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government’s priority is, as always, to ensure that the high standard of food safety and consumer protection that we enjoy in this country continues to be maintained now that the UK has left the European Union. This instrument follows the 18 EU exit instruments in the field of food and feed safety made during 2019 and 2020. It addresses two deficiencies identified in retained EU law, and provides transitional arrangements for labelling changes introduced as a result of EU exit. Since the instrument is technical in nature, I hope noble Lords will allow me to briefly summarise the changes we are making.

The instrument serves three key functions. First, it will ensure that emergency powers can be applied equally to all food and feed entering Great Britain. Retained EU Regulation 178/2002, on the general principles of food law, provides Ministers with emergency powers to suspend or restrict the placing of food or feed on the market. This can be used where food or feed presents a threat to human health. Legal analysis of Article 53 of that regulation identified that, as worded, it is not possible for a Minister to exercise those emergency powers on third-country food and feed entering Great Britain via Northern Ireland. To correct this operability issue, this proposed regulation includes a technical amendment that will enable all Ministers to apply, equally, the same emergency controls to all food and feed destined for our market. The amendment does not extend the remit or gravity of the controls that may be introduced, but will ensure that emergency controls are exercisable equally across all parts of the UK.

Secondly, the statutory instrument ensures that authorising provisions for feed additives and for GM food and feed authorisations will be made by legislation. Legal analysis of fixed and retained EU law identified that retained law on feed additives and on GM food and feed contained certain omissions. The regulations did not sufficiently make it clear that Ministers’ authorisation decisions will be prescribed in legislation. While this does not prevent Ministers from taking decisions to authorise these products, provision for those decisions to be implemented through legislation makes certain their enforceability in law. It also ensures consistency with other retained EU law in this area.

Thirdly and finally, the amendment provides a period of adjustment for changes to labelling requirements made necessary by EU exit legislation. In preparation for EU exit, changes were made to the legislation on extraction solvents and quick-frozen foods to reflect the fact that the UK would no longer be part of the EU. As a result, relevant food placed on the market is required to be labelled with the name and UK address of the legal person responsible for it, rather than an EU contact and address. This statutory instrument provides a period of adjustment in those sectors, allowing for the continued use of existing labels until 30 September 2022.

I should be clear that this instrument does not introduce any changes that will impact the day-to-day operation of food businesses, nor any new regulatory burden. The essence of the legislation is unchanged. However, it provides benefit for certain businesses by enabling a period of grace in the introduction of labelling changes.

It is also important to note that we have engaged positively with the devolved Administrations throughout the development of the instrument. I take this opportunity to note that their ongoing engagement has been warmly welcomed.

I reassure noble Lords that the overarching aim of this regulation is to provide continuity for businesses and to ensure that high standards of safety and quality for food and feed regulation will continue across the UK. The changes do not affect the essence of existing legislation. Having effective and functional law in this area is key to ensuring the high standards of food safety and consumer protection that we enjoy in this country and to make sure that they are maintained in the immediate and long term. I hope that noble Lords will feel able to support the amendments proposed in this instrument to ensure the continuation of effective food and feed safety and public health controls.

17:30

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is taking part remotely. She is speaking as the Liberal Democrat Front-Bencher but, as there are no Back-Benchers to speak, I invite her to speak.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction to the Food and Feed Safety (Miscellaneous Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2022, which propose three very differing amendments to existing food safety measures. He was right to start by saying that ensuring the highest levels of food safety is absolutely vital.

The Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments has pointed out that the second and third regulations come into force on the day after the day on which these amendments are made, so once again they breach the 21-day rule. It is such a shame that SIs and regulations seem always to be dealt with as emergency items, because this reduces the time available for Parliament to effectively scrutinise legislation.

The first amendment is to Article 53 of the retained general food law, to manage a problem that has arisen as a result of the Northern Ireland protocol. I note that the Explanatory Memorandum calls it a “deficiency”. It might perhaps be more honest to call it a problem of the Northern Ireland protocol and the practical effect it has had on border issues for those living in Northern Ireland—how they have to juggle the tensions of a border in the Irish Sea when third-party goods come into Great Britain via Northern Ireland and where a serious risk to human health has been identified with those goods.

It is right that the UK Government must correct regulations that are not fit for purpose, and we note that these amendments to Article 53 do not change the purpose or function of the original provision but there is now full protection for such emergency measures, regardless of where the goods have come from.

The second amendment relates to the authorisation of provisions for feed additives and for GM food and feed, which will now be through legislation, bringing them into line with other retained EU food and feed law. That is particularly welcome. There is a lot of suspicion about GM food and feed, and it is important that there is a vehicle through which it can be scrutinised carefully. Parliament is the right place for that to take place.

The third and final change is a sensible step to ensure that businesses have a slightly longer period to move from EU to UK labelling requirements, until 30 September this year. For some time, food businesses have been asking for a longer period, as well as for labelling requirements to be as close as possible to the EU requirements. The latter is not covered by this SI, but I hope that the Minister will continue to listen to UK food businesses which want to continue to sell into the EU and which must also abide by the EU labelling requirements. I thank the Government for the extension to the period during which the EU ones can be used.

The SI brings us back to the wider issues of the Northern Ireland protocol. That is obviously not on the agenda for today, but I want to say that, from these Benches, we always warned that there would be problems for goods travelling into Great Britain via Northern Ireland and for businesses there, which continue to express real concerns about the UK’s decisions and legislation between 2018 and 2020. Whether one agrees with them or not, it is good that these three corrections and amendments will at least sort out some of those minor problems.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for setting out the rationale behind this eminently sensible statutory instrument, which deals with a number of significant technical issues relating to the Food Standards Agency, some of which have come about because of the Northern Ireland protocol. They need to be resolved, and from these Benches we are of course happy to support this statutory instrument.

I add that the Explanatory Memorandum is very helpful in outlining the approach that the FSA is taking. I will just pick up on a few points. First, paragraph 7.7 refers to

“An analysis of the emergency powers for”


food and feed control, which revealed that these powers could not be deployed as effectively as required. I am interested in exploring the context. It would be helpful if the Minister could advise on whether this analysis was through a hypothetical desk-based exercise, or whether the situations referred to actually occurred. For example, did goods identified as presenting a serious threat to human health enter Great Britain through Northern Ireland or did that not happen in reality?

I welcome the clarification that the GM and feed additive authorisations will be dealt with through an SI. It would be helpful if the Minister could confirm whether this will be through the negative or affirmative approach. Also, are there any implications for the Government’s longer-term strategy for GM products, given the recent statutory instrument that changed some of the rules on research and gene-edited crops?

On the issue of labelling, it would also be helpful if the Minister could comment a bit on whether he feels that the date in place is the right one. I say that because the food production sector finds itself under pressure, of course, and we want to ensure that this is a practical step.

Throughout the consultation, the National Farmers’ Union has sought clarification on the UK’s relationship with the European Food Safety Authority. The NFU has stressed the importance of the UK’s close collaboration with the EFSA on equal terms. Can the Minister comment on the Government’s intentions for their relationship with the EFSA in the context of this statutory instrument, given its importance to our food industry? I would be most grateful.

I have a final point to raise. With regard to the consultations, one observation by the sector was about the expectation that these changes to the regulations could be read through in under an hour, such that businesses, regulatory agencies and councils would be able to work out in that short period how to apply the changes to their organisations. I know that this was regarded as somewhat overoptimistic, but has any further thought been given to an assessment of just how easy it will be to work with these regulations? With those comments, I offer our support for these regulations and thank the Minister in advance for the reply that I know he will give.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My Lords, I thank both noble Baronesses for their contributions and for their general positive response. Once again, I can only apologise for the fact that that some provisions are late. That is an issue that I constantly raise internally and I understand the criticisms.

I will try to address as many of the questions asked by the noble Baronesses as I can before I conclude. On the Northern Ireland protocol, one thing we are looking at is the United Kingdom Internal Market Act and its purpose of promoting the functioning of the internal market, given that we have the Northern Ireland protocol. The Act specifically serves to strengthen and maintain Northern Ireland’s position in the UK internal market. In terms of the bigger picture and how the Northern Ireland protocol works in future, we are hoping that will be done via the UK internal market Act, taking account of that protocol.

The SI makes provision for a specific transitional period to allow the industry to use up existing labelling stocks. A period of 12 to 24 months is indicated as being sufficient time to use up labelling stocks; some quick-frozen produce can also have a shelf life of up to two years. However, if there are still concerns from industry, no doubt we will look at them. We are in constant conversation with industry and a whole range of sectors related to health and other issues.

I hope that covers some of the questions that the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, asked. Once again, if I have not answered all the questions, we will check Hansard and make sure that we sweep up any answers to both noble Baronesses.

The noble Baroness, Lady Merron, asked how the issue was identified. It is hypothetical; nothing has happened, there was no breach of standards. The procedure will be a negative procedure for authorisations. We have had the first group of applications for authorisations, which have progressed through the risk analysis process, and advice has been prepared for Ministers. This amendment is required to empower Ministers to prescribe the authorisation by regulation.

The wider question of the future of GM and gene editing is not considered by this SI, and really it is a matter for the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Of course, if the noble Baronesses want more information, I am very happy to contact that department. For now, the commercial cultivation of gene-edited plants and any food products derived from them will still need to be authorised in accordance with existing GMO rules.

The UK has developed an enhanced risk analysis process, through the FSA, and we will seek close co-ordination with the EFSA. It does not mean we will always align, but it is really important to make sure that we have a strong relationship. Quite often, clearly, the issue of food safety is something that is shared by a number of jurisdictions, not just the UK and the EU, but in fact globally. So we will be looking at that.

In closing, I am grateful for the noble Baronesses’ contributions today. As I have said, if I have not answered questions, I hope, after a quick read of Hansard, I will try to sweep them up. I grateful to the noble Baronesses for their support. We want to make sure that there is a smooth transition for certain businesses in adjusting to the new labelling requirements. I take on board the comments made and I beg to move.

Motion agreed.

Commissioner for Patient Safety (Appointment and Operation) (England) Regulations 2022

Monday 21st March 2022 Grand Committee

Considered in Grand Committee

17:42

Moved by

[Lord Kamall]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Commissioner for Patient Safety (Appointment and Operation) (England) Regulations 2022.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Kamall) (Con)]

My Lords, patient safety remains a top priority for the Government, and we continue to place enormous emphasis on making our NHS safer and as safe as possible for patients. This builds on earlier measures including, for example, the first ever patient safety strategy launched by NHS England in 2019. This aims to improve the way the NHS learns from avoidable harm and to create a safety and learning culture across the NHS. However, we know that more work needs to be done.

The First Do No Harm report by my noble friend Lady Cumberlege highlighted and effectively exposed a healthcare system that failed to listen to and disregarded the experiences of women. In my noble friend’s absence, I pay tribute to her for the work and to the review team for their diligence and dedication in conducting the review. I should put on record that my noble friend Lady Cumberlege cannot be with us today but did send her apologies.

The Government published their formal response to the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review’s recommendations in July last year, setting out an ambitious programme of change. This included accepting the recommendation to appoint a patient safety commissioner with a remit covering medicines and medical devices. We are making progress towards fulfilling this important commitment. We included provisions in the Medicines and Medical Devices Act 2021 to establish the commissioner and set out their core duties. We also held a public consultation between June and August last year on the detail of the commissioner’s appointment and operation. In January, we started the process to recruit the very first patient safety commissioner. The job advert closed on 1 February and we hope to make an appointment this spring.

As well as establishing the patient safety commissioner, the Medicines and Medical Devices Act allows the Government to make legislative provisions about the appointment and operation of the role. Our public consultation set out nine proposals, covering details such as term of office, reappointment arrangements and remuneration. We are grateful to all those who took the time to engage with our proposals and share their views.

I can inform noble Lords that each proposal was supported by more than half of those who responded, ranging from 59% to 91% of respondents being in agreement. Having considered all the responses carefully, we have laid before the House this statutory instrument that will implement the proposals put forward in our consultation. This instrument will enable the patient safety commissioner to function effectively by providing a clear legislative framework within which they can operate. It allows for the commissioner to serve an initial term of three years. This received strong support during our public consultation, and we believe it provides sufficient time for the postholder to become established and develop the role.

17:45

I am aware that some respondents were concerned that this would provide too short a period for the commissioner to establish himself. I should stress, however, that the regulations also allow for the commissioner to be reappointed for an additional three years, in effect giving them up to six years in office. We believe that this provides the right balance between those who were concerned that a longer initial term would make it difficult to remove an ineffective commissioner, and those who were concerned about the premature removal of an effective commissioner.

The regulations also set out a range of other details about the role of the patient safety commissioner, including producing a business plan covering a period of at least 12 months; receiving the commission’s funding from the Government; keeping proper accounts each financial year; remuneration; publishing and laying in Parliament an annual report; and allowing staff to exercise any of the commissioner’s functions so far as they have been authorised to do so by the commissioner. The regulations also require the commissioner to appoint an advisory panel to provide advice and assistance to the commissioner.

The Government believe that we need to have a more patient-focused system of healthcare. The patient safety commissioner will play a vital role in promoting the safety of patients in relation to medicines and medical devices. We believe that these regulations provide appropriate arrangements to enable the commissioner to function and operate effectively once appointed. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Garden of Frognal) (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is taking part remotely. She speaks as the Front-Bench Liberal Democrat spokesman but as there are no Back-Benchers, I invite her to speak.

[Baroness Brinton (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction. He will know that across the House there have been considerable discussions, not just in recent months but recent years, on the role of the commissioner for patient safety in various Questions, debates and Statements since the First Do No Harm report of the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, was published in 2020. I join the Minister in paying tribute to her, not just for her report but for her absolute persistence in holding the Government to account to deliver as many of her recommendations as possible. I too am sorry that she cannot be with us today but I know that she is pleased that this SI has been published.

This SI specifically covers the appointment of the commissioner but, once again, government actions are happening before Parliament has had a chance to scrutinise this SI. This SI sets up the role of commissioner, but the Minister has just told us that not only is the advert out, but it is closed and an imminent announcement is due. I do not think that there is anyone who does not want the commissioner to be put in place, but once again, this seems to be putting the cart before the horse in that the SI is being dealt with after the advertisement has gone out.

However, for the first time there will be an independent commissioner whose role is to stand up for the rights of patients when they have suffered avoidable harm. The three main parts of the report of the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, covered HPTs, sodium valproate and vaginal mesh but there are other issues as well, and unfortunately there will be more in the future. That is why the Minister is right to say that the creation of a learning and safety culture is absolutely vital, as is an environment in which people working inside the NHS and other organisations associated with delivering medicines and medical devices can speak without fear. That is why some of us had concerns over the initial period of appointment. While the possibility of a second term is welcome, the concerns related to that first period of setting up the commission. This is not just somebody who will walk into the job and everything will be ready to go. The difficulty is that, having established themselves in the post, they will then have to gain the confidence of everybody who they might be investigating, which can take a while. It will be quite difficult to judge whether it is appropriate to appoint them for a second term if they have had probably only about 18 months when they have been able to do the job properly.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, the first thing I did when preparing for this debate was to ask the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, if she was content—of course I did. Since her shocking and moving report First Do No Harm, mentioned by the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and during the passage of the Medicines and Medical Devices Act, there has been active cross-party support for the recommendations in that report and a determination in this House to bring about change. This SI is another step along that path.

As one would expect, the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, is involved in the appointment—and will, I suspect, be involved in the work—of the new commissioner. I join the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, in asking why we are discussing this SI when action has already been taken. The reason this SI and the commissioner’s job are important is that when people, often at their most vulnerable, put their trust in the hands of healthcare professionals they do so in the expectation, quite rightly, that their safety will be of paramount concern. Sadly, that is sometimes not the case. Even worse, sometimes the patient is not heard. Where those incidents have taken place, patients have been made to jump through hoop after hoop in their fight for recognition and voice. The independent patient safety commissioner will take steps to ensure that patient safety is a top priority and will act as a voice for patients.

There is no question that the noble Baroness’s report was a landmark in the fight to improve patient safety, so I praise her but also honourable and noble Members of both Houses for their work, whether on sodium valproate, Primodos or surgical mesh, who have stood up for the thousands who have suffered because patient safety was not taken seriously enough. My honourable friend Sharon Hodgson MP, for example, was at the forefront of championing these women.

Despite this, there remain several outstanding ways in which this Government could further improve patient safety. I welcome that, in this instance, the Government have taken on board the recommendation to provide an independent patient safety commissioner, but I would like to know from the Minister what progress has been made on the remaining recommendations in the review. I think all are agreed that that full package of reforms is essential.

I would also like the Minister to explain why the tenure is only three rather than five years. I realise that it is allowed to roll over for another term but, when you are setting up a new office with a new role and getting an organisation up and running, three years is too short a time. The Children’s Commissioner has five years. I would be grateful if the Minister could outline how and why that decision was taken.

We welcome the obligation on the commissioner to lay an annual report before each House of Parliament. There is an additional obligation for the commissioner to publish a business plan at the start of each year, which is not mentioned in the SI. What is the point of the commissioner providing a business plan if they are not held accountable for its contents?

Finally, I draw the attention of the Committee to the advisory panel that

“must consist of persons who (taken together) represent a broad range of interests which are relevant to the Commissioner’s functions.”

Will that include the patient voice? Will patients have representation on this board?

Of course, this SI has our support and we welcome it, but the Government should see it as a beginning, not an end.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Baronesses who spoke today. Once again, I would like to echo their gratitude to my noble friend Lady Cumberlege, but I also agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, that a number of politicians in both places across parties raised a number of these issues. We have read some horrifying stories about some of the victims of the three issues that were raised. They are really heartbreaking in many ways.

My Lords, we are determined to deliver meaningful change in our response to the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review. We see the safety commissioner playing a key role in that change. I know there are concerns about the three-year and three-year-plus extension. When I was asking questions, right at the beginning of my awareness of this when I first became a Minister, I was told that three years is standard for a number of offices. So I was interested to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, talk about the term of the Children’s Commissioner being five years. The initial advice I was given was that three years is standard. There were also some concerns from other quarters about what happens if we appoint an ineffective commissioner; do we then have to wait five years to get rid of them? We think three years is the right balance, but it continues to be a subject of debate and I completely understand that.

I also take on board the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, that it is not only about women who have had mesh complications or valproate or the other issue; there will be other issues we come across, but this was set up as a result of the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review. We completely agree that patient safety must remain a top priority and we hope that this will not be the only way to improve safety. There is a statutory duty of candour, regulated by the CQC, which requires a trust to tell patients if their safety has been compromised and to apologise. There are protections for whistleblowers and “freedom to speak up” guardians; provisions in the Bill to establish, as the noble Baroness will be aware, the Health Services Safety Investigations Body; the implementation of the first-ever NHS patient safety strategy in 2019 with substantial programmes under way to create safety and learning; the implementation of medical examiners across the NHS as a critical reform, so that all deaths not involving a coroner are scrutinised by an independent medical practitioner; and of course legislation for the patient safety commissioner.

I am also in conversations directly with my noble friend Lady Cumberlege who, quite rightly, keeps pressing the department on the issues of valproate, vaginal mesh and the other issue, where we need some form of redress. I have mentioned to my noble friend where the concerns are and that, if we continue those conversations, I hope to close that gap as much as I can. I make no promises, but I hope noble Lords recognise that I do try to close the gap whenever I can, and I am in constant conversation with my noble friend Lady Cumberlege on that.

On top of this, we hope the patient safety commissioner will play a key role in that change, championing the view of patients in relation to medicines and medical devices. It is not particularly party political; this is important across the House. When the NHS performs brilliantly, of course it should be praised, but when things go wrong, we should find out. That then clearly makes it a patient-centred NHS, but it also means we can learn to make sure we have a better health service in the future. These things should not be swept under the carpet.

We hope the regulations before us will help us support the success of this new role, providing a sensible and clear legal framework within which to operate. In case I have not answered any of the questions, I will read Hansard and try to sweep them up and write to the noble Baronesses. Before that, I commend these regulations to the Committee.

Motion agreed.

Committee adjourned at 5.58 pm.

House of Lords

Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

Monday 21 March 2022

14:30

Prayers—read by the Lord Bishop of Leeds.

Introduction: The Lord Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich

Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

14:36

Martin Alan, Lord Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, was introduced and took the oath, supported by the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Leeds, and signed an undertaking to abide by the Code of Conduct.

Prisons: Releasing Women into Safe and Secure Housing

Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

Question

14:39

Tabled by

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in releasing women from prison into safe and secure housing; and what assessment they have made of what constitutes a satisfactory accommodation outcome for women released from prison.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, and at her request, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in her name on the Order Paper.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Wolfson of Tredegar) (Con)]

My Lords, our vision is that no female offender who is subject to probation supervision will be released from prison homeless. Building on the success of our Covid emergency scheme, last July we introduced a transitional accommodation service for prison leavers in five regions, and we are expanding it further. We hold the system to account through ambitious accommodation targets set out in the target operating model that we introduced last year.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, that is well and good—I am grateful to the Minister—but while it is good to know that some progress has been made, there are still problems. The accommodation service is in place in only five of the 11 probation regions of England and Wales, and there has been no commitment to timelines or to safe and secure housing specifically for women. Some 77% of women left one prison without any safe and secure housing; one was provided with a tent. The service provides temporary housing for only 12 weeks. Can the Minister give some commitment on timing for rollout and on what the Government will do for vulnerable prison leavers after 12 weeks? Can he indicate how support will reflect the particular needs of women?

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

There was quite a lot in that question. I acknowledge that it is a very important topic. I will pick up on a couple of the points made. The 77% figure comes from the recent IMB report for HMP Bronzefield, and it refers to safe and secure accommodation. That is a different approach to what we use, which is to determine whether people are actually homeless. Do they have somewhere—a roof over their head—for that night? We are very aware of the particular needs of women prisoners. Our accommodation programme is targeted at all prisoners, but we have particular people working in women’s prisons to ensure that women’s needs are specifically met.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, as my noble friend has just illustrated, there are wide discrepancies in the ways in which homelessness is measured for women leaving prison between the Prison Service and the independent monitoring board at Bronzefield. I am grateful that the Government recognise that something needs to be done about this to give confidence in the figures. Can the Minister say when we can expect a set of robust categories to be in place, on which everyone can agree?

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

I think that robust categories are in place. We define homelessness, in accordance with the legal definition, as being where the individual does not have any accommodation available and reasonable for them to occupy, including where they may be rough sleeping, squatting or in a night shelter, emergency hostel or campsite. It is very important to ensure that we are all looking at the same data. We publish the data annually and I invite all noble Lords to look at those figures.

[Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)]

My Lords, the disparity between government figures and those of the independent monitoring board is because we do not have one standard measure of what acceptable accommodation for prison leavers looks like. It is not a sofa, and it is not a tent. Will the Minister commit to facilitating the production of one standard measure? What we do not measure, we cannot manage.

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

I absolutely agree with that point. I have said from this Dispatch Box, on a number of areas, that data is absolutely critical. We need to ensure that we are looking at the same thing. I set out the legal definition of homelessness, and we publish statistics on this. I am pleased to say that there has been an improvement in the figures recently. The percentage of prison leavers recorded as either homeless or rough sleeping has fallen from 16% to 12%. We want to make that even better.

[The Lord Bishop of Leeds]

My Lords, Friday releases from prison, in particular, are hugely problematic. This is particularly the case for geographically dispersed women’s prisons, because women cannot travel home in time to make a housing application with their local authority before the office closes. Are the Government aware of this specific problem, and can they offer any solutions as to what can be done to overcome it?

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, I am more than aware of this problem, because we debated it both in Committee and on Report for legislation which was going through this House. It is a real issue, and particularly for prisons which are in more disparate parts of the country where it can take people longer to travel back to where they originally came from. Prison governors are aware of this. The figures—which I do not have at hand—are getting better in this regard. Perhaps I can write to the right reverend Prelate further on this point.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)]

My Lords, we have a virtual contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport.

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I wanted to ask my question on the next Question.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, it is very clear that many women end up in circumstances where perpetrators of abuse exploit and take advantage of them if they are not in safe and secure housing. One recent study has shown that, overwhelmingly, a number of those women in prison have previously been subjected to abuse and, therefore, suffer trauma. Is not the priority, therefore, to ensure that there is more trauma-informed work available to work with women, so that they do not enter the criminal justice system?

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness is absolutely right, but we have seen a significant reduction in the number of women prisoners in the past three to four years. There will always be some women in prison, but the figures have gone down significantly. In addition, as we are talking about housing, four of the housing specialists that we have put into prisons are specifically in women’s prisons, so they are acutely aware of the particular needs of women prisoners. They are in Styal, Bronzefield, Peterborough and New Hall.

[Baroness Sater (Con)]

My Lords, we know that, sadly, a large number of women in prison were victims of domestic abuse before they started their sentence. This makes leaving to live in safe and secure housing vitally important—but equally important is psychological support. What are the Government doing to ensure that specialist mental health support and mentoring are available for all women leaving prison for as long as they need it?

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, this is obviously a very important issue. We have tried to join up the dots between the Prison Service and the NHS. The problem in the past was that women left prison, and the NHS did not know about them; the Prison Service had, so to speak, passed them on to nobody. The GP is the best way in which to access mental health support, in particular, in the community. Therefore, we are working with the Prison Service to make sure that the links between the Prison Service and the NHS are stronger and better.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister in answer to my noble friend’s question said that his vision was that no women prisoners should be homeless. We have seen from the questions of noble Lords, and from the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, my former colleague, the breadth of the problems that women prisoners face when they come out of prison. Can the Minister say something about how he will monitor the impact of the Government’s policy to see that this integrated support, which is the only way in which to prevent reoffending, is actually working?

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, integrated support is absolutely key—I agree with the noble Lord on that. We have done a number of things; we have set up a scheme to offer 12 weeks’ accommodation to prison leavers with support to move to settled housing and, by 2024-25, we will be investing £200 million per year to transform our approach to rehabilitation. But of course we need to be held to account on this, and we hold the Prison Service to account on this. We publish data, and the data is meant to be clear and transparent. There has been an improvement in the figures, and I want to see them improve even more.

[Lord Singh of Wimbledon (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as head of the Sikh prison chaplaincy service. Prison chaplains can play an important role in rehabilitation. Does the Minister agree that smaller faiths should have the same access to prisoners, in education, pastoral care and so on, as the larger faiths?

[Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)]

My Lords, I disagree with the noble Lord only on one point, when he said that prison chaplains can play an important role for prisoners, including in rehabilitation. I think that underestimates the point; I would say that prison chaplains can play a crucial and fundamental role in prison life, in and outside prison. As to smaller faiths, maybe I should declare my interest, because I agree.

Mental Health Services for Rough Sleepers

Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

Question

14:49

Asked by

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the effectiveness of the £30 million programme to provide specialist mental health services for people sleeping rough, as detailed in the NHS Long Term Plan; and what plans they have to publish an evaluation of the outcomes of that programme.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord Kamall) (Con)]

This Government are committed to ending rough sleeping by the end of this Parliament. The long-term plan set a target of 20 high-need areas to receive new specialist mental health provision for people sleeping rough by 2023-24. In fact, the NHS has exceeded that target, with 23 sites. There are plans to share learning from these sites to identify the key successes and effective approaches, and NHS England plans to undertake a formal evaluation before the end of the programme.

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin (CB)]

I thank the Minister for that Answer and look forward very much to the publication of that work. We know that common mental health conditions are twice as high among people who have experienced homelessness, and psychosis is 15 times as high. Obviously, I commend the Government’s commitment to end rough sleeping. Does the Minister know what figure has been settled on for the number of people sleeping rough with specialist mental health services needs? If one has been settled on, is that the criterion that will be used to review progress with the NHS long-term plan when that is refreshed?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her Question and for her continued conversations with me on a number of different health-related issues; I am learning quite a lot from those. I understand that the data will be collected at some point, and I hope that that will be done regularly. If the noble Baroness will allow me, I write to her with more details, but I know that the top-level answer to that question is that we are about to get the data.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, about two-thirds of people who are homeless cite alcohol misuse as one of the reasons that first made them homeless, and for about one in 10 people who die homeless, alcohol is the main cause of death. Can the Minister assure us that all this work will include a proper alcohol treatment programme, so that the underlying problems are dealt with in addition to the other mental health problems?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The noble Baroness makes the very important point that a number of people who are homeless suffer from alcoholism and alcohol abuse—and indeed drug abuse. For some of these people, the issues they are suffering from are often interrelated. Therefore, in the joined-up thinking we are looking at, charities, civil society organisations and the NHS are making sure that we treat the various symptoms in an integrated way.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, given the success of the Everyone In campaign, through which 15,000 rough sleepers were given accommodation to protect them from Covid, does my noble friend agree that that progress must be maintained? Given that many rough sleepers have mental health issues, can my noble friend say whether the specialist funding for mental health services for rough sleepers will be extended beyond the next two years?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for raising that important point. The new rough sleeping strategy from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities will set out how departments will work together to end rough sleeping. This will build on the recent success to which my noble friend refers to ensure that rough sleeping is prevented in the first instance and responded to when it occurs. We are going to work closely with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and other departments, as well the voluntary and social enterprise sector and others, to make sure that we are all joined up.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, the most common health problems among homeless people are substance abuse, as the Minister just mentioned, and mental health problems; often it is a combination of the two. Given this correlation, can the Minister say what the Government are doing to reconnect addiction services with health services in order to treat homeless people with multiple health problems? Does the Minister agree that specialist addiction services should be jointly commissioned by the NHS and local authorities to ensure full integration?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

Like many other noble Lords, the noble Baroness has raised a very important aspect of this issue. She is absolutely right that people with drug addiction often have physical and mental health needs as well. Mental health problems and trauma are often central to an individual’s dependence on drugs, alcohol or other forms of abuse. As set out in the drugs strategy, we are working with NHS England to ensure that there is joined-up service provision between specialist mental health services and substance misuse services for people with co-occurring issues, including those who are experiencing rough sleeping. We are also going to make sure that the next phase of integrated care system development includes leadership on drugs and alcohol to integrate both physical and mental healthcare and substance misuse services.

[The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)]

My Lords, we now have a guaranteed virtual contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport.

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I commend to the Minister’s attention, if he is not already aware of it, the work of Art and Homelessness International and its 500 or so member organisations. In working with the NHS and local authorities on ways to support people sleeping rough, will Ministers take into account the impressive evidence that enabling them to engage with creative and cultural programmes— I think of The Choir With No Name, Streetwise Opera, Museum of Homelessness and the work of the Booth Centre—leads to improved well-being, resilience, agency and skills and thus to improved prospects for sustaining tenancies and employment?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I am sure we are all grateful that the noble Lord was able to ask his question on this issue. I pay particular tribute to the noble Lord for all his work and for raising awareness of the creative sector across a whole range of health and social care issues. I am not aware of the projects to which he refers, so I will be happy if he writes to me about them. In a previous political career as a Member of the European Parliament for London, I would meet lots of civil society organisations right across London, including homeless projects, and I was amazed by the diversity of provision. It was not a simple matter: they were tackling a number of different issues because often, the needs of homeless people are complex and there is not just one simple solution to the issue.

[Baroness Manzoor (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend will know that the people who are still sleeping rough after a year are generally those who started off with mental health problems. What action are the Government taking to prevent people hitting the streets in the first place? Is there a co-ordinated approach with the housing sector?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My noble friend raises the very important issue of prevention. When we look at the causes of homelessness, they are often complex, and we might consider that all of us—including noble Lords, perhaps—are only one or two steps away from homelessness. Someone loses their job, their relationship breaks up and they then lose their home—or it is the other way around: their relationship breaks up and they lose their job, and after a while of relying on a friend’s good will, they stop sleeping on their sofa and they end up homeless. So, it is really important that we understand all the different steps by which people become homeless and make sure not just that they get accommodation but that we tackle the underlying problems that led to them being homeless.

[Baroness Merron (Lab)]

My Lords, with a health audit by Homeless Link showing that some four out of five people experiencing homelessness need support with their mental health, how will the Government ensure that they get the help they need in areas that do not have the necessary specialist mental health services that are being funded through the long-term plan? Further to this, will the Minister commit to a continued expansion of specialist homeless healthcare services throughout the NHS as part of a renewed rough sleeping strategy?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for those questions on what are very important issues. Our plans to transform NHS mental health services as part of the long-term plan include investing an additional £2.3 billion a year by 2023-24, which we think will enable an extra 2 million people in England to access NHS-funded mental health support by 2023-24. On targeting much further down, we are hoping that some of the work we do through community mental health frameworks will give 370,000 adults with serious mental illness greater control over their care and support. We have to look at this in a multifaceted way, and we are looking at psychological therapies, improved physical healthcare, access to employment support, trauma-informed care and support for those with self-harm and substance misuse problems. We announced £30 million to establish these specialist mental health provisions, and we want to learn from those to see what the best way is of rolling out more in the future.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, have the Government carried out an analysis of why there has been a massive increase in the number of people rough sleeping on our streets? What does the analysis say, and what are the Government going to do about it?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

Indeed, in some measures, the number of rough sleepers in every region of England have actually decreased. There were 2,440 people expected to have been sleeping rough on a single night in autumn 2021, which was an eight-year low. We have also seen some of the problems associated with experiencing homelessness, such as suicide, fall, but that is not a sign to get complacent. That is why we want to roll out this programme. We have exceeded the target of 20, and we will continue rolling it out.

Constitutional Reform

Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

Question

15:00

Asked by

[Lord Campbell of Pittenweem]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have for constitutional reform.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con)]

My Lords, the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill, the Judicial Review and Courts Bill and the Elections Bill are in the advanced stages of their passage through Parliament. The Government have consulted on proposals to overhaul the Human Rights Act and replace it with a Bill of Rights. The Government also remain focused on working with devolved Administrations to make sure our system of devolution works effectively for all citizens.

[Lord Campbell of Pittenweem (LD)]

I thank the Minister for that response, but may we take it from the absence of any reference to a presidential system that the suggestion made on 22 January by Mr Rees-Mogg on the “Newsnight” programme will not now be pursued? If so, does the Minister understand that that will come as a great relief since given the verbal damage caused by the Prime Minister over the weekend, think just how much he would cause were he the President.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I think I answered on the first point a few weeks ago in the House. We do not have a presidential system in this country—thank God. We have a constitutional monarchy and our present monarch.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, when will the Government realise that the SNP is not interested in making devolution work effectively but only in the break up of Britain? Are the Government aware that in Scotland—on the right as well as the left—there is growing concern at improper expenditure by the Scottish Government on areas for which they have no responsibility, particularly in preparing for a referendum that no one wants? Why do the British Government not step in and make sure taxpayers’ money is spent properly?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, this is slightly outside my direct brief. Obviously, the Government’s intention is to work with the Administrations that we have and that is why we have pushed forward the work on intergovernmental relations, which has been welcomed in your Lordships’ House. As to the political comments of the noble Lord, I might well agree with some of the things he said. Certainly, a federal approach does not guarantee good government.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, have my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, had a chance to read the latest report from the Constitution Committee called Respect and Co-operation: Building a Stronger Union for the 21^st Century? I declare an interest as a member of that committee. The very positive message of that report was that with our very flexible, uncodified and evolving constitution, we can devise a far better and stronger United Kingdom, possibly more amenable to all the sensible views in Scotland, as well as the other devolved nations, in a way that does not involve getting into the deep quagmire of full constitutional reform, which could take years and achieve little.

[Lord True (Con)]

Yes, my Lords, I think your Lordships’ Constitution Committee makes outstanding contributions to all thinking on constitutional matters. As I indicated in my previous answer, we are seeking approaches to always create good relations—as far as we can—between the different Administrations of these islands. That means good will, and every party has to show that good will.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, the measures that the Minister referred to were for the most part unilateral initiatives on the part of the Government. What has happened to the proposal in the Conservative Party manifesto—and of other parties—for a commission on the constitution, which would involve much wider consultation?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I have indicated previously to your Lordships’ House that the Government are determined to take the various aspects of constitutional consideration forward; I gave the House examples of the different workstreams. I simply do not agree with the noble Lord that there is not cross-party agreement on certain things. For example, the removal of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act was agreed across the House and the principle of it was subject to very extensive consultation and examination.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, as the Minister is aware, there is currently a parliamentary by-election taking place in this House, the result of which is to be declared a week on Wednesday. I have the documents here: we now know that all nine candidates and all 46 voters are Conservatives. If the Minister was an election observer at this election, would he describe it as free and fair?

[Lord True (Con)]

It is certainly a secret ballot. The noble Lord is well known in the House for his assiduous pressing of this point—he almost qualifies as the elder Cato on Carthage—but the system remains enacted by Parliament, and it will remain until Parliament decides otherwise.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, could the Minister tell us who is responsible as Minister for the Constitution? I looked it up this morning on the government website, and it said that Chloe Smith had been the Minister for the Constitution in 2020-21 but gave no successor. She was responsible to a Cabinet Minister, Michael Gove, who was then the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He is now, in whatever his department is called, also Minister for Intergovernmental Relations, and one of his junior Ministers, Kemi Badenoch, is handling the Elections Bill in the Commons, but I cannot quite see who is in charge of the constitution. Perhaps it is the noble Lord, Lord True, himself—in which case, I congratulate him. If so, to which Cabinet Minister does he think he is responsible for discussions and policy on constitutional matters?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, so far as the elements of constitutional policy that remain within the Cabinet Office, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is the responsible Cabinet Minister—and, yes, I report to him as Minister of State. Other aspects of the constitutional brief—for example, policy in relation to the union, elections and local government—lie with my right honourable friend Mr Michael Gove and DLUHC.

[Lord Morris of Aberavon (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Government carry out meaningful consultations with the devolved Governments to reduce conflict in dealing with such matters as the pandemic, and recognise the inadequacy of the Barnett formula for providing for Welsh finances?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I repeat that we seek ongoing friendly and close relations with the devolved Administrations. Indeed, even in this regard, I know that the Secretary of State for Wales and the Minister for Levelling Up, the Union and Constitution met with the commission set up by the Welsh Government on constitutional matters. I can assure the noble and learned Lord that these contacts will continue.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, given that under the Barnett formula, Scotland receives very substantial amounts of taxpayers’ money from the rest of the United Kingdom, why are we not allowed to ask Questions in the Table Office about the huge losses—in ferries, airports and all kinds of weird and wonderful schemes—of hundreds of millions of pounds by the SNP Government? Why are they not accountable for taxpayers’ money in this House?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I cannot answer that question: it is a matter of procedure. As to the Table Office, that is a matter for the House authorities. I agree with my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, that the politics of the current Administration in Scotland leave a lot to be desired. It is notable that the Scottish nationalists do not send Members to your Lordships’ House, so we cannot hold them accountable in this Chamber, which is regrettable.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister referred to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. That Act is a prime example of how, when legislation is made in haste, it creates more problems than it seeks to solve. Does the Minister accept that any further reform of, or changes to, the constitution would benefit from a period of pre-legislative scrutiny? That would at least have the benefit of fully examining both the intended and the unintended consequences.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I certainly think that scrutiny, consideration and listening are important in our affairs—I gave the example of the Human Rights Act and its potential replacement, on which the Government have issued a consultation. Sometimes, it is an exaggeration to say that the Government do not listen or ask.

Trade with the European Union

Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

Question

15:11

Asked by

[Baroness Quin]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what their priorities are for future trade between the United Kingdom and the European Union.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and Department for International Trade (Lord Grimstone of Boscobel) (Con)]

My Lords, Her Majesty’s Government are focused on implementing the trade and co-operation agreement, which is the world’s biggest zero-tariff, zero-quota, free trade agreement. We are making good progress. Teething problems have largely been dealt with, and I am pleased to say that trade flows are stabilising. Where delivery of the agreement needs to be accelerated, we are engaging with the European Commission. We are also helping businesses to trade effectively with Europe, including through one-to-one advice offered by my department’s free to use export support service.

[Baroness Quin (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister will no doubt have seen the recent report published by the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee. It showed how our trade with the EU has declined and how British businesses have had to contend with increased costs, increased paperwork and increased border delays. However, when the Prime Minister announced the trade deal two years ago, he said that there would be no non-tariff barriers. In the light of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, is it not clear that the Prime Minister’s claim was completely untrue?

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, with all due respect, I sometimes feel that perhaps noble Lords hope that these arrangements will not work smoothly. However, I can confirm that we want a positive relationship with the EU and that we want this to be underpinned by trade and, of course, by our shared belief in freedom and democracy.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, if we want these things—and I am quite confident that my noble friend does—would it not be wise to cease making stupid analogies, such as comparing those who, by a narrow majority, voted for Brexit with those who are today laying down their lives for democracy?

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, I of course respect my noble friend’s opinion on that, but it is not something with which I agree.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, the Government have vaunted freeports as one of the benefits of the new EU-UK trading relationship. The owners of P&O, who sacked 800 workers in one go, Emirati-based DP World, has been given the operation of Solent and Thames gateway freeports. The Prime Minister said that we were in a transition. Does the Minister agree that it is regrettable that it is towards an awful, potentially illegal, and unacceptable face of capitalism?

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps it goes without saying that we are deeply concerned about the news from P&O Ferries. Ministers are speaking to the company to try to understand the impact on workers and passengers, and to do all we can to ameliorate it. Speaking personally, having formerly been a chairman of some of Britain’s largest companies, I would never have behaved in the way that P&O has.

[Viscount Waverley (CB)]

My Lords, I declare that I am co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on trade and investment. Judging from the Minister’s previous response, do figures indicate that the UK has aligned its trade interests away from the EU, with businesses calling for a reset along the more advantageous terms that Norway enjoys, such as, for example, the British Chambers of Commerce underlining the impediment of requiring a fiscal representative based in the EU for VAT-related issues? Alongside trade sits investment. Could the Government outline their strategies to strengthen investment flows to and from the European Union specifically?

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Viscount includes a number of points in his question. As Minister for Investment, one of my top priorities is securing increased investment flows with Europe. On trade, I am pleased to say that he is right: over the past two years, there have been noticeable changes in UK trade. Of course, factors associated with the Covid pandemic, global recession and EU exit do not always make it easy to disentangle that, but I am confident that both trade and investment will increase in due course.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, given that the EU committee found that the significant barriers that remain despite the trade and co-operation agreement will particularly affect smaller businesses, what steps are the Government taking to ensure that their trade priorities take these businesses into account?

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, one of the reasons the Government have launched the export support service is to support UK businesses—it turns out that is primarily SMEs—with one-to-one advice on exporting to Europe. They can find all this information in one place. It is working well. There is a good volume of inquiries coming through, but I agree with the noble Lord that we have to do all we can to help SMEs in this important area.

[Lord Udny-Lister (Con)]

My Lords, will the Minister please reassure the House that he is going to take into account Brexit freedoms as part of his negotiations and ensure that we maximise the opportunities in this country?

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, to mark the two-year anniversary of delivering Brexit, the Government have set out new plans to maximise the benefits of Brexit. I mention my right honourable friend the Minister for Brexit Opportunities; I think the House will recognise that this is a subject extremely close to his heart. A Brexit freedoms Bill will be brought forward to end the special status of retained EU law and ensure that it can be more easily amended or removed. This is very much to be welcomed.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, the Department for International Trade did a fantastic job in rolling over the 66 bilateral trade agreements the EU had with other countries. It is now starting to make them bespoke to our country. Does the Minister agree that, with the TCA with the EU, we have the opportunity to build on the agreement we have now? There is a “but”: when does the Minister think we will resolve the issues with the Northern Ireland protocol? The sooner we do, the sooner we can build on the TCA.

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, first, I thank the noble Lord for referring to the hard work being done by officials in the department. As to Northern Ireland, the Government’s absolute priority is to protect stability and the peace process. We believe that there is a deal to be done with the EU that protects the sovereignty of the UK and the integrity of the EU single market. This would deliver the stability that business and communities in Northern Ireland need. I know this is a subject very close to my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary’s heart.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister talks about exports and I am sure he would like to recognise the challenge facing our energy-intensive industries. They are competing internationally on an entirely different playing field, as the cost of their energy is substantially higher than that of their competitors. Will the Minister recognise that and undertake to once again go back to the Chancellor before this week’s Statement to make sure something is done about it?

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, I absolutely recognise the issue that the noble Lord refers to, and we have the energy-intensive industries scheme to help certain industries. This is important, and I believe the longer-term solution is more renewable energy in this country; we are working very hard to achieve that.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, the north-east of England is the region which has had the most trade per head of population with the European Union. It is still largely a manufacturing economy. The chamber of commerce tells us that companies in the region are having real problems with supply chains and levels of bureaucracy.. Has the Minister been to the north-east to discuss with them how to make sure that manufacturing can prosper in future? It feels constrained at the moment.

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

In my capacity as Minister for Investment, I regularly visit the north-east. I am very proud that we are now reindustrialising parts of the north-east which lost their industry some time ago. We should welcome that across the House. The only sustainable levelling up is through the creation of sustainable private sector jobs in regions such as the north-east, and I am pleased that we are making good progress with this.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, a moment ago, when referring to Northern Ireland, the Minister said that there was a deal to be done. I thought we had a deal—one which we negotiated for years. What is this new deal he is talking about?

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, sometimes pragmatism is needed once these agreements are worked through in practice. Pragmatism is now the watchword. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary is making good progress in achieving a pragmatic answer to some of the issues that we all know that we face.

Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Disabled Persons) Bill

1st reading
Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

First Reading

15:21

The Bill was brought from the Commons, read a first time and ordered to be printed.

British Sign Language Bill

1st reading
Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

First Reading

15:22

The Bill was brought from the Commons, read a first time and ordered to be printed.

Subsidy Control Bill

Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

Order of Consideration Motion

15:22

Moved by

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist]

That the amendments for the Report stage be marshalled and considered in the following order: Clauses 1 to 9, Schedules 1 and 2, Clauses 10 to 78, Schedule 3, Clauses 79 to 92, Title.

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Callanan, I beg to move the Motion standing in his name on the Order Paper.

Motion agreed.

European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (Repeal of EU Restrictions in Devolution Legislation, etc.) Regulations 2022

Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

Motion to Approve

15:23

Moved by

[Lord Greenhalgh]

That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 25 January be approved.

Relevant document: 30th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Considered in Grand Committee on 16 March.

Motion agreed.

Energy Performance of Buildings (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

Motion to Approve

15:23

Moved by

[Lord Greenhalgh]

That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 31 January be approved. Considered in Grand Committee on 16 March.

Motion agreed.

Combined Authorities (Borrowing) Regulations 2022

Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

Motion to Approve

15:23

Moved by

[Lord Greenhalgh]

That that the draft Regulations laid before the House on 31 January be approved.

Relevant document: 30th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. Considered in Grand Committee on 16 March.

Motion agreed.

Local Government (Disqualification) Bill

Order of Commitment discharged
Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

Order of Commitment

15:24

Moved by

[Lord Udny-Lister]

That the order of commitment be discharged.

[Lord Udny-Lister (Con)]

My Lords, I understand that no amendments have been set down to this Bill and that no noble Lord has indicated a wish to move a manuscript amendment or to speak in Committee. Unless, therefore, any noble Lord objects, I beg to move that the order of commitment be discharged.

Motion agreed.

Elections Bill

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

Committee (4th Day)

15:24

Relevant documents: 13th Report from the Constitution Committee, 5th Report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights, 21st Report from the Delegated Powers Committee

Clause 1: Voter identification

Debate on whether Clause 1 should stand part of the Bill.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I shall wait for just a minute while those who do not wish to hear my exciting speech absent themselves.

Those who heard the remarkable speech by the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, on Thursday will know that the case for this clause to be included in the Bill is very weak. He said it all, in effect. First, this is an extremely small problem; secondly, it will disfranchise the poorer and more marginalised elements of the electorate; and, thirdly, the larger problems of our electoral system lie elsewhere. The PACAC report, which has been much quoted in Committee so far, states:

“There is very limited evidence of personation at UK elections.”


These proposals represent

“a disproportionate response to a problem that appears not to be widespread.”

Paragraph 96 states:

“Introducing a compulsory voter ID requirement risks upsetting the balance of our current electoral system”—


that is a real constitutional reform in the wrong direction—

“making it more difficult to vote and removing an element of the trust inherent in the current system.”

The more urgent problems facing our electoral system include some things we will discuss later today, such as intimidation, of which I have experience, but above all the missing 8 million to 9 million citizens who are not on our electoral register. The Bill leaves to one side the issue of the incompleteness of our electoral register. As it happened, last week, I turned up in my pile of Cabinet Office publications one from December 2017 entitled Every Voice Matters: Building a Democracy that Works for Everyone, introduced by Chris Skidmore, then the Minister responsible. As we were discussing in Questions, there have been several changes of responsible Ministers since then, which has no doubt contributed to the incoherence of the Bill. Skidmore argued very strongly in that document for citizen engagement, greater participation and a more complete register.

Here is a major weakness in the integrity of our elections. Previous Conservative Ministers thought it important, but the Bill instead chases after other imagined problems—ones that US Republicans also chase for reasons not concerned with election integrity. The Bills that Republican-controlled state legislatures have passed under the title of election integrity have been concerned with pushing people—marginal, poor, black and others—off the register. The Minister will be well aware of the wide suspicion of the degree of Republican infiltration of the Conservative Party and of Conservative imitation of right-wing Republican enthusiasms and campaigns, most recently illustrated in the remarkable and awful speech which the chairman of the Conservative Party gave to the Heritage Foundation only two weeks ago.

Perhaps the Minister would like to argue that the absence of evidence of a serious current problem should not deter us from turning to the precautionary principle—introducing this in case there turns out to be a larger problem in future than there was—but he has told us that he does not accept the precautionary principle. After all, it is a European principle disliked by all true Anglo-Saxons.

The cost of introducing voter ID across the entire electorate could instead be spent on citizen education and engagement, to encourage more young people to play an active role in our electoral system and its campaigns. We could experiment with moves towards automatic registration—that is, automatic entry on to the register, which we will discuss later in Committee.

15:30

Last week, the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, remarked that voting was a right, not a privilege. Everyone should be on the register. It is not something that you might care to volunteer for if you wish, and it is easier if you are middle-class and educated. Years of Conservative resistance to ID cards have been swept away by the demand that there should be compulsory photo ID; I remind the Minister that the idea of photo ID was not on page 48 of the Conservative Party’s 2019 manifesto. However, if the Minister were perhaps to persuade his colleagues to change the Government’s approach to ID as a whole, it would fit, as others have discussed, with the way in which other nations manage their elections. Having no formal ID card means that voting rights should not be limited by a requirement for particular ID.

I am reminded of the occasion when I was in the Minister’s place during the coalition Government. I found myself saying to a Cabinet Minister, “You may feel deeply committed to this clause but, unless you can find a better rationale for it, it will never get through the Lords”. I feel that the Minister has not yet provided us with an adequate rationale for this clause and, on that basis, I hope that it will not get through the House of Lords.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, and agree with everything he said; that is hardly surprising, of course, because I have added my name to the list of those opposing the Question that Clause 1 and, effectively, Schedule 1 should stand part of the Bill.

The noble Lord put it so well: compulsory voter ID, and in particular photo ID—this needs to be teased out a little—is a solution looking for a problem. It is a bit like compulsory ID before it but, again, as the noble Lord pointed out, there would be a greater logic—it was a position that I opposed for many years, along with many others in this Committee, in your Lordships’ House and in political life, particularly to the centre-right of politics—in the current Government’s position if, when in opposition, they had not been so opposed to the notion of compulsory identification and compulsory photo identification for their citizens. Pretty much every argument that was put against compulsory ID, particularly the more libertarian arguments about this being a country of free-born people who should not need to identify themselves before the exercise of the most fundamental rights and freedoms, applies here. I am afraid that it leaves many people in this country very concerned about the true motivation behind this policy at this time.

This is the clause stand part debate so, necessarily, it reintroduces some of the points that were made in previous sessions of this Committee in relation to various amendments to do with public cost, private cost and various aspects of the argument against.

Once more, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, has pointed out, this is a solution looking for a problem, compared with other solutions that are, some would argue, quite urgently required in relation to real problems, such as voter intimidation and the oppression of some women, in particular, including within their families. That point was at least intimated by the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, when we last met. She is not in her place, but her noble friend Lady Noakes is in hers, and I think there was a consensus in the Committee that there are issues there about women, in particular, in certain families and perhaps in certain communities, and that there is work that could be done there.

It would involve some public expense to really empower some of those women, to be sure that they felt truly liberated and empowered to exercise their vote truly independently. But this is not an issue of proof of identification; it is a much more holistic problem of the way in which they live and, perhaps, their lack of support and a certain level of alienation from wider society. The problem could be addressed in many ways with some of the resources which, as we said last time, will instead be diverted towards this untested, new, radical requirement of compulsory photo ID, and all that comes with it.

We have a problem already. I think it was broadly agreed, by consensus, in Committee last time that there are nowhere near as many people registered as there could be, and should be, for them to have at least the potential to exercise the right to vote. We could be using public resources to have truly cross-party, non-party voter registration campaigns. Unfortunately, the noble Lord, Lord Woolley of Woodford, cannot join us today—he is detained in Cambridge with his students—but he spoke last time about the importance of such campaigns for voter registration. Resources could have been targeted towards that, rather than this.

Some of us have argued, and will argue on later groups, that we should really be moving towards automatic voter registration, as happens with automatic registration for taxation. Why is it that in this country we are capable of automatically registering people for taxation purposes on their 18th birthday—quite rightly, in my view, because that is not only a right but a duty, and it is an ethical duty, at the very least, to think about voting—but we cannot do that for the purposes of representation and voting? That would no doubt cost some money, at least. But we are spending the money on this, the Government’s intention, and not on that.

There are general levels of disengagement and disenchantment, in some communities more than others. There are so many things we could be doing there to engage people in civil society, political parties and voting. Some of that could be done quite creatively, and some resources would no doubt be involved. But we are not choosing to do that; we are choosing to do this instead. I would argue, as I have done all my adult life, that there is still insufficient constitutional and political literacy in our mature democracy. Yes, that is more the case among some groups than others, and it would take some resources to engage in that kind of voter and citizenship education—not just among school-age children but among new migrants, including refugees who come to our country. There is so much more we could be doing with the resources, but we are choosing—or at least, the Government are currently proposing—to employ resources on this compulsory ID instead of on that.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, that this is an expensive solution looking for a problem. Worse than that, it will do more harm to our democracy than any possible good. It is not unusual, when the precautionary principle is used to justify everything from detention without charge to compulsory ID, that we end up with a policy and a law liable to do more harm than good. Whether by accident or design, what some of us fear in this case is nothing short of voter suppression, or at least voter discouragement, on a level that is not what we need at this moment, nearly a quarter of the way into the 21st century, after some really difficult years in a very divided country. Whichever side people were on in the referendum campaign, with suspicions of interference in elections by foreign powers—including foreign powers now tempting people possibly into another great European war—and during the difficult times of the pandemic and the difficult times now, with yet another refugee crisis, this is not the moment even to whisper a policy, let alone to legislate for one, that will lead people to feel that we are going in for a period of voter suppression.

We do not want to go down the American road on this. There are wonderful things that come from the United States. Many of us who are constitutional lawyers have, when studying, looked in admiration to many aspects of American notions of citizenship, but we should avoid voter suppression or putting hoops in people’s way, particularly those from more vulnerable communities, whether they are more recently arrived Britons, minority groups, the disabled or poor people. Putting any hurdle in the way of registration and voting will smack of voter suppression, whatever the true intentions. Clause 1, married with Schedule 1, makes the photo aspect compulsory, and it is that which I have a principled objection to, and would have whichever party was in government and whichever party was proposing it.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

Given that the noble Baroness has a principled objection to the introduction of photo ID, why is photo ID used in Labour Party selection meetings?

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My noble friends, who have more experience of being selected to stand for elected office in the Labour Party are muttering that it is not—

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

It is an option.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am being told that it is an option. Perhaps my noble friends can speak of what they know and I do not.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

Perhaps I may clarify, as this has come up before. When you go to selection meetings you are asked to take a membership card in case anyone wants to check it, but it is not compulsory. I have never had my card checked.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I should say, for the record, that I have never stood for election to a parish council or a PTA committee, let alone to high elected office. I should say that with some embarrassment, given that I am in this revising Chamber, but being a member of a political party is a privilege. It is based on a shared understanding of more than just the broader values of a political project, whereas to be a citizen entitled to vote is a fundamental right, and that is the distinction. It is also a distinction with various commercial transactions, which we understand require a certain element of identification. I would be more persuaded by the point that the noble Lord is making by his probing if we had heard, in response to some hours of debate on previous occasions, evidence of a significant problem with identity fraud in our elections.

As with many things in life, there is a balance of risk to be judged here. The noble Lord, Lord Woolley of Woodford, who is unable to be here today, pointed out the one conviction for voter identity fraud. That is not enough evidence to introduce this level of hurdle, hoop or requirement when balanced against the research that has been ventilated in this Committee and that has been sent to all Peers about the likely outcomes of putting further obstacles, hurdles or disincentives to register in people’s way.

15:45

This comes at a time when we are going into a fuel crisis, and for some people a food crisis. People have all sorts of things to cope with on their minds. Even if free ID will be available and very easy to get, as we are invited to believe by the Ministers, even that one further administrative application will be one too many for many people. That is what the research suggests. It is about the balance of risk. I suggest that the right to vote and to be included in this political community is too fundamental and precious for that risk to be engaged in such a blasé fashion by any Government.

I will say one final thing about this. We are in the heat of party politics when we are talking about prospective elections and say that any party would be suspicious of the other party’s motives. I am on these Benches, but I opposed the Labour Party’s policy on compulsory ID cards for many years because I thought it was wrong. I ask Members of the Committee to accept that I would be against this kind of compulsory identification even if it was proposed by my own party. I hope I have a reasonable enough track record on these fundamental civil liberties.

The balance of risk has not been made out. There is too much to lose for too many people at too difficult and divided a time. With the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, and others who have added their names, including the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, who I think is also unable to be here, I say that Clause 1 should not stand part, given everything else we could be doing in the Bill.

[Lord Woodley (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree that Clause 1 should be struck from the Bill, if the Bill itself is not withdrawn. The clause is a dangerous solution to a problem that, as has been said, does not even exist. Requiring photo ID to vote will not strengthen democracy; it will weaken it. There is no doubt in my mind about that. It will damage the democratic rights of millions, disproportionately disfranchising poorer and ethnic minority voters, who, as we know, tend to lean towards Labour in elections.

There is no evidence that voter personation, which is what the clause is supposed to tackle, is a problem in this country. On the contrary, in 2020 there were just 139 allegations of voter fraud, which led to one conviction and one caution for personation. In 2019, although there were local, European and general elections, there was again just one conviction for personation out of 60 million votes—no problem there, then.

If this was not so serious it would be laughable. I am somewhat sceptical. It is not a coincidence that this Tory scheme for voter ID to suppress working-class voters is a mirror image of what has been done to black, Latino and American workers by the Republicans, as has been said. You would almost think that the ruling class was organising across the Atlantic to change the rules of the game itself. Surely not.

It is important to highlight the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee’s warning that Clause 1

“risks upsetting the balance of our current electoral system, making it more difficult to vote and removing an element of the trust inherent in the current system.”

We should not forget that.

Then, of course, there is the financial cost of compulsory voter ID: £120 million over 10 years according to the Cabinet Office. No election in British history has ever been undermined by mass fraud, so why are the Government spending millions of pounds to fix a problem that does not exist?

I believe the answer may simply be that the Government are worried that many working-class voters are starting to realise they were hoodwinked at the last election. Workers and their families are watching this Government take decision after decision that make the very rich richer while the rest of society is squeezed dry by the escalating cost of living crisis that we are confronted with now.

The Government’s total capitulation to the big energy firms has led to eye-watering bills that are rising higher and higher. The national insurance hike next month is a tax on jobs that will hammer the working poor most of all. Real-terms cuts to social security are driving millions into despair and destitution. All this pain and misery is against a backdrop of rampant inflation and crony Covid contracts for the chums of the Prime Minister, who mostly, in my view, likes to party.

Workers are waking up to the Government’s ideological assault on trade unions, the last line of defence against the bad bosses and a system that has attacked them, including this very Bill, especially Clause 27 on gagging trade unions, which we debated last week. Let us look at the Government’s much-hyped Employment Bill. I repeat: let us look at the Government’s much-hyped Employment Bill—except we cannot. It is nowhere to be seen, despite the manifesto pledge to

“make the UK the best place in the world to work.”

It would be scandalous if this promised legislation was again absent from the forthcoming gracious Address. Perhaps, the Minister would like to share his thoughts with us all on this subject.

Faced with the reality that the Tory party is not on their side, many workers and their families who lent the Prime Minister their vote to get Brexit done now want their vote back. This Bill as a whole, and especially Clause 1, looks like a blatant attempt to limit the damage this will cause the Conservatives at the next election.

In this place, we are privileged to play a key role by helping to improve legislation and holding the Government to account. We would not be doing our job properly if we did not challenge bad Bills, and this is a very bad Bill indeed. The Minister will deny it, but Clause 1 is a key component of a backwards, Trumpian attempt to rig democracy in favour of the Tories. That is why I support the cross-party call by my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti and others to strike it out. I urge the whole House to do exactly the same.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I support this proposal that the clause stand part but I have some caveats. A high-profile Guardian commentator alleged:

“The Tories are introducing voter ID purely because they know the people lacking relevant ID are most likely to vote Labour, and they want to prevent them from voting.”


One Labour MP described it as

“a cynical and ugly attempt to rig the system to disempower the poorest and most marginalised.”

I do not believe that at all. It seems to me those arguments—we have heard some here—are concrete evidence that cranky, conspiratorial thinking is alive and well across left and right. I am not convinced that this is a Trumpian plot, an attempt by the Republican Party to take over the Conservatives or anything else. The view that everything is a sinister international plot—and goodness knows I see a lot of that on social media—is itself in danger of fuelling a cynicism and nihilistic distrust in institutions and politics. We should not necessarily resort to it to oppose voter ID. I do not think we need to.

I am prepared to take at face value that the Conservative Government are trying to fulfil their manifesto pledge to tackle potential voter fraud. There certainly has been concern about it although, as it happens, that has largely been confined to postal votes, which are being dealt with separately. But even if I take it in good faith that they are trying to shore up trust in the electoral system, my big problem is that voter ID is a wrongheaded way of doing it; it is likely to backfire and stoke up mistrust.

Let me explain a few of those points. The voting system in Britain is the outcome of centuries of struggle and civic engagement, and often, indeed, class struggle. The degree of trust that allows us as a country to allow citizens to vote on the basis of just showing up and giving their name—it is as simple as that—is a real success story. That is something that the Government and all of us should be proud of and celebrate; and—guess what—there is no evidence that it has been subverted in any way. We should have the same pride that we do not live in a “produce your papers” society, based on constant official checks by authorities. It is important to maintain that distinction between citizens and the state.

That is why so many of us campaigned against ID cards in general when the Labour Party tried to bring them in, and more recently balked at vaccine passports pushed by the Government and backed by the Opposition. Even fully vaccinated enthusiasts for the jab such as myself worried that saying, “You have to show your papers”, was an egregious, divisive encouragement to look at one’s fellow citizens with suspicion. We are now talking about showing your papers when you go to vote. General ID cards are a barrier to being able to go freely about our business, while voter ID is a barrier to being able to vote freely. In that context, voter ID is not just a technical matter; no matter what method is used, it creates obstacles to voting.

I do not think that it will lead to mass disfranchisement and, to be honest, I find it slightly awkward when people say that poorer people and the marginalised will not be able to cope with filling in the forms or getting the ID; that is potentially rather patronising and is not our objection. Let us imagine what it will do to a bond of trust, however, if you go along to vote and witness numerous people being turned away from polling stations; we know that people will be turned away because we have seen pilot schemes in which that has happened. Surely that would put a question mark over those electors, as though they were somehow a bit dodgy, when in fact they have just got the wrong paperwork.

Then there are other kind of nightmare scenarios that I dread. There just needs to be a handful of officious, jobsworth local officials overzealously treating people as though they are would-be cheats with the paperwork, and chaos will ensue. Anyone who has had to go to a government department and deal with the paperwork will know that that is all completely feasible. What is more, the more the Government double down on this—I do not understand why they are doing so— the more they send the message that the voting system itself is a major problem. It gives the misleading impression that large-scale fraud is going on that needs to be tackled, which is just so negative. In fact, as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, pointed out, there are positive ways of talking about engaging voters rather than this negative view that somehow we have to stop all those people who are trying to sneak in and cheat.

Democracy is based on trust. At its heart lies the belief that all people should be treated equally at the ballot box regardless of any social or educational inequality. Your status is irrelevant when you get to that polling booth. The most lowly person is equal to the highest person in the land—every vote is equal. That is based on the belief that everyone can be trusted to decide on the future direction of society and to vote in good faith. That is what democracy is all about.

When a very few bad apples—maybe only one, according to the evidence—become the focus for a Government to reorganise the election practice, or when there is a greater problem of distrusting democracy and democratic institutions, which I talked about at Second Reading, it is a bigger problem, but I do not think that this solves it. When that bigger problem of distrust in democratic institutions is narrowed down to take the form of a managerial, bureaucratic solution, I fear that democracy itself will be damaged. I fear that it will fuel only a climate in which future election results will be open to suspicion and in which the integrity of the system is undermined. However, I appeal to those people who agree in principle with this to avoid cheap sectarianism in making their case.

16:00

[Lord Desai (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I have been somewhat orthogonal to this whole debate for a long time. I feel that whether Clause 1 stands part or not is neither here nor there—but there is an important point here. If voting is my right, it is the Government’s duty to deliver the instruments that will make it easy for me to vote. I should not have to go out there and register; the Government ought to be at my door, knowing that I have attained the appropriate age of 18, or whatever it is nowadays, to register me and give me my identity card. I do not know what the fuss is about. Why do we put the burden on the voter all the time? We really ought to make it easy for the voter to vote.

As I have said before, at Second Reading, we should not even have to go to the voting booth to vote; people should be able to vote on their smartphones, as long as it is a valid, encrypted method.

I am not at all worried that the great unwashed and coloured people like me will not be able to handle literacy. That is not the point. The point is that the Government are not doing enough on their own to make good and allay the fears they have that lots of people are going to cheat.

It is very simple. As I have said before in your Lordships’ House, in India they have 900 million-plus voters, and everyone has an identity card. I do not know what the fuss is about. It is not expensive and it is very convenient. After all, when people go out, they have their debit card, and they can give their phone to identify themselves, and so on.

My grandchildren laugh about our system of voting, because it is a very old-fashioned system. I do not think that is anything to be proud of: it is a voting system that puts all the burden on the voter and none on the Government. Whether or not Clause 1 stands part is another matter, but if the Government want identity cards to be introduced, they should introduce them and provide them, and they should make it easy for people to vote.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I hope that I have displayed to the Committee an independence of spirit on certain parts of this Bill, including in my comments on this clause stand part debate previously, but I am absolutely 100% behind the Government in introducing photo ID. It is for the reasons that the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, touched on, and actually for the reason that the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, accidentally touched on last week—and I am pleased that he is here. He raised the question twice in relation to the last general election, about the uncertainty of our democratic institutions.

If one looks at the surveys undertaken by the Electoral Commission, there is serious doubt about the validity of the ballots that take place, persistently. The trials that were undertaken, and then followed up by research thereafter, showed that there was a marked—

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am so sorry to interrupt mid-sentence; it was just due to my hesitation. In the moments which follow, will the noble Lord give some thought to, and reflect on, his comment that there has been some serious doubt about our recent polls? That is quite a serious thing for anyone to say in this House. It may just be a question of rephrasing that point. For the reasons given by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, it is quite serious to now suggest, at this moment in 2022, that there is serious doubt over recent elections. We have had some pretty seismic elections and electoral results in recent years, and it is serious for a noble Lord of any party to suggest in this Chamber that there is serious doubt about the validity of those polls. That may not have been the noble Lord’s intention, but he might want to clarify this.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I did not say those polls, I said some polls. In fact, the noble Baroness actually referred to the disagreement in society in relation to the EU referendum and the closeness of that result. It was that, and others, to which I am referring. Clearly, the noble Baroness has not actually read the Electoral Commission report and the research undertaken associated with the trial ballots which took place in a number of locations in 2018 and 2019. Had she done so, she would have seen that there was serious concern among large parts of the electorate—not a majority—about the validity of the voting process. The noble Baroness is looking at me somewhat quizzically. I suggest that she actually reads the report.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

It is just my mask which makes me look suspicious.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

In which case, I apologise for misinterpreting the noble Baroness’s expression below her mask.

If noble Lords look at the most recent poll undertaken by the Electoral Commission, it is striking that concern about recent ballots and votes diminished quite markedly, despite the fact that there had been no change in electoral law. It is my contention that one reason for this is that we are moving further away from the Brexit vote, which generated large concerns among large numbers of people about the validity of certain votes.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

Has not the noble Lord just undermined his own argument, then? If things are moving in the right direction, with what problem is this legislation seeking to deal?

In addition, the noble Lord said that we have not read the report—I have read the report. There is a huge difference between an expression of concern and evidence of concern. If we sought to change the law of the land for everything about which people expressed concern when responding to opinion polls and surveys, this House would never stop sitting. The issue is evidence of concern. What evidence of concern—beyond that which has already been indicated to the Committee and which is extremely limited—can the noble Lord point to?

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

The noble Lord is misinterpreting the data within those datasets and what the Electoral Commission and an individual research team undertook to do. They were trying to establish the level of concern. Had the noble Lord allowed me to continue for a few more sentences, I would have identified why I am concerned about that. It is not about a particular election; it is about when elections or referendums become close and contentious.

I speak here as a remainer—I was not a Brexiteer. When a referendum, or some form of ballot, becomes both close and contentious, the way in which the ballots have been conducted comes out as a matter of concern. As a result, it is precisely for those reasons that I am concerned that we should have certainty and security in the process.

I do not regard it as a process of voter suppression. President Trump—or Donald Trump, whatever you like to call him—had a basis of foundation for his arguments against the result at the last presidential election because there were uncertainties about the way in which it was conducted. As far as I am concerned, I want to see certainty in this country.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

In my Second Reading speech, I said that I recognised the sense in which we have a problem of people withholding loser’s consent. I made the point that that was one of the problems we had in America with Donald Trump withholding it. Loser’s consent is a fundamental part of democracy. For many years following the referendum result, there was a substantial number of people who wanted to withhold loser’s consent for a majoritarian vote. That is complicated and there is a political issue going on about why people no longer accept that.

My argument—and this is what I want to ask the noble Lord—is that it is not a technical matter. It has absolutely nothing to do with impersonation. Nobody accused anyone of impersonating anyone. All sorts of accusations have flown but not that one in the UK. Therefore, does this technical way of trying to tackle a problem imply that there is a big problem of impersonation when there is not and therefore fuel the very sentiments that we are trying to reassure people around? It just does not make any sense as a way of dealing with a problem that I agree exists.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her intervention. She and I clearly recognise that there is a problem and there are different problems and you can tackle them in different ways. I happen to believe that photo ID is a way of tackling the issue.

Unfortunately, the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, is not present. I was present on the Select Committee when he gave evidence. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, was also present but, unfortunately, he clearly is not able to be here today. The noble Lord, Lord Woolley, dealt with issues way beyond the question of voter registration and voter ID when he gave evidence to the Select Committee. It was an incredibly powerful submission then and it was last week in his contribution here. He was essentially talking about alienation from society in a much broader sense, and I recognise that. I live in the ward which I think has the largest proportion of voters of west African origin of any ward in the country—Camberwell Green. In Camberwell Green, if you want to collect a package from the Post Office—and I did last week—you are required to produce one of six items of ID, four of which are photo ID, two of which are not and one of those I do not think anybody would use in this day and age. In terms of general—

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for giving way. He spoke about the alienation of voters and earlier he spoke about the validity of the process. Does he agree that concern about that validity of the process surely reflects the fact that people look at the composition of the other place—or, indeed, this place—and feel like it does not represent them? They maybe even know that 44% of votes went to the Tories and they got 100% of the power in the other place. People’s deep feeling of alienation and lack of validity does not relate to voter ID; it is much more deep-seated.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I agree with the noble Baroness, but I am not sure that it is specifically or solely related to this particular Bill. There are much broader issues on paths down which I will not go at this stage. I see it on a daily basis. I see it from where I came this afternoon to be in this Chamber.

There have been references to the question of personation and the quantities of that. The police have not pursued personation in some cases. I refer here to Richard Mawrey QC’s judgment in the petitions in relation to Tower Hamlets. He refers to a former Labour councillor, Mr Kabir Ahmed, and I quote from paragraph 326 in his report:

“Applying the statutory test of residence set out above, I am quite satisfied that 326a Bethnal Green Road was not such a ‘residence’ as would entitle Mr Ahmed to be registered to vote from that address”.


That is part of the judgment of an elections court. The police did not pursue it. I am not arguing that there are large numbers of cases, but there are far more cases than are being cited. The police, for a number of different reasons, do not pursue them.

Equally, as I cited in passing at Second Reading, the Electoral Commission makes it difficult to access electoral rolls. If you are going to be able to produce proof of false registration—that is, personation—you have to refer to past electoral rolls. However, the Electoral Commission has quite specifically said that EROs

“should not provide access to any register other than the current register”,

so that makes it very difficult indeed for people to prove personation.

16:15

I intervened on the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and when I did so, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, responded from the Dispatch Box; I noticed that the noble Lord, Lord Collins, did not reply. I have a feeling that the noble Lord, Lord Collins, knows more than he will admit. The noble Lord has referred on previous occasions to his former role as general secretary of the Labour Party.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I was only giving my personal experience.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I appreciate that correction from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman.

But the concentration has been on the problems associated with certain social groups. It was said earlier that it is not necessarily the case that certain groups can or cannot participate in one form or another. The Liberal Democrats will point out that this is a failing of our first-past-the-post system, but selection meetings held by political parties in many constituencies are, in effect, choosing the Member of Parliament. For the selection of the Labour Party candidate for Poplar and Limehouse at the last election, the note that Apsana Begum sent to party members said, “Bring photo ID”. That is a specific instruction. It goes on to say,

“Bring your membership card or another proof of address”—


in other words, at her selection, you had to produce two forms of ID: one photo ID and one proof of address.

You can go on the web for other examples. One of the most racially diverse constituencies in the country—the reason that the noble Lord, Lord Collins, may be aware of this is that it is right next door to his borough—is Tottenham. Again, I quote from the web: for the Haringey shortlisting and selection meetings in 2018, people were told,

“You need to bring ID”.


They were told to bring proof of address—a utility bill or council tax bill—and named photo ID. The types of accepted photo ID were identified as a passport, driver’s licence, et cetera. I willingly give way to the noble Baroness.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way again. I understand where he is going: he is drawing analogies with a number of other situations in our country where photo ID is being required, either in law or in practice. Earlier, before everyone started intervening on him and he very graciously gave way, he gave the example of having to prove that you are the person associated with a package when you go to collect it at the Post Office. I could go further and say that if I am going to take money out of a hole in the wall, I will be required to demonstrate that it is me who is entitled to access that bank account, as otherwise someone else could steal my money. But he must surely understand the distinction between my right to specific property and millions of people’s right to go and vote. We could go back to a system where everyone just has some indelible ink put on their finger once they have voted. There is not the same degree of risk of theft and impersonation with universal suffrage as there is with people’s property—whether it is their cash property in the bank or whether it is with their pass.

On the Tower Hamlets example, I know that at one stage the Labour membership amounted to the biggest political membership in western Europe. I do not know the position at the moment, but the noble Lord would concede, would he not, that most people in the country are still not members of the Labour Party and, therefore, in a very contested and slightly toxic selection, people might get very anxious about whether people are actually members of the Labour Party. Therefore, it becomes much closer to the property example than to universal suffrage, does it not?

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

On the noble Baroness’s first intervention, I knew that people would raise objections. I was citing the Camberwell Post Office example as an indication of the fact that people now live with producing ID, including photo ID. She cannot get away from the fact that a series of selection meetings within the Labour Party, which will be choosing the councillors and the Members of Parliament, actually require not one but two forms of ID, one of which is photo ID. If it is so impossible to produce a photo ID to vote at a polling station, how come it is acceptable to require people to produce photo ID at a selection meeting of the Labour Party, which, in the case of Poplar and Limehouse, was almost certain to produce the new Member of Parliament for that constituency? Haringey Labour Party uses the phrase

“each of the wards at the selection which required photo ID will take place.”

I am quite willing to give the noble Baroness a copy of this, although she can go on the web, search “Haringey Labour Party” and she will find it.

[The Lord Bishop of Leeds]

What I am struggling to understand is this. There is a fundamental difference between belonging to an organisation—be it any political party—to which you opt to belong and for which you might be expected to provide ID, and being able to vote as a citizen of the country. Those are totally different things.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

The right reverend Prelate identifies the difference, but I have drawn the parallel, and it is a parallel, between selecting an MP at a constituency meeting and selecting them at a polling station.

As far as the process is concerned, I conclude with a final question, which I put to the Labour Front Bench. I have quoted from documents regarding the requirement to produce photo ID to select an MP. I ask whichever of the noble Lord, Lord Collins, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, replies to the debate to address this question. I have cited cases where people have been required to produce two forms of ID. Can the Labour Party please say whether, on occasion, at selection meetings they have actually required three forms of ID, two of which were photo and one was the address?

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Has the noble Lord finished? I am sure my noble friend will deal with his query, which has been dealt with thoroughly already. The Labour Party is a voluntary organisation which you can choose to be in or not, and if you choose to, you abide by the rules thereof—rules that are democratically determined within the party itself. It is totally different, as the right reverend Prelate pointed out, from a clear right to vote, which should apply to everyone, irrespective of the degree to which they wish to become involved in daily politics, which is of course a matter of choice.

I wanted to speak now because I did not quite understand what it was that the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, did not understand about my previous intervention on this subject. I shall not discuss any individual details, because we have sundry debates on those coming up. The silence of the Government Front Bench on two or three issues in the whole of this discussion seems to have permeated the Back Benches as well. One of the crucial questions for me is whether the Tory party, which is investing an awful lot of time and effort in the Bill—and money; £180 million at least and rising—is doing so on the basis that somehow, we should be disturbed by the result of the last general election, which, I sadly remind everyone, it won with an 80-seat majority.

The Government are saying—by their actions, if not by their words—that the election is a bit dubious, a bit dodgy. Every contribution from that side is more or less implying just that. If it is not dodgy at a global level—the 80-seat majority—it must surely be dodgy in respect of a number of individual constituencies. So, I would like to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, who is an expert on these things, which of the 650 constituencies he thinks should probably be declared invalid on the basis of serious doubts and misgivings about the authenticity of the voters in those constituencies?

Having fought numerous elections and, on one occasion, having won by 360-odd votes in an electorate of 90,000, I can only say to the noble Lord and to all those who say that people do not accept our election results because the system is first past the post, that no one in the ballots in individual constituencies argues for a moment with the idea that the person who was first past the post was the winner and should be declared the winner, even if it was by a short head. But the point I am making now is that no one contested that result. My opponent, to his credit, although he called for a couple of recounts, did not doubt the validity of the result any more than I did when, prior to that, I lost by rather more, it must be said—by 1,500. Likewise, I did not contest the result.

I really do want to know the answer to this, because we are in a very odd situation. You would think we would be on different sides of the argument. You would expect the Opposition to be saying that they were really worried about the last election result and that it looked very dodgy that the Tories got an 80-seat majority, with the Government saying that it was the finest election they have ever been privileged to take part in. But in this Alice in Wonderland world, it is the Government who are raising serious questions about the validity of the election result. So, I repeat that point, which is hanging in the air, and if the Minister would share with the House his deep anxieties about the last general election, I would like to hear them.

I would also like to hear from the Minister precisely what the Government’s estimate is of the effect on voter participation of the proposals in Part 1 of the Bill, which introduce a substantial new requirement for people to exercise their right to vote. This is the biggest change in the electoral requirements in my lifetime. I suppose the voting age has changed and there have been other changes of that sort, but this is a substantial one that says to electors that what they have done in the past is not good enough and there are too many risks associated with it, so they must jump over these additional hurdles.

Our contention—I say ours, but I think it is a pretty broad contention—is that the one thing you can be sure of is that introducing a brand-new requirement such as this will have a completely neutral effect on election turnout, which, I remind the House, has been going down rather badly, certainly since I first started fighting elections. I looked up the figures for a few—1970 was the first one I fought. In February 1974, the turnout was 79% and for the last five or six elections, it has been down in the 60s. That is bad news for anyone who cares about democracy. I was proud of the fact that we used to beat lots of other countries substantially on turnout at major elections. That is no longer the case. It is not credible to say that this big change in voting requirements for voters will have no impact whatsoever on turnout. I will give the Minister three options: is he saying it will have no impact whatsoever; that it risks reducing turnout; or that it is going to increase turnout? That would be an interesting intellectual case to develop.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My noble friend might be interested to know that at the end of the last day in Committee the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, pointed out that no analysis of turnout has been done. Indeed, the noble Baroness the Minister said:

“I can confirm that we have not done that impact analysis. The important impact will be after.”—[Official Report, 17/3/22; col. 568.]


So I am afraid my noble friend will not get an answer to his question, because they have not done the research.

16:30

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

Well, I do not suppose that surprises me. I bet one bit of research they have done and been careful to check on—I cannot be as generous as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, on this—is whether this change will have a serious adverse effect on the number of Conservatives voting at the next election.

We know roughly the demography that is most likely to be affected—and, by the way, it is not being patronising to people on low incomes to say that we know as a matter of fact that, in general terms, the wealthier the area, the higher the turnout. That is not because people in lower-income areas do not understand what is involved. There can be all sorts of practical reasons. If you live in rented accommodation, you may not get your poll card as easily. I know you do not have to have a poll card to vote—you will need a lot more in future—but, if people do not have photo identification, clearly they are more likely to miss out on voting at subsequent elections. If, in proposing this change to the requirements on voters, the noble Lord, Lord True—a lifelong Conservative, as I am lifelong Labour—had found in his research that it was going to really cost his party something, I very much doubt he would be bringing it forward, let alone bringing it forward with such enthusiasm.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for giving way. What he and the Committee are addressing are the potentially very serious but unknown and unquantified ill effects of this reform. Normally when a measure which could have an enormously detrimental social impact of this kind is proposed in these circumstances, the proposal is to pilot it. My noble friend will remember, because we were both in government at the time, that, when this House wrecked the ID card Bill, it did so led by Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, a former Cabinet Secretary, on the grounds that, if such a major piece of legislation was being proposed, even though it was in the Labour Party manifesto, it should be piloted. It was on that basis that we lost a large part of the legislation. Does my noble friend not think that it is highly appropriate and indeed necessary that a change of this magnitude should be piloted to see what the effects are before it becomes the universal law of the land?

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

I absolutely agree. I would add only one point to my noble friend’s observations. If we regard the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust as a reputable research body, it is saying that something like 1.7 million people are without voter ID—I do not have the notes here, but it is a very substantial figure—and they are overwhelmingly people on lower incomes. So there is a lot that we do know, but it would certainly be a lot better to have a pilot study before this kind of change was introduced.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

Before my noble friend Lord Hayward sat down, the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, rose to intervene. Perhaps we could allow the noble Lord’s intervention.

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

Thank you very much. I certainly have not come across any evidence to suggest that ID cards are an answer to the problem of voter fraud. I would like to broaden the debate a little and think about the consequences. I grew up in east London, where it was not unusual for people of certain backgrounds to be stopped in the street by the police and asked to show ID, when you are not required to carry any ID. What would happen in this brave new world when the police stopped people and said, “By the way, you now have an official ID. Have you not got it? Can you not bring it from home and report to the police station?” What would be the consequences for the young people who are unwilling or unable to produce those officially sanctioned ID cards? Would that drive a wedge between the police and the community? Would that criminalise people? Would that fuel more dissatisfaction with our parliamentary system? Would that fuel social instability? I would like to hear from the Minister where this ID concern will stop. What would be the broader social consequences? It seems to me that we would be opening up American-type social problems. They would be imported here, because people simply do not have or cannot produce officially sanctioned ID cards.

It is minorities who will be targeted. It is well known and well documented that the police target minorities. They would have a new authority to wield to criminalise minorities. I would love to hear the Minister’s views on that.

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, voter ID is not something dreamed up by the Government with the express intention of suppressing voter turnout, as various noble Lords have come perilously close to suggesting in both today’s debate and our debates last week. I am sure that, as parliamentarians, we all share a belief in the centrality of elections to our democracy and a desire to achieve the highest standards of integrity and participation. I believe that it would be a unworthy slur to suggest that my party believes anything else. The plain fact is that the Electoral Commission has recommended voter ID, as have international election observers. Most European countries require it; Northern Ireland has had it for nearly 40 years.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

Can the noble Baroness explain where the Electoral Commission by itself said that voter ID was required? Or was it responding to options that were put before it in terms of what it saw as the best form of voter ID? Does the noble Baroness have the evidence to say that the Electoral Commission has said of its own volition that voter ID is required?

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

I am sorry that I do not have chapter and verse with me, but the Electoral Commission has called for voter ID since 2014. As I said, Northern Ireland has used it for nearly 40 years.

I find it quite extraordinary that polling station procedures in Great Britain are virtually the same today as they were when I started voting 50 years ago. It is quite remarkable.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

If the system works well, why change it? I thought it was a good Conservative principle that, when it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

The world has changed very considerably in the past half a century.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Would the noble Baroness concede that this House and the other place have changed very little in the 100 years since women got the vote in the way we operate at Westminster?

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

That is an entirely irrelevant observation, if I may say so.

I have heard many noble Lords say that this is a solution to a problem that does not exist, but I believe that that is looking at this through the wrong end of the telescope. I invite noble Lords to read my noble friend Lord Pickles’s report on election fraud, which was published after the disgraceful events at Tower Hamlets. He found that there were risks of electoral fraud in our current system. The fact that relatively few people have been convicted of election fraud is not the point. It is clear that there are real risks; we owe it to the electorate to minimise those risks.

I am astonished that noble Lords can oppose the simple concept of voter ID. As my noble friend Lord Hayward said, voter ID is required if you go to a Royal Mail depot, or indeed the Post Office, to collect a parcel. Let me give a more mundane example: last Friday, I collected a birthday cake from a supermarket and was required to show some ID. It is just part of the way we carry on our lives now. We require ID for all kinds of things. From my perspective, requiring voter ID is a reform that is long overdue.

It is also obvious that, if you go down the route of voter ID, the most secure way of proving identity is photo ID. That is why the Labour Party has required it at some of its conferences—unless the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, is going to countermand that, that is what I believe to be the case. If we go to a meeting at the MoD or the Bank of England, we have to show photo ID, because it is part of the way we live our lives now.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way, because it is worth addressing this point. It came up earlier with her noble friend Lord Hayward, who said to me, “You collect your parcel”, et cetera, and I suddenly looked down and saw myself, of course, wearing a badge around my neck, as I and most noble Lords do. I notice that my noble and rebellious friend Lord Grocott is currently not wearing his, but that is presumably for the TV cameras, and he will put it on later. Are noble Lords suggesting that, by complying with sensible security practices within this Palace and wearing this thing around my neck as I walk around every day, I am conceding that I should be prepared to wear such a thing on the street and in my life for other purposes?

Surely that concession is not made, because we are not comparing like with like. If anything, when I leave the Estate, if I still have this badge around my neck, a police officer will say to me, “Please take that off”, because it is not appropriate. Something that is of security value in here becomes a security risk out there. We are, therefore, not necessarily comparing like with like. The most sensitive and valuable ID that I possess is probably the card that gives me access to taking cash out of the wall, and it has no photographic evidence on it whatever. These are different purposes, different levels of risk and different levels of ID or not. Is that not the case?

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness says we are not comparing like with like, and I completely agree. I drew no parallels with the wearing of identity badges in this building or, indeed, many other buildings; many corporate organisations require this for their own internal security purposes. That is completely different from engaging in certain acts, whether it be going into certain buildings as an outsider or carrying out daily tasks such as collecting parcels. I am suggesting that it is perfectly ordinary to propose using it when going to election polling stations to cast one’s vote.

Northern Ireland has used photo ID for more than 20 years with no problems. Indeed, Northern Ireland electors are happier with their elections than the rest of the UK. To the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, I say that there has been no harm done in using voter ID in photo form in Northern Ireland at all—no recorded harm whatever. The issue that we should focus on is how to facilitate voting by those who do not already possess the kinds of photo ID that are allowed for in the Bill. The Government’s latest estimate—there are higher estimates from earlier studies—is that this applies to 2% of the population. That is roughly a million electors, which is a lot of people, but the Government have already successfully piloted a scheme of voter cards.

There is no evidence from the pilots of an impact on different communities, although there has been a lot of speculation throughout today and our previous Committee days on which particular groups will be affected. I am sure that there will be local issues in local areas, which is why—

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

The Electoral Commission’s analysis of the 2019 pilots showed that people in the compulsory voter ID pilot, after the ballot, had a 69% satisfaction rate with the poll, compared to 77% of those outside the photo ID pilot. Why, if it did not cause a problem, does the noble Baroness think that satisfaction was less in the pilot area than in the non-pilot areas?

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

I cannot answer that question, but the purpose of pilots is to find out what practical problems there are with major policies, and it was good practice on the Government’s part to have various different pilots to find out the sorts of issues that might arise.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

But if the basis of this, as the Government keep saying, is to increase the public’s satisfaction and the ballot integrity, why is it that 69% versus 77% think that that did not happen?

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

I do not think the only metric is how satisfied people were. The most important thing is how comfortable people are with the integrity of the voting system. Just being satisfied with the first rollout of something is not going to give you the final answer. It is right to let local authorities, who know about their local electorates, work out how to reach these hard-to-reach communities. It is right to enlist civil society groups to do the same, as well as political parties, which should know their local areas and know how best to do it.

We know there will be some teething problems, and some voters may not bring the right voter ID with them the first time they come. But according to both the Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators, this happened to a very small degree during the pilots. As I said earlier, pilots are there to find problems so that they can be overcome. I hope that noble Lords will stand back and look at these reforms—

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

I am just about to finish, if the noble Baroness does not mind. I hope that noble Lords will stand back and look at these reforms through 21st-century eyes and see them as sensible and proportionate, and as a reflection of how we live our lives on a daily basis.

16:45

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak in support of these clauses not standing part of the Bill. I do so primarily for the reasons we debated on Thursday, and I will not go over all those again in terms of the differential impact on marginalised groups. In particular, I spoke about people in poverty, and about Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, that this is not about those groups not understanding paperwork and so forth. As my noble friend said, there are all sorts of reasons why marginalised groups may find it harder to vote. If the noble Baroness reads that debate she will see that the very work that goes into getting by in poverty can itself act as a barrier to sorting out alternative ID cards.

We have talked a lot about trust. One of the Government’s arguments—it has been put today—is that the measure is essential to increase trust in the electoral system. However, the Electoral Commission public opinion tracker found that when asked what would increase voter satisfaction, twice as many people replied proportional representation—which we shall discuss on Wednesday—as said increased security against fraud. Worse—here I do agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley—there is a real danger that the Government themselves are eroding trust by suggesting that fraud is a problem that could be addressed by these provisions. The more it is said that there is a problem of fraud, the more the general electorate are likely to think that there is a problem of fraud. The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee warns that this could damage trust between the individual and the state. It was also pretty scathing about the quality of the evidence put forward to justify the move, saying that it was “simply not good enough”.

Various concerns have been raised about the evidence provided by the pilots that the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, talked about—such as, in particular, that none was carried out in a large urban metropolis, and that we know nothing about the people who were turned away because they lacked the requisite identification and did not return. Nobody bothered to find out what happened to them.

As we heard on Thursday—there has been mention of this today too—one line of defence is that voter ID is used in most EU countries. When it was pointed out that some form of general ID is mandatory in most of those countries, the Minister said that this was neither here nor there. Actually, it is very much here and there. Whatever people think about it, if they have to carry ID around with them anyway, there is no great difficulty in taking it to the polling station. If people are not carrying it around with them anyway, that is a lot more difficult.

Both the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights have raised questions about the Government’s claim that the measures are proportionate—a test they need to meet to comply with the European Convention on Human Rights. On the one hand, as we have heard, there is very little evidence of fraud—even allowing for the fact that it is difficult to produce such evidence. On the other hand, there is pretty overwhelming evidence that the measures are likely to have a disproportionate impact on marginalised voters and potential voters. But of course we do not know—because, as I have said, the Government have not done the research. Far from being essential to the protection of our democracy, as the Minister in the Commons claimed, these provisions are a threat to inclusive democracy and citizenship.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett. I agree with everything she said.

I offer Green support for Clause 1 not standing part. We would have attached a signature to the opposition to the clause had there been space. I am well aware that we have already had a very long debate, so I will make three key points that have not quite been made elsewhere, and echo the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, in introducing the group, on the power of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, last week. Anyone who wants to see it will find it on my Twitter account, handily captioned and shared. I urge people to share it because it deserves a wide audience.

The first of my three points builds on the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, who suggested that people were saying there might be a sinister plot with the Republicans. There does not have to be a sinister plot for people to copy what they see happen in other parts of the world. Indeed, the inspiration for voter ID, which I believe is voter suppression, comes from the other side of the pond. I quote the American Civil Liberties Union, because if that is where the inspiration comes from it is instructive to see the context:

“Voting should be as easy and accessible as possible … But … more than 400 anti-voter bills have been introduced in 48 states … The result is a severely compromised democracy that doesn’t reflect the will of the people. Our democracy works best when all eligible voters can participate and have their voices heard.”


That is a message from America, but it is one we should also listen to here.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

Does the noble Baroness not understand that voting systems in the US are a state matter? The problem is not what she says it is; it is that every state has a different methodology. That is what leads to confusion and difficulties, particularly in some states which adopt particularly regressive and repressive measures. The point she is making about photo ID is nothing to do with that.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I disagree with the noble Lord, in the sense that I am talking about the rhetoric, and the context and reason for this, whether it is happening on a state-by-state basis or nationally. What is behind it is in my second quote, from Max Feldman at the Brennan Center for Justice, who says that

“claims of widespread fraud are nothing more than old wine in new bottles. President Trump and his allies have long claimed, without evidence, that different aspects of our elections are infected with voter fraud. Before mail voting, they pushed similar false narratives about noncitizen voting, voter impersonation, and double voting”.

To pick up the noble Lord’s point about people’s concerns about the voting system, these days we see a great deal of sharing and cross-fertilisation of concerns on social media. Rhetoric spread by powerful, well-funded forces will have an impact on people’s views, as we have seen in other contexts.

The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, suggested that people were coming perilously close to suggesting that the purpose behind voter ID was voter suppression. I am not going to come “perilously close” to it; I believe that that is the case.

The second point I want to make concerns history. I do not believe that we are guaranteed to gradually progress positively into the future, but look at the trends. In 1832 and 1867, the Great Reform Acts spread the right to vote among men. In 1918 and 1928, women got the right to vote. In 1969, and implemented in 1970, the voting age was reduced from 21 to 18. That is all heading in the direction of greater engagement. In Oral Questions earlier we saw some fairly severe attacks on democracy and devolution in the UK, but Scotland and Wales have gone further down this road, with votes at 16. Democracy has been on a long-term trend of engaging more people. We have to ask why we are suddenly heading in the opposite direction with voter ID.

My final point is a practical one. Most of this discussion has focused on the estimated 2 million people who do not have any ID. I do not think we have talked enough about the people who do not have ID on them at the point where they go to vote. As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, pointed out, none of the pilots was in a large urban area.

I was in a large urban area—Sheffield—telling on a polling station in one of the years when the pilots were being conducted. I saw a large number of people who had seen the reports and thought that they had to have ID.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

The noble Baroness is citing where the pilots took place. Earlier on, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, did not seem to be aware that pilots had taken place. Was it not the case that a number of local councils refused to participate in the pilots? It is not that those places were chosen by the Government; it is that those were the places which were allowed to participate by the local authorities.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I respectfully respond to the noble Lord that, whether it was the choice of the local authorities or not, it harms the quality of the evidence before us.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

If I may intervene, I knew where the pilots had taken place, but they were not nearly proportionate to the scale of the reforms being introduced. We do not know anything about their likely impact on voter turnout or the administrative issues that will be raised by the nationwide introduction of this reform. The very small, selective pilots were not even in representative areas. The issue of piloting is still very much there. If this is to be a nationwide reform—we are talking about parliamentary elections—this should be piloted in many constituencies before we move in this direction.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

Is it not the case that this has not been piloted before a general election? The Electoral Commission specifically says that there should be a pilot before it is ruled out for a general election.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

That is a fundamental point. They were piloted in local elections. The scale of the pilots has not been nearly proportionate to the scale of the proposed reform.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I thank both noble Lords, who have contributed greatly to my argument.

I come back to the question of people who own voter ID but do not happen to have it on them and to the experience of Sheffield on this particular occasion. One of the people I spoke to was a man who came speed-walking up to me, puffing slightly, and said: “Huh, do I have to have voter ID?” I said, “No, it is all right; you do not need it here.” He said, “Okay”, and dashed into the polling station.

What if I had had to say yes to that man? He was obviously having a very busy day, as many of us do—some people have to maintain two or three jobs to put food on the table and keep a roof over their head, and some people have caring responsibilities. Voting is on a Thursday, which is a working day for very many people. All these are reasons why voting can be difficult to access. Maybe a little window has opened up in your day—say you are a care worker who moves between different houses, and suddenly you have an opportunity to go past the polling station but you do not have your passport on you. Say you are a student, not living at home; perhaps you have left your passport with your parents for safekeeping because you do not travel overseas very often. You go to vote where your student residence is. Did you remember from when you heard two months ago that an election was coming? Maybe you did not even know that an election was coming, and two months ago you left your passport at home.

We have not looked enough at the facts. It is not just about people who do not own this ID. People do not have to. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, made a very powerful point that the European case studies do not match up. If you live in a country where a police officer or other official can stop you at any time and ask where your ID is, you will always have your ID on you. That is not the case in the UK.

My concluding point covers this group of amendments and many others. A lot of this Bill and the direction of the Government suggests that we have a problem with voters in the UK. I do not think we have any problem with the voters; we have huge problems with our failed political system.

17:00

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, at Second Reading, my noble friend Lord Rennard, who unfortunately cannot be here today, drew attention to the Government’s negligence in trying to assess the scale of the problem that they say they seek to address. He pointed out that anyone attending a polling station who finds that their vote may have been claimed by someone else is issued with a replacement, known as a tendered ballot paper. He has been pressing the Government for some years to collate and publish the information about how many of these ballot papers are issued, and tried again recently with a Written Question.

Unfortunately, the Government would not answer, even though they know the figures. Fortunately, the independent Electoral Commission publishes them. There are several reasons why such tendered ballot papers might be issued, apart from someone impersonating a voter. The most common reason is probably a clerical error in the polling station when the wrong name is crossed off by mistake. At the last general election, 32,014,110 ballot papers were issued across the UK in 38,812 polling stations. The total number of tendered ballot papers was just 1,341. That is 0.004% of the total number of ballot papers issued—just two tendered ballot papers for each of the 650 constituencies, or one for every 30 polling stations. Most are probably issued because of clerical error or for reasons other than personation.

Clause 1 is all about a supposed solution to a problem that simply does not exist, or that the Government have been unable to show exists. At Second Reading, the Minister clearly stated that this was not about the precautionary principle to prevent voting error. I asked the Minister to reiterate: is this not the precautionary principle? If not, where is the evidence that the problem is so big that the clause’s provision is proportionate to deal with the problem?

I have also looked back at the opening remarks of the noble Lord, Lord True, at Second Reading. He said:

“Voter ID is used across the world, including in most European countries and in Canada.”—[Official Report, 23/2/22; col. 2228.]


He did not say that those European countries had compulsory national ID cards, meaning that no additional ID is required other than that which citizens have to carry as part of being citizens of those countries. We do not have such national ID cards and the Government are opposed to them. In Canada, a photo ID card is issued to Canadians who do not have a driving licence, thereby serving as a national ID card, and in Canada you do not need that ID to vote if you do not have it to hand, provided someone with such ID is also present at the polling station and vouches for you.

The Government have pointed to Northern Ireland, which requires voter ID, although it has a significantly different political culture that made that necessary. Northern Ireland introduced mandatory ID in 1985 in response to what happened in the 1983 general election. Nearly 1,000 people arrived at polling stations there only to be told that a vote had already been cast in their name. Police made 149 arrests for personation, resulting in 104 prosecutions. In contrast, in Great Britain, in two national elections in 2019, there was only one conviction for personation and one caution, both of which related to the European Parliament election of that year.

It should also be noted that Northern Ireland did not move immediately to require photographic ID. Elections took place there for almost 20 years with a less stringent ID requirement. The first election there to require voter ID was the 2003 Northern Ireland Assembly election. Estimates have shown that about 25,000 voters did not vote because they did not have the required ID. That is more than 1,000 per constituency. Furthermore, almost 3,500 people, 2.3% of the electorate, were initially turned away for not presenting the required ID. It took more than 12 years—I repeat, 12 years—for turnouts to return to previous levels; other factors were, of course, involved relating to political controversy in Northern Ireland.

We have very limited information about the effects of introducing any form of voter ID from pilots in just 15 out of over 400 local council elections in England, but all the information suggests that many more legitimate voters were unable to cast votes than there were people who needed replacement ballot papers. Extrapolating from these 15 pilots to around 450 local authorities suggests that perhaps 30,000 legitimate voters could have been turned away from polling stations, to say nothing of the number of people who did not attempt to vote because of the requirements.

The proposals in Part 1 of the Bill are in response to one conviction and one caution in 2019, with hardly anyone finding that their vote could have been stolen and, in any event, all were compensated with a replacement ballot paper. After the voter ID pilots, the independent Electoral Commission said that more work was needed to make sure that an identification requirement did not stop people who are eligible and want to vote in future elections. That is why Clause 1 should not stand part of this Bill.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, the speech that we have just heard from the noble Lord was utterly compelling. Indeed, he gave the House a detail that I was not aware of about the impacts of compulsory voter ID in Northern Ireland; I do not think that the House was aware either. In the case of Northern Ireland—I remember the discussions that took place in government at the time—the evidence of voter personation was at a level completely out of proportion to what we are dealing with here in the case of elections in Great Britain. But if, as the noble Lord says, it took 10 years to get voter participation up—

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

It was 12 years.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

That should be a matter of huge concern. In an extraordinarily un-Conservative statement earlier, the noble Baroness said that voting in the way that we used to vote 50 years ago is somehow bad and means that we are not keeping up with modern times. If we applied that principle to every other aspect of life that works well we would be seeking to change everything for the sake of it—something I imagined she thought this side of the House was seeking to do.

A combination of those two great Gladstonian reforms, the Ballot Act 1872 and the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Act 1883, has maintained a level of integrity in the conduct of elections in this country that most of the rest of the world finds awe-inspiring. The idea that people look at the United Kingdom and say that, among all the democracies—let alone other regimes—there is great doubt about the integrity of our election outcomes and people are constantly concerned that ballots might be being stuffed and all that, is so far removed from reality that it is obviously a farcical proposition.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I am sorry to intervene again but is the noble Lord aware of the report of foreign observers who watched the elections in Tower Hamlets? He seems to display complete ignorance of what overseas observers said about what they saw going on in Tower Hamlets.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

The big issue in Tower Hamlets, which the noble Lord referred to earlier, was electoral registration. What happened there was clearly improper registration. If the issue of registration had been dealt with, these further issues would not have arisen. This is not just an issue of principle, though many issues of principle have been raised. Rather like the Blair Government’s move to introduce ID cards, I suspect this will become a matter between the two Houses. The fact that photo ID was not in the Conservative Party manifesto will be significant; I do not think the Salisbury convention will cover the reform as proposed in this Bill. On matters of deep constitutional import such as this, how far we can press our concerns is always a fine judgment for this House. We have these debates and send amendments to the other place, and then they come back.

If this Bill gets through in this Session, the issue of compulsory photo ID might be one where we insist on our amendments, particularly in the context which the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, referred to, about how at constituency level and on a substantial scale there have been no pilots.

I have two other points, since I want to add to the debate rather than to repeat other points. This Bill is one of the most substantial that I have addressed in my entire time in Parliament, with 171 pages, 22 of which are Schedule 1, which governs the arrangements for the introduction of photo ID. Most of the legislation that this House passes is shorter than Schedule 1 of this Bill, which introduces some element of these requirements. There are 22 pages of very dense and complicated legal reforms, and I pity the electoral registration officers who will be implementing them—there will be a host of problems over the implementation. Yet despite it being 22 pages long, huge issues are not even properly addressed in Schedule 1. We are being asked to give Henry VIII powers to the Government to produce further changes in due course. Paragraph (2)(4)(a) of Schedule 1, on page 66, says that regulations may make provision about

“the timing of an application for an electoral identity document”

and

“about the issuing or collection of an electoral identity document.”

These are fundamental issues, and they are not even on the face of the Bill. They will all be subject to regulations in due course which this House, in practice, does not have the capacity to influence or to reject.

On a fundamental and crucial issue which I hope that the Minister can help me with, is there now effectively to be one point of electoral registration or two—the first when you apply to go on the electoral register and the second when you apply for your photo ID? I see that my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock has tabled amendments on this precise point, which is of huge importance and has not been addressed in the debate at all so far, of whether there should be provision for you to apply for the photo ID when you complete your electoral registration form. The Minister may have addressed this point in earlier debates, but I could not see it in Hansard. This fundamental issue may be worse than just ambiguous. I look forward to the Minister explaining this, but my reading of paragraph 2 of Schedule 1 is that you cannot apply for the two at the same time.

New Section 13BD in Schedule 1, which amends the Representation of the People Act 1983 by inserting these new provisions, says:

“An application for an electoral identity document may be made by (a) a person who is or has applied to be registered in a register of parliamentary electors”,


It does not say “is applying”. There is a fundamental difference between the two. Can the Minister help the Committee on this, since we are discussing the clause at large and it will pave the way for my noble friend Lady Hayman’s amendment in due course?

Is it the case from my reading of the schedule—I am a non-lawyer—that you cannot apply for both at the same time and therefore that it would not be legal for electoral registration officers to send one form enabling you to fill in your name and details on the register of electors and to make your application for a photographic identity document, but you must do them separately? I may be wrong, in which case I am very happy for the Minister to intervene, but if I am correct, it is a fundamental massive additional issue with this Bill. It effectively doubles the electoral registration requirements. Whereas until now it has been the accepted practice that you register once, you will now have to register twice. My noble friend Lady Lister said that in continental countries, ID cards are the norm, but, of course, there you have them by the time you register to be a voter, and do not have to go through any separate process, nor must you turn up with a separate identity card in due course.

17:15

Some of us have been round the circuit in these debates before. As a member of the Government, I sat through many of the impassioned debates this House held on the Blair Government’s proposal to introduce ID cards. There were strongly held views, and this House carried fundamental amendments to that reform I referred to earlier in respect of very substantial requirements for piloting. That ultimately led to ID cards not being introduced, because the piloting requirements had not been completed by the time the Government changed in 2010. However, I remember speech after speech from the Conservative Front Bench at the time saying that, even though we made it explicitly clear that these ID cards were not going to be used for the process of elections, introducing these ID cards to deal with illegal practices in respect of employment, immigration and asylum was the thin end of the wedge. Before we knew what would happen, they would be required for elections, and this would have the effect of voter suppression.

It is sheer hypocrisy for the Conservative Party now to say the very reform it opposed at the time—a coherent reform, which would have had a single identity document on the kind that applies on the continent—should not be introduced because it might have an impact on elections. Yet they are now introducing a reform requiring voter ID in a much worse form than would have applied if there was a universal ID card. There would not have been any requirement for this separate, second process of electoral registration to start with, and there would not have been the offputting effects that there will be of having to produce another form.

There have been a lot of totally groundless assertions by the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, and others that there is an actual threat to the integrity of elections. No evidence has been submitted that would get past first base as to why that should lead to a reform of this kind. I think, particularly listening to the figures we just heard, a much bigger concern about the integrity of elections will be when large numbers of voters are turned away from polling stations at the next election. They will turn up thinking they can vote in what they regard as the usual way and are turned away from the polling station either because they do not have this form of ID or because they have left it at home and were not aware of the precise one they had to bring at the time.

If the impact is at anything like the scale the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, is concerned about, the big concern these international observers of our elections are going to be raising is that an untested, unpiloted reform of a highly peculiar kind, requiring identity documents specifically relating to an election, has had a chilling effect on electoral turnout in what had previously been regarded as a model democracy. Not only is this a profoundly unconservative reform; it may be one of the most retrograde reforms to promoting participation in elections since we introduced the secret ballot 150 years ago.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I intend to be brief, because I do not want to repeat all the excellent arguments that have been made. I think the important part of this debate is the issue of proportionality. Of course, as we have heard elsewhere in the Bill, it is incredibly disappointing that the key problems our electoral system faces—underrepresentation, low turnout, lack of registration—are not addressed, as referred to by my noble friend Lord Woolley. Also, I am going to keep to my record in referring to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, because this House’s Select Committee report on civic engagement showed that it is really important to address this issue in terms of education—better understanding our responsibilities and the role of the citizen.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for giving way. Yes, the report of the committee that I chaired said that we needed a statutory ability to learn about citizenship throughout primary and secondary education—but nowhere did we talk about voter ID or the methodologies by which people would be identified for voting. So, with great respect, would the noble Lord please not pray me in aid for that particular?

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I hear what the noble Lord says, but it will not stop me—because in the argument about proportionality the question is, “What is the most important problem that we seek to address?” At the end of the day, we are focusing on this issue of voter ID to address a concern over fraud. As we have heard from the debate, it is not the evidence of fraud that we should be concerned about but the concern about concern, which actually undermines the argument completely.

I come back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Woolley. What evidence do we have? Of course, we have heard about the pilot schemes in the local elections of 2019. What the noble Lord highlighted well was that the Electoral Commission noted that between 3% and 7% of those who engaged in the election were turned away because they did not have the right form of voter ID, including non-photographic ID. As the noble Lord said, those small pilot schemes were not reflective of a general election. If you extrapolate that to a general election, the Electoral Commission and others have suggested that between 50,000 and 400,000 people could show up at a general election and then be turned away. What is that going to do to confidence in our electoral system? Not much, I would suggest. It is pretty appalling that we are focusing on that issue, when there is a desperate need to focus, as the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, said, on civic engagement, how to encourage young people to participate and to register, and how to get that understanding of the need to vote.

I was sorely tempted to intervene on the noble Lord, Lord Hayward. Of course, I am fully aware of the rights and responsibilities of membership organisations, having had the responsibility of ensuring that the rules of the Labour Party were properly upheld. But that is not the same as what the right reverend Prelate was talking about: the universal right to vote. I have to pay for my Labour Party membership, and I have responsibilities to abide by its rules. That includes a whole host of requirements that the noble Lord has not mentioned—but what has that got to do with the universal right to vote? Not much, I beg to argue.

It has to come back to this whole point about what problem it is that we are seeking to address. It is a very, very small issue that we seek to address here, and we are taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I support all noble Lords who seek for this clause not to stand part.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con)]

Well, my Lords, I thank all those who have taken part in what has been quite a lengthy debate—but why not? It is an important issue.

I will try to answer the various points which have been made. The proposition in Clause 1, which is before us, is part of a whole series of measures which this Government are putting in the Bill to strengthen the security and integrity of elections. These include matters we are coming on to in relation to postal votes, the handling of postal votes and so on. There is a consistent overall desire in the Government to ensure that votes are cast, and cast with integrity. I submit to the Committee that there is no distinction—no “one or the other”—between wanting more people to vote and trying to secure the integrity of the vote. This is a false antithesis that has run through the debate. All of us should want to do both things: to ensure that all votes are honest and honestly handled, and that as many people vote as possible. We are able to do both; it is not one or the other.

Last week, on the first technical amendment in what was a lengthy series of amendments relating to voter identification, we had a wide-ranging clause stand part-style debate on many aspects of Clause 1, and on the assessments done on costs for voter identification and its potential impacts. I acknowledge that, as has happened again today, the Benches opposite have made it abundantly clear that they do not support this policy—or Clause 1 or Schedule 1 of the Bill. The Government disagree. In our submission, this policy is necessary and proportionate. It also implements the Government’s manifesto commitment to voter identification to protect the security and integrity of our ballot, so that our elections will remain secure well into the future.

The idea floated by some, including the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, that this was not a manifesto commitment because the word “photo” was not in the manifesto, is wide of the mark. As I said in our last session, the Government clearly declared their policy in the Queen’s Speech in October 2019, set out in detail in the briefing what that would mean, and referenced that in the manifesto. Manifestos briefly often reference established policy. Indeed, there was much debate at the time about the proposition that the Government had put on the table, including the photographic aspect.

I must tell the House that the Government regard this proposal as fully covered by the conventions of your Lordships’ House on manifesto commitments—as they would apply under the Government of any party. The process for voting in polling stations—

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

I am sorry, but can the Minister clarify why the Government chose not to put the word “photo” into the manifesto? No one is disputing that there was a manifesto commitment; what we are disputing is whether that commitment was for photo ID.

[Lord True (Con)]

The Government had an established and declared policy on voter identification which was referenced in the manifesto. Not every aspect of every policy goes into a manifesto. We do not normally put 177 pages—or whatever it was that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, mentioned—into a manifesto. However, the specific details—not only the photo identification, but also the fact that we would offer, as part of this, a free card to anyone who is not covered by any of the aspects of the policy—were declared public policy. That, too, remains the Government’s policy.

My noble friend Lady Noakes said that the process for voting in polling stations in Great Britain has seen no significant changes in its security since the Ballot Act 1872. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, mentioned another Gladstonian reform. None the less, the system used in the Victorian era, in a confined franchise in smaller communities, is in our submission simply not fit for the 21st century. There are undeniable vulnerabilities in our system—covered not only in this Clause 1 measure but in others as we track through the Bill—which let people down because they can lead, and have led, to votes being stolen by unscrupulous individuals. The introduction of photographic voter identification as a solution to such vulnerabilities is supported by the independent Electoral Commission. As we have heard, it is also backed—

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I am sorry to interrupt. I do not want to delay proceedings any more, but the noble Lord just referred to the Electoral Commission. It suggested in its briefing to noble Lords that the Government should also consider options on polling day for those people who have lost their ID and have not received their voter card to ensure that no one loses the opportunity to vote. This could include using a vouching system as the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, referred to, which applies in Canada. Is the Electoral Commission’s recommendation going to be considered by the Government when they introduce voter ID?

17:30

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, applications for the free card will be available up to 5 pm on the day before, as has been said. I note what the noble Lord has said, and I will take away what he and the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, have said but our submission is that the time to apply for the card is satisfactory at the moment and anyone who is turned away initially on the day of vote can return. As a matter of fact, at the last election in which I took part, which certainly was not a general election, I was turned away. The returning officer said: “We are too busy at the moment. We have a technical problem, can you come back later?” I went back later in the day. People can return, and I did.

It was also pointed out, and this is correct, that the provision is backed by leading international election observers such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. It has repeatedly called for its introduction, saying its absence is a security risk. Many people would question why it is not already the case. In fact, as my noble friend said last week, the 2021 Electoral Commission winter tracker report was clear that the majority of the public—66%—say that a requirement to show identification at polling stations would make them more confident in the security of the voting system.

The choice of photographic identification as the model has been questioned by noble Lords. Put simply, it is the most secure and familiar way of confirming that someone is who they say they are. It is true that a number of different models of voter identification were trialled as part of the pilots undertaken by the Government in 2018 and 2019. However, when evaluating the security strengths and weaknesses of each pilot model, the Electoral Commission found that

“the photo ID only model has the greatest security strengths compared with the other models.”

On the basis of those evaluations, it was clear that the most secure and appropriate approach was photographic identification.

Many noble Lords in the debate raised questions about the practical implications of selecting this model. Obviously, as we go forward in co-operation into the face of implementation, the Government will carefully consider all the points that have been raised. The Government understand this and want to prepare the system as well as possible. This is why we considered the absolute maximum range of identifications that could be accepted for the policy. Using the Government’s Verify security scale, we opted for level 2 and then considered this against the widest possible range of documents which would meet that assessment. Should other forms of photographic identification meet that level of security in the future, the Government will be able to add them through the power inserted into Rule 37 by paragraph 18 of Schedule 1 to the Bill. This will ensure that the list remains up to date and is as accessible as possible going forward.

We commissioned a nationally representative survey of over 8,500 electors in Great Britain. This found that 98% of people have access to an accepted form of photographic identification, including 99% of people from ethnic minorities and young people aged 18 to 29. We need to reach all those others, which is why a free card is being offered and the Electoral Commission will be entering into a publicity process to ensure, with the Government, that that is known. Some 94% of the people surveyed felt that having to present a photo identification at the polling station would either make it easier to vote or make no difference.

Voter identification is a proven approach and although I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, said, in addition to the provision made for Northern Ireland by the last Labour Government, it is in place in most European countries and also in countries such as Canada which do not have compulsory national identity cards. Whether noble Lords like it or not, Northern Ireland is a comprehensive empirical example of the introduction of photographic identification in the UK. We know that it operates there with ease. It has brought real benefit to the democratic process, and Northern Ireland consistently reports high rates of confidence in the outcome of elections. The 2019 Electoral Commission post-election questionnaire reported that 83% of voters in Northern Ireland found it

“very easy to participate in the elections”

as opposed to 78% in Great Britain.

I trust that that sets out some of the underlying principles, but when developing this policy we of course completed all the required impact and equality impact assessments. A team of analysts produced detailed cost and benefit modelling, published in the impact assessment, as is typical for such a government programme. They incorporated high and low ranges to account for uncertainty and conducted sensitivity analysis to test the most sensitive and impactful assumptions, such as the percentage of the electorate requiring a voter card. If any noble Lord would like to explore details of the impact assessment with officials who have been involved in doing it—I know the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, is interested in that—I would be very happy to arrange for them to meet the Bill team to discuss it.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I do not need to meet the Bill team. The impact assessment that the Minister signed off on 20 January this year says very clearly on page 30, paragraph 18, on this specific policy, on Clause 1 on mandatory photo ID:

“The analysis does not assess the impact of the policy on voter turnout.”


There has been no assessment in the impact assessment of the voter turnout and this clause.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry that the noble Lord does not wish to meet members of the Bill team and I am very happy to repeat that offer.

So far as the noble Lord’s point is concerned, my noble friend answered that point explicitly—indeed, the noble Lord referred to it. An impact assessment is an economic assessment. It did not deal with turnout. As the noble Lord well knows—he has campaigned often enough, as I have—turnout is affected by a very large range of factors. I will give way once more to the noble Lord.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

I think it is important for the Committee to understand this because the noble Lord has said something at the Dispatch Box which they will find is slightly different when they look at the impact assessment. The impact assessment looks at non-monetary and non-economic issues to do with policies all over this Bill. It specifically says about this policy that it has not looked at voter turnout. This is not just an economic assessment—it is an assessment of the monetary and non-monetary effects of the Bill, including voter turnout.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, it covers economic, equality and other assessments. If I misspoke, I apologise. I say for the third time what my noble friend said last week and I have said—the Government did not cover turnout. I have not sought to hide that fact because the factors that affect turnout are very wide and cannot be distinguished. Of course, analysis should not remain static, and I take that point. As we move towards implementation, I say to the Committee that we will continue to make sure that the evidence base remains up to date in terms of costings and will refine the modelling and assumptions. This is standard practice and will address the economic points.

I repeat that year-on-year turnout comparisons cannot be accurately estimated due to the volatility of the electoral cycle. As I have said, a huge variety of disparate factors play a part in whether someone chooses to vote in any particular election, from the appeal of candidates standing to personal circumstances on the day. An attempt to draw conclusions would be difficult.

In this vein, I note Amendment 142 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, on post-legislative scrutiny, which has not been addressed in this group yet. I appreciate that she has not had the opportunity to speak to it, but I will reply to the amendment. The Bill already provides for an evaluation of the impacts of voter identification at the first two general elections to which it applies and the first stand-alone set of local council elections. I am pleased to say that we intend to go further and produce a process and impact evaluation of the programme and its implementation across all policy measures. I hope that this reassures the noble Baroness that our aims on this are aligned. However, I repeat what I said in an earlier group: I remain open to further conversations on this point in relation to post-legislative scrutiny. I give that undertaking to the Committee.

Finally, in the same spirit of increasing participation in our democracy and empowering those eligible to vote to do so in a secure and effective way, Clause 2 introduces an online absent vote application service and an online voter card application service. As it stands, there is no facility for electors to make an online application to get a postal vote or proxy vote. Electors must have a paper form which they complete and submit to the electoral registration officer. Here the Government are seeking to encourage participation, because in an increasingly digital world, providing an online service for applications must increase accessibility. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, that his fears are unfounded. It will certainly be possible to apply for the voter card and the registration at the same time, just as one can in applying for a postal vote.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

Does the Minister therefore intend to accept my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock’s Amendment 64, which says that explicitly?

[Lord True (Con)]

No—we do not believe that the amendment is necessary, but the noble Lord is anticipating the next group. I am replying to noble Lords and assuring the Committee that I am advised that the noble Lord’s fears are entirely unfounded and that voters will be able to apply for both at the same time.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

That is very well and good but coming back to the impact assessment, on applying for absent votes, paragraph 117 says:

“The requirement for identity verification as a part of the online application process for absent votes could deter some voters from voting … This may impact the integrity of the elections as it may lead to lower turnout”.


Why would such a policy be implemented, with that in the impact assessment?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I repeat that we believe that, in an increasingly digital world, where the introduction of digital services can be done securely, providing an online service for applications increases accessibility. That is our submission, and I think that would be regarded as logically correct by most people who turn on their internet in the morning.

These powers will enable the identity of applicants using the new services to be verified, as well as identity checking for other absent voter applications.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

There is a fundamental issue. The Minister has said that it will be possible to apply for the two at the same time, but paragraph 2(4) of Schedule 1 says:

“Regulations may make provision … about the timing of an application for an electoral identity document”.


Is the Minister saying to the Committee that those regulations will provide that applications for the electoral identity document can be made at the same time and as part of the same form or digital process as electoral registration itself?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I am not sure whether it is under that specific rubric. Obviously, a lot of this material will come forward in regulation, including precisely the last hour at which you can make an application, et cetera. I will say to the noble Lord only that his comments were heard and I have been advised that they are not founded. There is a later group during which we can come back to this point, if we must. I can write to the noble Lord, but I think it would be helpful if I was in a position to give that assurance to the Committee, in public, on the next group.

17:45

I want to make progress. I appreciate that not everybody has enthusiasm for these provisions, but I beg your Lordships to understand that they are part of a set of provisions—they do not stand alone. They stand alongside all the other measures in the Bill which are intended to secure the integrity of the ballot. On reflection, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, will feel able to withdraw his opposition to Clause 1 standing part of the Bill.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, this has been a long and often confused debate. I have to say that I am as confused at the end of it as to what the rationale for Clause 1 is as I was at the beginning.

We have touched on a range of issues which we will return to on later occasions. The noble Lord, Lord Hayward—for whose expertise I have the highest respect—talked about the uncertainties of our electoral system and the problem that, in many constituencies, local and national, the selection meeting is the important one because we all know who is going to be elected. That is actually a gross abuse of our electoral system, to which perhaps one might consider either the introduction of primaries or a change in the electoral system to give the electorate a wider choice. I mark that in passing.

I have much sympathy with the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, on the point about the failure to modernise the pencil on sacking style of polling stations and the very antique business of local registers and local registration, which is totally unsuitable to the digital age. I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Desai, on that.

What we should have had here was what page 48 of the Conservative manifesto—which I think I know almost off by heart—refers to: that the time has come for a “broader” approach to our constitution. That is one of the aspects the noble Lord told us that they have now abandoned. We could have discussed some of these issues together.

The noble Lord, Lord True, said that all of us should want to do both things at once: security and engagement —and I assume, therefore, proper modernisation of our electoral system. The problem with the Bill is that it does not do both things at once. It does this but not the other things. That is why I find this such an unsatisfactory half set of measures. It is a Bill which does things that help the Conservatives but does not address some of the evident inadequacies of our electoral system and electoral campaigns, and does not modernise, as the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, rightly says. Therefore, it seems to me that the Bill fails the test of appropriate legislation. This is a disproportionate attack on one small part of the inadequacies of our electoral system, which leaves untouched many of its other inadequacies. On that purpose, we shall therefore wish to return to this on Report. I beg leave to withdraw my opposition to Clause 1 standing part.

Clause 1 agreed.

Amendments 61 and 62 not moved.

Amendment 63

Moved by

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock]

63: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“Statement on guidance given to registration officers
The Secretary of State must publish a statement on guidance given to registration officers in relation to the implementation of Schedule 1.”

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, there is a large number of amendments in this group, all of which refer to Schedule 1. As my noble friend Lord Adonis said, Schedule 1 is pretty enormous—there is a huge amount of information in it. It is concerning that there is a lot of very detailed information but that quite a lot of it is perhaps not pinned down in a way that would be helpful when making such huge changes to our electoral law.

It may well be a large section of the Bill but, as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said, when you look at the balance between securing the integrity of the ballot and encouraging participation, unfortunately there is simply not enough in the schedule to encourage participation and increase registration. I find that disappointing, because if the Government bring forward an elections Bill, encouraging more people to use their right to vote and take part in civil society in that way should be an absolutely integral part of what such a Bill tries to achieve.

As I say, all the amendments refer to Schedule 1. I will batch them into three groups, which seems sensible, given their focus. First, I will speak briefly to my Amendments 63 to 69, 79 and 81, which concern the electoral identity document. Amendment 66A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, and Amendment 80 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, are along similar lines. My noble friend Lord Adonis asked the Minister a number of questions about Part 2 so I will not go into detail on that, but it would be useful if the Minister could do as he said he would in the previous debate and give some more detailed answers to the relevant questions that were asked.

My Amendment 63 would require the Secretary of State to

“publish a statement on guidance given to registration officers in relation to the implementation of Schedule 1.”

In the previous debate in Committee, I talked about the importance of guidance and training when introducing voter ID. As was said in the previous debate this afternoon, an enormous amount of information will be provided to electoral registration officers, local authorities and the people who will man the polling stations. It is incredibly important that everybody knows exactly what they are supposed to do, what will be allowed and what will not, and how they can support people who may have come in with the incorrect documentation, so that they do not lose their votes, which is another issue we will talk about later. It is also incredibly important that we understand how guidance is being managed and implemented. Having a regular statement on where we are with it is important in making sure that our democracy is not undermined and that we have the best response possible to these proposals. Whether you agree with them or not, if they come in, they need to be implemented as well as possible.

I know the Minister said that he would explain why my Amendment 64 is not necessary, but we should do everything we can to increase participation. Providing an option so that someone can apply for an electoral identity document as part of the same process as registering to vote seems a straightforward, easy, sensible thing to do. I do not understand why the Government do not want to make this explicit in the Bill; it just seems terribly sensible to me.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

The issue that I hope the Minister will address, and which goes to the heart of my noble friend’s Amendment 64, is that he said when he replied to me earlier that, under paragraph 2 of Schedule 1, it will be possible for people to apply at the same time. However, if we want to minimise bureaucracy, surely, we want to make it a requirement that they be able to apply at the same time, which certainly is not part of that paragraph. My reading is that it could be covered by the regulations

“about the timing of an application for an electoral identity document”

in new Clause 13BD(4), as proposed by paragraph 2 of Schedule 1. But obviously, the way to ensure that it is possible, that we minimise bureaucracy and that we do not have an impact on turnout is for the Minister to accept my noble friend’s amendment or give an undertaking from the Dispatch Box when he comes to reply—so that he has time to commune with his officials—that the regulations will provide that electors can apply at one and the same time to register to vote and for the electoral identity document.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

To save multiple interventions on my noble friend, I just want to say this: it is all very well to say “Perhaps this will all be dealt with in regulations” so long as the vires—the power—in the schedule is broad enough to allow for regulations enabling people to apply to be registered and have one of these government-provided ID documents. However, I have read paragraph 2 of Schedule 1 and what it proposes. New Clause 13BD(1)(a), which is headed “Electoral identity document: Great Britain”, says that an application for an electoral identity document may be made by a person who

“is or has applied to be registered”.

That begs the question of whether these things can be done simultaneously. If these regulations will allow for an application only when someone is already registered or has already applied to be registered, that appears to leave out the group to which my noble friend Lord Adonis refers: people who are applying to be registered but know that they do not have a relevant document and want to make one application, rather than two applications at different times.

I am sorry to labour that point but I think it might be helpful to the Minister to hear that concern so that he can deal with it in one go later on.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I thank both my noble friends for their contributions and support for this amendment. As I said, this measure seems simple and straightforward to me. On the basis that it is important for people who do not have the right document to be able to vote, it seems a simple and sensible proposition that, when they register to vote, a little box comes up that they can tick if they need an identity document. It would then all be dealt with and sorted. I hope the Minister will seriously consider the importance of having that spelt out in the Bill, or, if he is not going to accept my amendment, of making sure that this works in the legislation as drafted, as my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti said.

I have two further amendments, Amendments 65 and 66, which are about the issuing of the documentation. The first amendment refers to

“the issuing of digital electoral identity documents.”

We are in a digital age, after all, so it seems sensible for people to have that option. I get my train tickets digitally, so it is not beyond the wit of man to come up with that. The other amendment is

“about the distribution of an electoral identity document by post.”

At the moment, that is not in the Bill; the regulations provide for the timings, issuing and collection but they do not go into any detail about whether a document could be issued digitally or sent through the post.

Amendment 66A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, is interesting. It would change

“the deadline for applying for a Voter ID card to 5 days before the day of a particular election. This is in line with the practice in Northern Ireland.”

We have had a lot of discussion in our debates on voter ID about the way things are done in Northern Ireland, so I am interested to hear more on this from the noble Lord and from the Minister.

Amendment 67 is very straightforward: it is just about ensuring that every electoral identity document should have the date of issue, which again seems pretty sensible so we all know where we are with it. Amendment 68 would delete new subsection (9) in paragraph 2 of Schedule 1. The reason for this is that it says, fairly vaguely:

“Regulations may require an electoral identity document to include other information.”


Why is this necessary? What kind of “other information” are we looking at? It would just be interesting to have further detail and clarification on what that part of the schedule is intended to do.

18:00

My Amendments 79 and 81 are to do with the documentation that is going to be accepted at the polling stations. My first amendment would include a birth certificate and my second is around including a senior railcard, which I know has been rejected as basically not having tough enough conditions when it is issued to be acceptable, but surely that is the wrong way round. Would it not be better to make the actual application for the card sufficient to allow it to be used as voter ID? It just seems more sensible to do it that way around when you think that other travel cards are acceptable. Amendment 80 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, extends the list of specified documents quite substantially and we very much support that, because of course we want to make sure that as many people as possible can use their right to vote.

The next few amendments I wanted to look at, which I have batched together, are 70, 71, 72 and 73, and these are to do with an anonymous elector’s documents. Obviously it is really important that people who need to have anonymous identities—when it comes to voting or otherwise—really need to be able to be verified effectively at polling stations but without any risk of their anonymity being compromised. The way they have to apply should not put them off applying for that document in the first place, so that they inadvertently lose their right to vote. At the moment, if you want to register anonymously, you complete an application form and explain why and get that attested in order that you can continue to remain anonymous on the register.

My amendments look at removing the provision to require a photograph of the person and the provisions which allow regulations to require other information—again, why would we need these for an anonymous elector’s documentation?—and look at the different kinds of materials. My main concern here is to ensure that anonymous people are properly protected within the new system. I would be interested to hear reassurance from the Minister that this will be the case. I would also like to hear what kind of work has been done in drawing up the regulations with people who represent anonymous electors—and anonymous electors themselves —in making sure that these provisions are secure, protect people, are satisfactory and easy to continue to use.

The final couple of amendments are Amendments 83 and 84. These are to Schedule 1 again, and I tabled them particularly to address concerns around voters who could be refused a ballot paper. This has been discussed already, as has the pilot scheme, so I would just like to give a little context around the pilot schemes on this as well. As we know, the pilot schemes took place during the local elections in 2018 and 2019. In 2018, I think it was more than 1,000 voters across all the pilot areas who were turned away for not having the correct form of ID and around 350 voters, which is more than a third who were turned away, did not come back to vote. My understanding is that in Woking there was no ward where 100% of people turned up with the correct ID.

These were areas with no or very few historic allegations of fraudulent voting or personation so, compared with the number of voters who were turned away and did not return, it is disproportionately high. My noble friend Lord Collins and others have talked about the importance of proportionality, which concerns me. If we look at 2019, in just one area, North West Leicestershire, 266 people were turned away and 61 failed to return. Again, that is a large number of people who are losing their vote.

A small number of people who are unable to vote can easily change the outcome of an election. At the 2017 general election, 11 constituencies were won by 100 votes or fewer. That is what really concerns me when we are looking at the potential democratic outcomes, when there has been no impact assessment on what could happen to turnout. Turnout is not just the amount of people who do not vote or who are not registered, and how we should encourage people; it is also looking at the number of people who wanted to vote and, for one reason or another, did not have what was required and did not come back and therefore were disfranchised.

It is extremely important that voters are not turned away unless there is an exceptional reason. They also need to be supported to understand exactly why they have been turned away and what they need to do to be able to exercise their right to vote. Finally, I just refer to the noble Lord, Lord True, who said it had happened to him—but he was not turned away; he was asked nicely if he could come back later and, actually, that is a bit different.

[Baroness Greengross (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of Amendments 64, 78, 79 and 81. On Second Reading, I expressed concerns that the new voter identification requirements in the Bill might disproportionately impact the youngest and the oldest voters. As others have already highlighted, we need to balance, on the one hand, that we ensure we have a secure electoral system that is not open to abuse of fraud with, on the other hand, removing possible barriers to voter participation. The fact that someone does not have a driver’s licence or a passport or cannot lay their hands on their passport on voting day should not mean that they are unable to participate in the electoral process, which is a very significant part of our democracy.

Amendment 64 gives someone the option, when registering as an elector, to apply for an electoral identity document as part of the same process. This ensures that, at the point of registering, people can get the ID needed to vote. Amendment 78 would enable a voter without satisfactory ID to have their identity confirmed by another voter at the polling station who does have acceptable ID. Amendment 79 expands on the list of documents that can be used as ID, again at least reducing the risk that someone is turned away from a polling station due to them not having satisfactory identification on them. Amendment 81 would include the senior railcard as a form of ID that can be used, as older people tend to have it on them at all times. These amendments help mitigate the risk of eligible voters being turned away for not having identification, but they do not eliminate it completely.

Lack of participation, especially by younger people, is by far a greater problem in this country than voter fraud. Can the Government please outline what safeguards they plan to put in place to ensure that eligible voters who lack identification documents are not disfranchised by what is proposed in the Bill?

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 80 in my name has the support of other Members of this House, including—he asked me to indicate this—the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, who sadly is not with us now. This amendment adds to the list of voter identification documents that are accepted for the purpose of being able to vote. It is carefully framed so as to be consistent with the statement in the Conservative Party manifesto, because I understand the importance for us in this House of working within the conventions of the respect we give to manifesto pledges. I will share with the Committee the exact words of that manifesto:

“We will protect the integrity of our democracy by introducing identification to vote at polling stations, stopping postal vote harvesting and measures to prevent any foreign interference in elections.”


My view on that list—and I think it is the view of almost everyone in this Committee—is that there is indeed an issue of postal vote harvesting, and we do indeed need measures to prevent foreign interference. I do not believe that the challenge of voter ID is a significant risk in the British electoral system and I do not think anyone has presented any evidence that it is; nevertheless, it is clearly within the framework set out in the Government’s manifesto and we should respect it.

So my amendment tries to do two things. First, it adds some more photo IDs to the current list of photo IDs—such items as the student identity card, the 18-plus student Oyster photocard and the national railcard. I am trying to add, as far as possible, to the list of photo IDs.

But the amendment goes further than this. It includes other documents that are not photo IDs. Here, I am very influenced by the second document, to which I pay almost as much attention as the Conservative manifesto; namely, the report by my noble friend Lord Pickles. In his important report Securing the Ballot, recommendation 8 says:

“The Government should consider the options for electors to have to produce personal identification before voting at polling stations. There is no need to be over elaborate”—


we hear the authentic voice of my noble friend there—

“measures should enhance public confidence and be proportional. A driving licence, passport or utility bills—

I emphasise “utility bills”—

would not seem unreasonable to establish identity. The Government may wish to pilot different methods. But the present system is unsatisfactory; perfection must not get in the way of a practical solution.”

So, at the stage at which my noble friend produced his report, which has been widely cited throughout the debate on the Bill, he clearly envisaged that it should not be just photo ID.

The Minister, in his response to the earlier debate, took us through the subsequent process, where there was piloting of a range of measures, and said that the pilot with photo ID had strengthened security the most. I accept that point. The question is, to what extent is security the key consideration? Given that voter personation is such a minor problem compared with other genuine issues around security, going for maximum security by requiring photo ID to tackle a problem that is not itself a major issue in our electoral system seems to me to be disproportionate compared with the disadvantages of photo ID. That is why I am trying, within the spirit of the report of my noble friend Lord Pickles and the Government’s own election manifesto, to provide as long a list of documents as possible, so that we will not face that challenge of people who are legitimately entitled to vote finding that, because they do not possess an ID, they are turned away from the polling station.

18:15

I am very aware of the experience in Northern Ireland. Of course, Northern Ireland has distinct problems and we cannot just read across from Northern Ireland to the rest of the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland began with a longer list of documents and, in the light of experience of continuing problems with voter personation, in 2003, I think, went specifically to photo ID. It seems to me that that would be a reasonable approach here: namely, we start with a long list of documents and, if the Government ever had evidence of a significant problem of voter personation, because large numbers of people were turning up with utility bills that were bogus, and we therefore needed to crack down on this novel and hitherto unexpected abuse, it would be absolutely understandable and they would have the powers in this legislation to delete some items from this list. It seems sensible to start with a long list and then, if in the light of experience it proves that there is, for the first time in English electoral history, significant abuse in the form of voter personation, at that point we could move to a shorter list and delete some of the items.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

The noble Lord is implicitly saying that he does not regard the Conservative Party manifesto as extending to photo ID. Indeed, there is a very good reason for not regarding it as extending to photo ID, because it does not say “photo ID”. It is all very well for the Minister to say that he intended it to mean that, but, as I know from having piloted controversial legislation through this House, when it comes to invoking the Salisbury convention on matters of first-rate constitutional importance such as this, what the manifesto says is absolutely crucial.

His proportionate principle is that we should start from a long list. Just from quickly scanning Amendment 80, it looks to me as if about half the items on his list do not require photographs; they give the identity of the person but not the photo. That would seem to me to be exactly the kind of position which this Committee should take—and insist on, if need be—to see that the Government’s manifesto commitment is introduced in a proportionate way and not in a way that is likely to have serious deleterious consequences.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

Well, it will be up to the Committee to decide. I very much hope the Minister will be able to provide some welcome to my amendment, because it is certainly drafted in a way that is intended to be consistent with both the Conservative manifesto and the important report from my noble friend Lord Pickles.

I shall end by painting a picture of a scenario which several noble Lords opposite have hinted at. It is a scenario that concerns me; I think it is unlikely, but it is possible. It is that we go into the next election and in the course of election day we have, for the first time in British political history, a significant number of voters being turned away from polling stations on the grounds that they do not possess a photo ID. We would then have an election won—and I hope it will be an election won by my party—by a party with a small majority, including quite small majorities in a range of marginal seats. We will find ourselves in an extremely difficult political and constitutional crisis if people are saying, “This is an election where a Government has won by a very small majority after we have seen, for the first time on our TV screens, voters being turned away”. I think that would be catastrophic for trust in our electoral system, and everything that we agree in this Committee must be proportionate, given that there are, in the background, risks such as that. I therefore hope that, within the spirit of the Conservative manifesto, it will be possible for the Government to accept my amendment.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, I will ask a question specifically addressed to his amendment. By the way, I wholly commend the thrust of what he is trying to do with the amendment and his incredibly bipartisan remarks about our constitution. I looked through his list on the basis of what I readily have to hand myself. Did he ever consider the simple bank card, as opposed to bank statements, mortgage statements et cetera? I understand that he is trying to make the list as broad as possible. For myself, I find the debit card or whatever the most ubiquitous and quite a sensitive form of identity. I would favour it over, for example, a cheque book. I cannot remember the last time I wrote a cheque.

[Lord True (Con)]

I wrote one yesterday.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I make no comment about that, but people increasingly use debit and credit cards. They carry them around on their person. In fact, some people now use their phones for everything. People are paperless even in relation to their statements and so on. I wonder whether that was something the noble Lord considered, because I am so with him in the thrust of what he is trying to achieve.

[Lord Willetts (Con)]

I take that point; this is not the perfect list. Indeed, there is a rather different agenda behind it. I shared at Second Reading my concern about lower rates of participation in voting and the difficulty of voter registration, especially for younger voters. It is odd that a Government driving forward a digital reform agenda in so many other areas are not doing so in this one. I believe in modernisation; I think digitisation is coming. It is very odd that we are not taking the Bill as an opportunity to introduce it in the electoral register. I also do not believe in lots of red tape and disproportionate burdens from it. By adding to the list, I am trying to reduce the amount of red tape as a barrier to people legitimately voting in elections.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to support the amendments to which I added my name: Amendment 80 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Willetts—he made a very strong case for the amendment, possibly modified to take account of what my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti said—and Amendment 78 in the name of my noble friend Lady Hayman. Again, my motivation in supporting these amendments stems mainly from my concern that the photo ID requirements will disproportionately exclude marginalised groups, including people in poverty and members of the GRT communities, who are also less likely to apply for a voter ID card, to some extent for the same reasons they do not have photo ID in the first place. The additions suggested by the noble Lord are much more likely to be held by these groups. For me, that is the key test: are these forms of identification that members of marginalised groups are more likely to have?

The noble Lord quoted the Pickles report. I will repeat the quote, because he rather rushed over it and it is worth emphasising:

“perfection must not get in the way of a practical solution.”

My fear is that perfection is getting in the way of not just a practical solution but, as I have said, inclusive democracy and citizenship. I am yet to hear a convincing justification for why this should be accepted as a proportionate response to the supposed problem of personation. Again, the noble Lord spoke eloquently about that.

I am also unclear why the Government are so opposed to a vouching system, as proposed in Amendment 78—they made it very clear in the Commons that they are opposed to it—not least given the fact, as my noble friend Lord Collins pointed out, that the Electoral Commission has supported the idea. Once again, it smacks of a worrying lack of trust in the electorate.

Finally, once again, I welcome the commitment to continued consultation with civil society groups to maximise accessibility for those most likely to need to apply for a voter card and/or who will find it most difficult to apply. Once again, will that include groups working with people in poverty and GRT communities? Will it include those who bring the expertise of experience to the table? That expertise will be of particular value in this context: who will know better what will work, or not, about applying for a voter card than the people who will make those applications? I am grateful to the Minister for promising last week to send me a list of those being consulted, but I would welcome an answer to this specific question about whose expertise will be taken into account in rolling out these provisions, because it is quite important.

[The Lord Bishop of Coventry]

My Lords, I offer your Lordships an apology for not being able to contribute to Committee for all sorts of reasons, but I said at Second Reading that I would support amendments that introduced mitigating factors to reduce the risk of unintended exclusion, particularly for that group of people the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, referred to: those on lower incomes. There is real risk that that could happen through this immediate introduction of photo ID.

That is why I was very glad to add my name to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, which, as he said, seeks to widen the forms of photo ID available and extend the list to include other forms of ID that do not include photographic ID. I was going to make similar points to say that the amendment is consistent with the approach taken in the local council pilot scheme in 2018-19. As has been said, it is entirely consistent with the earlier report from the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, and the gradualist introduction, if I may put it that way, of photo ID in Northern Ireland.

It seems that the purpose of the amendment is to reduce the risk of people living on lower incomes—a significant proportion of whom we know do not possess the acceptable photo ID—being disfranchised, which is my particular concern. That would simply be a form of non-recognition, which would be a moral injury to them and an injustice that would damage the UK’s traditions of democratic participation. The amendment seems to follow the logic of the inclusion of 60+ Oyster cards and blue badges, allowing for greater accessibility to particular groups of the electorate by making provision for those on lower income and other potentially marginalised groups to retain the highest chance of inclusion in the democratic process.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 63 to 69 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, to which I have added my name. I was surprised that we had a very long debate on Clauses 1 and 2 standing part but there was very little mention of any concern about the impact of this change on the overall turnout in elections, and the potential skewing of election results. I was delighted to hear the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, focus on elections that might be quite tightly fought with quite close results. You really might question those results, particularly in those constituencies where you might have a very tight result.

Before today, it struck me that this is really the big issue: there does not seem to be an issue about trust in our elections, certainly in relation to people who turn up at polling stations. I understand that there has been a problem with postal votes, but this reform does not touch that at all. I do not get it; I do not understand why there is this tremendous focus on photo ID for people who go to polling stations.

18:30

Of course, this will affect disproportionately people from BAME communities, people living in poverty, disabled people and so on. Without wishing to make a party-political point in any way, the reality is that all those groups disproportionately tend to vote Labour, if they vote at all. At this stage of the game, when we see our voter turnout dropping over time, the emphasis should surely be on doing anything we can to increase voter turnout, in particular among groups that are disinclined to bother to vote—the groups I have just mentioned.

I think it was the Minister who said that if somebody turns up without ID they can come back later. I was involved over the years in many elections, and my experience is that people have a way of doing it: they vote on the way to work and then forget about it, they vote on the way back from work or they vote after having taken the kids to school. The idea that people are going to come back to a polling station a second time seems to me to be something from cloud-cuckoo-land; people just do not do that, in my experience, and will not do that. This will have an impact on turnout and, in my view, in marginal constituencies and closely fought elections—there could be a really serious issue here. That is my main concern.

It is worth noting that Voice4Change England, for example, a BAME organisation, is so concerned about the impact of Clause 1 on BAME communities that it is urging us to challenge the clause as a whole. My view has been that, because some version of this is in the Conservative manifesto, we cannot expect to knock it out, but I am delighted to hear today—I was not familiar with this—that the Conservative manifesto does not actually refer to photo ID. So that at least enables consideration of the points from the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, about extending the types of ID you can bring along. It is excellent that we can at least go that far.

The Runnymede Trust points out that many people from black and minority-ethnic groups are not registered to vote or do not have photo ID—nothing surprising there. It points out that trust in the political process is at a low ebb at the moment. I do not think there is any lack of trust in people being honest about who they are, but there is obviously a general malaise or apathy about voting.

Three major civil rights groups in the US have pointed out that in the absence of evidence of widespread election fraud, such ID systems have a harmful impact. Again, where is the evidence of widespread election fraud? We went over that lots of times during the Clause 1 stand part debate, so I will not go on about it. The fact is that that is not the issue; the issue now is voter participation, particularly among certain groups.

I hope noble Lords will bear with me as I touch on one other aspect. I draw attention to Amendment 68, which proposes that on page 67, at lines 11 and 12 of paragraph 2 of Schedule 1, new subsection (9) should be deleted. Once again, I declare my interest as a member of the Delegated Powers Committee. I want to extend my concern more broadly to the delegated powers in paragraph 2 of Schedule 1. The fact is that much of the electoral ID process is left to regulations. New subsection (9), for example, says:

“Regulations may require an electoral identity document to include other information.”

What other information? We have no idea. It could be devastating if you have to provide a whole raft of information. New subsection (3) is even more concerning. Here we are told that:

“A registration officer must, in accordance with regulations, determine an application made to the registration officer”

for an electoral ID. I hope that the Minister, if he cannot respond to the concern about what on earth that means, can ensure that the Government will take seriously the Delegated Powers Committee’s concerns about the extent of delegation across Schedule 1. Maybe he could ask his officials to try to include more information about the whole ID process in the Bill. Without that, we have very little idea about just how serious this may prove to be.

In the light of the concerns expressed by other noble Lords and our own very real fears about the consequences of the ID system unless heavily adjusted, I hope the Minister will think again and take advantage of the many proposed amendments in this group, which seem to take us as far as we can go towards some sort of level playing field.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I agree with almost all of the previous contributions. I wish I had joined in on the previous group, but I was not here for all of it—although I certainly feel that I was. The debate covered a lot of the territory that we are going to talk about now.

For clarity, the Green Party opposes the whole premise on which the Government build their case for requiring voters to present ID. There is no real voter fraud. It is no good to keep bringing up Tower Hamlets, because that argument has been demolished already. This will disfranchise the most marginalised people in our population. It is voter suppression; there is absolutely no doubt about that.

Suppose we pretend for a moment that the Government are sincere in wanting to reduce election fraud. If that was so, they would accept a lot of the amendments in this group—for example, Amendment 64. Why on earth should that not be included? The Government could be absolutely clear by putting it in the Bill, so that we know exactly what they are thinking. Why not accept Amendment 78? If somebody has voter ID, they are accredited, so why should they not support somebody else who might have forgotten their ID?

I do not do anything where I have to show ID, although I know the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, says that she has to show it for a lot of things. The last time I was asked for ID was when I used my passport. I do not do anything that needs ID and there are a lot of people like me.

Personally, I think this is Trumpian and Putinesque. We have heard a lot about integrity and trust. I spoke to the Minister about the Government we have at the moment, our Prime Minister, No. 10 and the Cabinet Office, who quite honestly do not understand what integrity is about. They are happy to take money from dodgy Russian donors and happy to break the rules when it suits them. So please do not talk to us about integrity and trust on something like this, when it is clear that it is going to stop some people voting. That is a bad thing.

Of course, we did not hear an answer to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Grocott. Why are the Government so exercised about this when they have an 80-plus majority? Surely it should be this side of the Chamber that is concerned about voter fraud. The Government are bringing forward some terrible legislation. We sit here and listen to the Ministers—I have a huge amount of respect for most of them—and I just do not understand how they can back this Government. They are a terrible Government, with terrible ideas, and this is another of them.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to return to what the Minister said in the last group, because it is going to be of great importance as this House proceeds with the Bill. I totally and completely refute his proposition that the Bill in its current form is covered by the Salisbury convention. My contention, which I will elaborate at greater length in future if need be, is that something as significant and of such great constitutional import as a requirement on all voters to have a wholly new form of photo ID is not covered by the Salisbury convention. What is covered is the requirement that there should be some form of voter ID—that is why I would not support the removal of Clause 1 in its entirety—but not photo ID. That is a fundamental distinction. Indeed, the conflict between the Blair Government, of which I was a member, and this House, which led to the loss of a substantial part of the ID cards Bill, was precisely that this House contended with a significant majority that there was not sufficient manifesto cover for the proposition being put forward.

I say this very directly to the Minister now, because I think this is going to be a very significant issue in due course. It is going to be particularly important that my noble friends on the two Front Benches of the Labour and Lib Dem parties—I am speaking to them as much as to the Minister at this point—do not fall for the argument that, simply because this Bill has come from the House of Commons and has photo ID in it, and because it is asserted that it is covered by the Salisbury convention, it is covered by the Salisbury convention. It is a particular tradition of this House, which goes to the heart of the constitution, that the occasions on which we are prepared to assert our power against the Government where they do not have manifesto cover particularly relate to constitutional issues, where we have a special role as guardian of the constitution to see that one particular party cannot gerrymander it at will, claiming a general manifesto commitment for something that specifically has a very big impact.

The noble Lord, Lord Willetts and I—I hope he does not mind me saying that he and I are old friends—both approach public policy from a fairly centrist perspective, applying rationality and so on. Not only was his speech on Amendment 80 brilliant and very compelling but he went to the absolute heart of this issue in his analysis of the distinction between the Government claiming that their manifesto contained, and gave a mandate for, an identity document requirement, and it being a photo-identity document requirement. Those are two fundamentally different propositions. The proposition that they are fundamentally different is made by the content of Amendment 80 itself, because although the noble Lord did not deconstruct his amendment, I have had time to deconstruct it since he moved it.

In Amendment 80 the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, lists 21 forms of personal identification. By my calculation, only five of them are necessarily photo IDs: driving licence, student ID card, 18+ student Oyster photocard, National Rail card and, I assume, the Young Scot National Entitlement card, because young people’s documents require photos. Of the other 16, only another three may—and I think it depends on who the issuing authority is—require a photo: a trade union membership card, a library card, and a workplace ID card. That varies very much between local authorities and trade unions, and so on. All of the rest are non-photo ID documents: birth certificate, marriage or civil partnership certificate, record of a decision on bail, bank or building society cheque book, and, and, and.

The noble Lord from the Conservative Benches made the argument that this is completely consistent with the Conservative Party manifesto. That point will be of huge importance as the House takes forward consideration of this Bill, passes amendments and then gets into what I assume will be—is very likely to be, if there is time in this Session; the sand is going through the hourglass quite rapidly—a significant standoff between this House and the other place. I have no doubt at all that not only is it within our powers but it will be our duty to resist the mandatory introduction of photo ID requirements. I suspect that Amendment 80 may well be the fundamental amendment that we take forward in some form in later stages of the Bill.

I will quickly deal with Amendments 78 and 64. We have dealt with Amendment 64, and I hope the Minister will be able to give us satisfaction on it. It is an absolutely crucial point. It is not enough for it to be possible to apply at the same time; it has to be a requirement that people can apply at the same time, or else it will become a matter of postcode lottery across the country as to whether you can apply for your identity document at the same time as you apply to register to vote.

One point that has been made which we have not debated enough is covered by Amendment 78. When I first came to the Bill, not being an expert in the evolution of the Government’s thinking, I thought that they were going to propose that people needed to turn up at the polling station with some form of ID. I thought that that alone was going to be off-putting. It never occurred to me until I read the Bill and heard what they were doing that not only were they going to have to turn up with some form of ID but it was not even sufficient for them to have an existing photo form of ID. Over and above that, even if you were going for a photo ID requirement—which, as I said, is not even covered by the Conservative manifesto—surely it would be proportionate for you to turn up with your passport or driving licence that is an existing form of photo ID. What is the great security risk of saying that people can turn up at a polling station with a passport or a driving licence? Why on earth can the Government not regard that as adequate?

18:45

What is, in fact, happening—it is very clear—is that the Government have erected an obstacle course to make it as hard as possible for people to get this identity document. The thing I am slightly mystified by, as someone who has some understanding of electoral politics, is that noble Lords have said that there is some kind of Conservative plot in this. My own view is that there might have been one in the construction of the commitment, but if you look at the demographics of the electorate today and how it is voting, this is going to misfire badly.

Many of the demographics that I think will be most affected by this were some of those who voted disproportionately Conservative last time. This is not like the United States—people have talked about Trump and all that—where particularly getting voters of colour off the register is seen to be a straightforward partisan act by Republicans against Democrats. What is going to happen as a result of these requirements is the dissuading and off-putting of people from taking part in elections who may actually be even-minded in their support between the two parties. This may be a catastrophic misjudgment, not just in terms of the impact on our elections but even in terms of the Conservative Party’s own interests. We may be doing the Conservative Party a huge favour, even in its own narrow electoral interest, by not allowing itself to engage in this act of self-mutilation.

My final point—which we will come back to time and again—is the point that I started to develop in my earlier speech but which the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, took head on in his speech. He said that the effect of this on confidence in elections could be catastrophic—that was his word. I agree with him that it would be so if, at the next election, there are huge numbers of people who are turned away from polling stations either because they did not have the right ID or because they did not turn up with it. The Minister said they could come back later. Lots of people vote in the last hour or even in the last minutes of elections. If they are turned away, they will not have time to go and get it, even if they had the inclination to do so. That will do more harm to the integrity of British elections and the reputation of our electoral and democratic system than anything that applies at the moment.

This is not a small issue. There are some issues that come before this House that are either of second-rate importance, which we have to deal with, or, if they are not of second-rate importance but are of first-rate importance, the Government have so clear a manifesto commitment to it that we have no choice but to give way. This is one of those issues that is in three categories at one and the same time. It is of major constitutional import, it could do very significant damage to the integrity of our democracy, and it is not covered by the Salisbury convention. That is why we are building up to a significant conflict between the two Houses on this issue, unless the Government are prepared to accept that there is a big difference between photo ID and some other form of ID. That goes to the heart of Amendment 80, proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

The noble Lord made a thoroughly compelling speech, as did the noble Lord, Lord Willetts. As he is from my side, so to speak, I point out that I have a more fundamental objection than he does to a compulsory ID of whatever kind for our citizens. Because he has been supportive—to some extent, I am tempted to be of the approach of the noble Lord, Lord Willetts—can I put to him the question that I tempted the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, with earlier? If we are looking at safeguarding on the face of the primary legislation some categories that we believe will be accessible to people, but also looking at broadening these categories so that no one is deliberately or accidentally disenfranchised, what about simple debit cards?

I am playing devil’s advocate against myself because I spoke against clause stand part, but I am playing the game and trying to be constructive. It seems to me that there would be two tests—would there not?—for broadening the types of identification that we would put on the face of the legislation so that people could relax as we go forward.

The first test would be that this is documentation—a card, or whatever—that is ubiquitously available, and people have it already. Therefore we would not be putting in too many hurdles or obstacles. People have it already; ideally, they carry it around rather a lot, and it is not buried away in the attic or some other place so safe that it would be annoying to go looking for it. The second test would be that it is a reasonably secure document or object. Otherwise, if it is too easy to forge with a photocopier, what is the point?

If I am right about those two tests of security and broad availability, it seems to me that the simple banking card comes first on both criteria. It is, by definition, a very secure thing. That does not mean that it cannot be forged or stolen, but it is so ubiquitous—and used by people daily—that if someone loses it or it is pinched, they will report that immediately. They will not fail to notice that their bank statement, which was sitting on the doormat for three weeks, was lifted by their flatmate—if we really think that is going to happen. The bank card is very secure and is treasured by people, it is in ubiquitous supply in the broad community, and it is taken everywhere, whether to vote or not. There are also all sorts of incentives to protect its security. I put that to my noble friend, as I did to the noble Lord, Lord Willetts—and of course I am putting it to the Minister as well. If we are really serious about saying that this is nothing to do with putting hoops and hurdles in people’s way, why would this not have been thought of at the very outset?

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My noble friend makes a compelling point, which is really a point for the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, as he constructs that amendment that I very much hope he will bring back on Report, having taken account of this debate.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I shall dial down the rhetoric a little here. First, I want to pick up what the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, said with great conviction —that it was beyond the wildest imagination that this could be a deliberate attempt at voter suppression. The Minister made the same point in responding to an earlier group. The Committee owes it to both of them to take that in good faith. So I shall move on and say that I also take in good faith what the Minister has said at least twice during our proceedings, which is that he rejects the concept of the precautionary principle. I shall make an assumption, based on a fair amount of evidence—although that is not collected from these debates in particular—that he is also against the gold-plating of legislation.

I shall speak particularly to Amendment 80, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts. All the other amendments in the group have great merit and require careful consideration by the Minister, but Amendment 80 is what has attracted my attention for further comment. Incidentally, I was originally going to say that I did not believe it encompassed parliamentary passes—but I notice that item (q) in the list is “a workplace ID card”, so possibly we may qualify under that. It would be ironic, would it not, if a busy Member of Parliament seeking re-election, dashing to the polling station at 9.55 pm on realising that they had failed to vote, was turned away because their parliamentary pass was not sufficient identity to get into the building? I see that I am going to be intervened on by another noble Lord, who, like me, has a pass that does not qualify him to vote—but that is a separate issue.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

The point is that the MP would be turned away, because that pass does not mean that someone can turn up and vote. The pass is an accepted document with which someone could apply for a photo electoral ID card. If the noble Lord tries to turn up at the polling station at 9.55 pm with his parliamentary pass he will get very short shrift, because the Government will not regard it as a secure document.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

The noble Lord makes an interesting point. At the 2017 election, when I was present at the normal polling station that I attend, I had some difficulty in preventing the polling clerk issuing me with a ballot paper. He was not deterred by the fact that I was disqualified by virtue of my membership of this House. I assure your Lordships that I rejected his tendered ballot paper—“tendered” with a small “t”, obviously.

The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, made a powerful point on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, and his report. He referenced the Pickles report recommendation 8, and further parts of the report have also been read into the record in this debate. Recommendation 8 said that there was no need to be over-elaborate, and utility bills would do. My two years of junior ministerial office were in the then Department for Communities and Local Government, whose Secretary of State was the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, and I am pretty sure that, unless the noble Lord has changed his tack very considerably, he will remain fundamentally opposed to gold-plating. He was an enthusiastic pursuer of the red tape challenge, which was designed to reduce the amount of legislation and regulation, and I do not even have to consider whether he would regard the spending of £180 million on fulfilling his report as a sensible use of public money, or proportionate. I do not even have to imagine whether he regards the present arrangements as over-elaborate. I am sure that in due course the noble Lord will speak for himself. No doubt he is wisely keeping out of the way at the moment, but at some point, when his memoirs are published, we shall get to the truth.

The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, talked about which demographic would be hit the most. We can debate that, but there is clearly a proxy, which has been mentioned already. Some parts of the population do not have bank accounts. I would just say to the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, that for them, adding a credit or debit card to the list would not help. People who do not have bank accounts, and therefore do not have bank cards, are people who are very likely to be unable to produce evidence of other things either. But they nearly all have utility bills, and that seems to be a route that the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, recommended to the Government when he drew up his report.

The Minister should remember his own first principle, which is “No precautionary principle: don’t do anything unless there’s evidence to show it is needed”. There is no evidence to show that this is needed. His next principle is “Don’t gold-plate”—and he should remember the red tape challenge. The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, has provided the Government with the solution they are looking for, which would allow them to say to whoever they have to give an account to, “We’ve fulfilled our manifesto pledge, and we have a scheme that doesn’t strip out electors and reduce their propensity to come along and vote”. I support all the amendments in the group, but Amendment 80 ought to be the foundation stone for the Government to do a diplomatic and nuanced U-turn.

19:00

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak first to my Amendment 66A and, in so doing, I draw the Committee’s attention to my entry in the register, particularly my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I see this as what I call a “two Ps” amendment: a probing amendment about the practicalities of what the Government are suggesting. I thank Solace, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives, for the wide and helpful briefing that it sent about this. It is important that we consider this briefing, because many of those chief executives are the returning officers in constituencies up and down the country.

The briefing talks about the impracticality of suggesting that the voter ID card can be applied for and supplied if people apply by 5 pm on the day before the poll takes place, which, as it points out, is inconsistent with every other form of voter application—whether it be for a postal or a proxy vote—unless it is a medical emergency. We talked about the practicalities of Northern Ireland and it is also inconsistent with Northern Ireland, where this is not allowed to happen until 5 pm on the day before the poll.

It is impractical because it places extra burdens on those administering an election at their busiest time: the week before the election. Anybody who has seen what happens in an electoral office a week before an election will understand that the administrators are already under great pressure to ensure the security and integrity of the election. To suggest that people can turn up until 5 pm on the day before the poll to seek one of these voter ID cards is impractical. The Government’s impact assessment suggests that 50% of people will apply by post and 50% will apply in person. It states that the closer you get to an election, the more people will apply in person. So people could be trying to sort out postal votes and ensuring that the ballot boxes and everything else are in place with queues of people seeking this ID.

In this respect, the Government’s impact assessment is detailed. It suggests that the cards will take approximately five to 10 minutes to produce, assuming that everybody has the things that they need to produce one. It suggests that there be one machine per constituency, which I think works out at just over two on average per local authority.

It is inconceivable that this requirement is practical. So I ask the Minister: why was the stipulation of 5 pm on the day before the poll selected; why is it not consistent with Northern Ireland; and, specifically, what discussion took place with Solace and other returning officers, who would have pointed out that this was impractical? If the Government did consult those who administer elections, what advice came back on the practicalities of delivering this?

I will now speak to some of the other amendments, particularly weighing in with my support for those to which my noble friend Lord Rennard has put his name. I will talk specifically about Amendments 64, 68, 78 and 80.

On Amendment 64, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has mentioned on a number of occasions, it is absolutely vital that when people register to vote, they should be able at the same time, as an automatic right laid down in the Bill, to apply for the voter ID card. I see no practical reason why that should not happen. There is no practical reason why returning officers, Solace or anybody else who administers elections would say that is not consistent. So what would stop the Government allowing that to happen as an automatic right and including it in the Bill?

Amendment 68 is important because it comes back to the powers of the Secretary of State, which we have talked about a lot. The Secretary of State could, by decree, by the stroke of their pen, decide what documentation is or is not available. I shall come in a second to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, which is really important. I see no reason for that provision.

Amendment 78 is also important. The noble Lord, Lord True, has on many occasions referenced Canada having voter ID. It is absolutely not true to say that to vote in Canada, you have to have voter ID. If you turn up without voter ID, there is a system called vouching. Somebody can vouch for you, if they have some ID, to say that you are the person who you say you are and they vouch for your identification.

I see no practical reason why that should not happen if this clause stands part of the Bill. It is sensible, it is not unknown across the world, it is practical and it happens. In Canada, it does not happen significantly, but it happens. As many people have said, if somebody turns up without their voter ID at 9.55 pm with their spouse, friend or loved one, I see no reason why that person could not vouch for them.

The Minister mentioned people turning up to a polling station and being asked to return, as he was. For some people, that is impractical. If you work 12-hour shifts and are going just before you start work, you cannot turn back. For people with childcare responsibilities, it may be impractical or impossible to do that. That is why, if you turn up without your ID but with somebody else who has some ID, vouching on the Canadian system should be allowed. I see no reason why it should not. It does not undermine the integrity of the ballot. Somebody who has the appropriate ID could vouch for somebody who has not whom they know. There is then a way of checking, if there is personation by the second person, who the person has vouched for—but there is no evidence in Canada that that actually happens.

I come to the most powerful and important intervention in the debate on this group, which was from the noble Lord, Lord Willetts. He made it very clear as a member of the Conservative Party who sits on the Conservative Benches exactly what was in both the 2017 and the 2019 Conservative manifestos: that voter ID would be required. Neither manifesto used the word “photographic”. That is key in terms of the Salisbury convention and the Conservatives being able to carry out their manifesto commitment. In terms of providing extra ID, the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, showed a practicality and pragmatism that I would expect his Front Bench to replicate. If not, the cat is out of the bag. The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, is trying to make it as easy as possible, if this provision comes in, for people to exercise their democratic right to vote.

If the Government, from the Front Bench, refuse to accept that mandatory photographic ID is not required to vote, then they will be saying that they will be making it as difficult as possible for people to exercise their vote. This is the litmus test. We must all listen to the answer to this particular set of amendments.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, not just for his amendment but for making it very clear that the Conservatives would be carrying out their manifesto commitment without introducing photo ID.

[Lord Desai (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I shall make a very short point about Amendment 80. The noble Lord should look carefully at whether many of these indicators are male-oriented. Women do not have their names on documents such as mortgage statements and utility bills. It would make more sense to have one particular card, as the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, suggested. It would be personal, in the name of the man or woman.

I want to add that I have my Freedom Pass in London. It is a very good thing. I could show it around.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, again I thank all those who have spoken in the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, outside what he imagined to be the walls of Jericho, sounded a very loud trumpet call to lead his Front Bench into a battle over the Salisbury convention. I will not pursue this. It is for everybody in the House to decide to what extent the opinion of the other place and the Government’s manifesto should be respected or not. I made a statement about that at the beginning of our proceedings.

I was asked about the card and the words “is or has”. I shall come to this shortly because it is important. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, that any voter who does not have one of the forms of identification listed in the Bill will be able to apply for a voter card. There is a wide range. I know that my noble friend Lord Willetts wants to extend it. The card is supplementary. All the other types of identification are listed. Expired identification will also be permitted. Not every elector will be required to have the voter card. People will be able to apply for it at the same time as they register to vote, so the process will be as easy and accessible as possible. If they are already registered and need a voter card, they will be able to apply online, on paper or in person. It is our ambition that they will be able to do so until 5 pm on the day before polling day. That was challenged by the noble Lord, Lord Scriven. I will come back to it. The Government would regard that as unnecessarily restrictive.

I am not a parliamentary draftsman, but I am advised that the wording,

“is or has applied to be”

is there because, on the wording of Amendment 64, it could be construed that someone who is applying should be able to get it. You obviously have to be on the register to get the voter card. Either you are on it, or you have applied to register. You send your letter or your online application in. With both applications, the process will be that the registration officer will check the correctness of the application to register. When someone is on the register, they will be able to have the voter card. It is sequential, but the application can be done at the same time. This is the purport of why these words are there.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

The Minister has been extremely helpful on this point. An extremely important statement has been made from the Front Bench. To close the point completely, in the regulations that the Government are going to produce, will the Minister undertake that this will be made an explicit requirement of all electoral registration officers? Making available the facility to apply for both at the same time is not just something that they can do; it is something that they must do.

19:15

[Lord True (Con)]

Certainly, I would hope and intend for that to be the case. I am not writing the regulations personally. I am not the Minister in DLUHC which administers this. I shall certainly pass on the views of the Committee. I reassure the Committee that this is absolutely in the spirit of making life simpler for registration officers. It is certainly the Government’s wish that people should be able to do this. It is not necessarily their intention that everyone should get a voter card—only those who need one. All the other types of identification currently listed in the Bill will be accepted.

Of course, we have undertaken extensive engagement with the electoral sector about this, including with Solace, with civil society organisations, and with those representing the kind of groups to which the right reverend Prelate referred. This is a rolling engagement in order to inform them of the proposals, to gather feedback on the plans and to identify ways to ensure our implementation plans are clear, comprehensive and inclusive for all electors. This engagement continues as officials refine implementation plans. They will be listening to what is said in your Lordships’ House, with a focus on exploring many of the aspects that noble Lords have raised, such as the needs of particular groups and the best ways of communicating.

New Section 13BD is worded specifically so that a person does not have to wait until a registration application has been determined before applying for the card. They can do both at the same time, but they have to be on the register first. In practice, this means that the applications can be put in at the same time.

I turn to the specific amendments. I have partly addressed Amendment 64. I understand precisely where the noble Baroness is coming from. I fully accept that she was quite right to raise that point. I hope that I have been able to give some reassurance.

We do not believe that Amendments 65 to 69 are necessary. They provide for powers that are already in the Bill and make suggestions that are already part of the policy, although not ones requiring legislative definition. I set out some of the policy intentions earlier. They were clearly stated in the voter identification policy statement, published on 6 January.

On Amendment 65, new Section 13BD(10)(a) enables the Government to make provision about the form of a document, including digital. I note that this probing amendment says that it should be in digital form.

On Amendment 66, new Section 13BD(4)(b) enables the Government to make regulations about how cards will be issued, including by post and so on and so forth. We will make sure that this is in the record. I fully accept that these things need to be covered.

Amendment 67 asks about date of issue. The card would have a date. New Section 13BD(9) is about the power to make regulations on what information will be on the document. The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, is not in her place. The additional kinds of information referred to in that section of the schedule is precisely to allow for something like the date or name of the issuing local authority. They will have different local authority names, so one cannot have a single card. These are the kinds of additional points. In reply to Amendment 68, spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, it is certainly envisaged that the date of issue of the card will be on it.

I thank the noble Baroness again for putting forward Amendments 70 to 73. For noble Lords who are not sure which amendments I am talking about, these are probing amendments concerning the arrangements that will be in place for anonymous electors. I can certainly confirm that officials have carried out extensive engagement with various civil society groups that highlighted their interest in anonymous voting arrangements. This is important. In developing the clauses, an extensive consultation has also been carried out with the AEA on how we could make the provision work effectively for anonymous voters.

I assure the noble Baroness that we share a joint aim. There may be a relatively small number of people here but they are very vulnerable, important people. We share a joint aim that those who rely on anonymity—including some people who have been subjected to the most vile abuse and violence imaginable—will not be negatively impacted by the changes. The Government recognise that there are electors who need to register and vote anonymously for a variety of reasons; I have referred to the kinds of circumstances in which other vulnerable electors may not wish for their name or location to be available on the register.

Anonymous electors who wish to vote in person at a polling station will be able to apply for an anonymous elector document, which will enable effective verification of identity while also protecting the voter’s anonymity. We believe that the changes proposed by Amendments 70 and 71 might undermine the objectives of the voter identification policy. Removing the photograph from the anonymous elector document, for instance, would make anonymous electors, often some of the most vulnerable members of society, potentially an easier target for anyone seeking to commit fraud.

Amendments 72 and 73 propose regulation-making powers relating to the application process for anonymous elector documents and to the exact materials used in the manufacture of those documents. The powers that Amendment 72 provides for are already in the Bill. I have not been advised on which particular clause but I will let the noble Baroness know; I did say to my faithful team, who are absolutely wonderful, that it would be helpful to the House if I were able to give details of clauses when responding. For the reason I have given, the Government do not think that taking an inflexible approach to the production of documents, as set out in Amendment 73, is desirable. With those assurances, I ask that those amendments are not pressed.

Amendment 78 would introduce an attestation process for those without necessary identification. This was given very considerable thought by my colleagues during policy development. However, there is a risk that, if someone brings another elector to the poll, these provisions could be exploited by unscrupulous individuals and might allow a ballot paper to be issued to a person who claims to be somebody else, or who is ineligible to vote in an election. The issues are balanced but we have concluded that any form of attestation would be an unacceptable avenue for this kind of fraud, undermining the core aim of promoting electoral integrity; so, after reflection, it is not something that the Government can support.

As I said earlier, photographic voter identification is, in our submission—and as agreed by the Electoral Commission—the most secure way to prove that someone is who they say they are. On Amendment 66A from the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, our aim is that electors without accepted photographic identification will, as he says, be able to apply for a voter card from their local authority until 5 pm the day before polling day. The noble Lord wishes to have a cut-off date four and a half days earlier. We do not, on the basis of our discussions, think that that is desirable or necessary. Given the great importance that the Committee rightly attaches to the ability to vote, we would like to be more liberal in our approach to making the voter card more readily available. Agreeing to restrict the amount of time for which it was available would not be a step forward; I therefore ask the noble Lord not to press that amendment.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

Will the Minister clarify one issue? Why is the provision to allow an application up until 5 pm on the day before the election considered to be consistent with Northern Ireland? It is not consistent with Northern Ireland. when speaking to electoral officers, what factors suggested that having those extra four days would make it practical to deliver this in the way that the Government are suggesting?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, we believe on the basis of our discussions that it is, and should be, practical. Whether or not you agree with the policy, it should surely be desirable that the card be made available up to the latest possible moment.

Amendments 79 to 81 relate to the range of identity documents; my noble friend Lord Willetts came out with a very long list. As I said on the previous group, the list of acceptable documents in the Bill was drawn up against the widest possible range of documents that would meet strong standards of security. That is the conclusion that we have reached. The Electoral Commission said that photo-only identification had the greatest security value but, as I said on the previous group—and it is there on page 81, lines 24 and 25 of the Bill—other documents may be added. However, for the reasons of security that I gave on the previous group and give again, we do not believe that the list should be extended in the way that my noble friend suggests, and we therefore cannot support this amendment.

We also see little merit in Amendment 63—which I should have referred to—proposing an annual statement from the Secretary of State on numbers of documents issued. Only individual local authorities will have the complete set of cards issued, as they will not be issued centrally. When the Electoral Commission does the post-operative examination of what happened, I am sure that it will consider those figures.

On Amendments 83 and 84, I am pleased to say that, as set out in paragraph 22 of Schedule 1, we already intend that returning officers, through their polling station staff, will record and collate information on anyone who applies for the issue of a ballot paper and is refused. This will be set out in secondary legislation, and we are working on the details with the Electoral Commission and returning officers. Of course, the polling station will already have informed the person concerned that they have been refused a ballot paper and why, so we think that a letter is an unnecessary further step. As I said, secondary legislation will cover this point.

In the light of this, these amendments would ultimately either duplicate or extend processes which are provided for in the Bill—making them either unnecessary or unacceptable to the Government—while only increasing the administrative burden on the electoral sector; for example, an enormous list of documents might do that in itself. For this reason and the other reasons mentioned, I beg that these amendments are not pressed.

I gave a long response, as this is quite a large group. I hope that I have managed to address at least the main points that were made.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

The Minister is making important new points in his closing remarks that are of significance to the Committee. He has drawn our attention to new paragraph (IQ), inserted by paragraph 18 of Schedule 1, on page 81, which says:

“Regulations may make provisions varying paragraph (1H), (1I) or (1J)”,


which give the list of acceptable documents,

“by … adding a reference to a document to any of those paragraphs”.

He has just said to the Committee that that could allow the Government to extend it to any other documents. My reading of that is that it could allow for the extension to a document which is not a photo ID document. Have I correctly construed that new paragraph?

19:30

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the Government’s policy position is clear. I will probably get wrapped over the knuckles as I may not have construed the Bill correctly because of feeling hungry at 7.29 pm. If I did not then, once we come back, I will correct the record. Certainly, the provision is there. As I said in my speech on the previous group, if the Government consider that there are other documents which can meet the security standards required—some photographic documents currently do not and are therefore excluded—then that is why we were taking that potential power in the Bill. Regarding the type of document, the Government’s policy remains as stated. We are for photographic identification.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sorry to labour the point, but can the Minister write to us on this? It is one thing for him to say what the Government’s policy is but what the law says is another. The issue here is whether that power would require documents which are added to be photo ID documents or whether they could be any other item on the list by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, in his Amendment 80. I am offering the Minister a possible way out in due course for accepting the noble Lord’s amendment by the back door.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this lengthy debate, and the Minister for his detailed responses. I am sure that there are areas of these amendments that we will return to on Report but for now, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 63 withdrawn.

Schedule 1: Voter identification

Amendments 64 to 73 not moved.

Amendments 74 to 77

Moved by

[Lord True]

74: Schedule 1, page 72, line 12, leave out from “to” to end of line 19 and insert “a relevant provision.
(1A) For the purposes of paragraph (1)(b), “relevant provision” means— (a) where the person is or will be registered in a register of parliamentary electors in Northern Ireland, section 10(4A)(b), 10A(1A)(b) or 13A(2A)(b), and(b) where the person is or will be registered in a register of parliamentary electors in Great Britain and does not also fall within sub-paragraph (a), section 8(7A) of the Representation of the People Act 1985.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment clarifies the requirement relating to preparation of date of birth lists for polling stations in Northern Ireland, so far as that requirement relates to date of birth lists for proxy voters.

75: Schedule 1, page 74, leave out lines 23 and 24 and insert—
“the form must include details of the documents the voter needs to bring to the polling station, namely—(i) in the case of an elector (other than an elector with an anonymous entry) or a proxy, any of the forms of identification for the time being referred to in rule 37(1H);(ii) in the case of an elector with an anonymous entry, the elector’s official poll card and an anonymous elector’s document showing the same electoral number as the electoral number shown on the official poll card.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment ensures that, in inserted paragraph (3ZA) for rule 28 of Schedule 1 to the Representation of the People Act 1983, the reference to rule 37(1H) catches documents listed in rule 37(1I) and (1J) of that Schedule (as amended by the Bill). The amendment also makes separate provision about the details to be included in poll cards sent to electors with anonymous entries.

76: Schedule 1, page 74, leave out lines 39 and 40 and insert—
“(a) details of the documents the voter needs to produce when applying for a ballot paper, namely—(i) in the case of an elector (other than an elector with an anonymous entry) or a proxy, any of the forms of identification for the time being referred to in rule 37(1H);(ii) in the case of an elector with an anonymous entry, the elector’s official poll card and an anonymous elector’s document showing the same electoral number as the electoral number shown on the official poll card, and”.Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment amends inserted paragraph (4A) for rule 29 of Schedule 1 to the Representation of the People Act 1983 by requiring the large notice displayed inside each polling station in England, Wales and Scotland to contain information about the relevant proof of identity requirements for electors with anonymous entries as well as for others voting in person.

77: Schedule 1, page 77, line 24, after “Britain” insert “and does not also fall within sub-paragraph (a)”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is consequential on the amendment in Lord True’s name at page 72, line 12.

Amendments 74 to 77 agreed.

Amendments 78 to 81 not moved.

Amendment 82

Moved by

[Lord True]

82: Schedule 1, page 80, line 37, leave out “current”
Member’s explanatory statement
The definition of “electoral number” in the inserted paragraph (1L) of rule 37 of Schedule 1 to the Representation of the People Act 1983 means that the word “current”, in the inserted paragraph (1K), is not needed. This amendment therefore leaves it out.

Amendment 82 agreed.

Amendments 83 and 84 not moved.

Schedule 1, as amended, agreed.

House resumed. Committee to begin again not before 8.15 pm.

Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities

Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

Statement

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Thursday 17 March.

“With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a statement on our work to tackle ethnic disparities and to build a fairer, more inclusive Britain for all.

In April last year, I came before this House following publication of the report by the independent Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, chaired by Dr Tony Sewell. I return to the House today to announce publication of our response to that report and to outline our new Inclusive Britain action plan.

The Sewell commission was established by the Prime Minister in response to the protests that we saw throughout the summer of 2020. It was tasked with carrying out a deeper examination of why disparities exist and considering how we can reduce them. The commission published its findings on 31 March 2021, making 24 recommendations in all, focused on health, education, crime and policing, and employment. The result was a ground-breaking report that set out a new, positive agenda for change. It provided an important contribution to both the national conversation about race and the Government’s efforts to level up and unite the whole country. I take this opportunity to again thank the commissioners for their tireless efforts and the invaluable contribution they have made to helping us better understand this complex and multifaceted policy area.

The Government fully endorse the findings of the Sewell commission and our action plan is based largely on its recommendations. Its report conclusively showed something which I, and indeed honourable Members on all sides of this House, know to be true: disparities do persist in the UK and racism and discrimination continue to shape people’s experiences. However, it also showed that most of these racial disparities are not driven by individual acts of prejudice committed by people behaving, either consciously or subconsciously, in a racist way. What the report’s analysis shows is that, for the most part, negative disparities arise for reasons not associated with personal prejudice. That is why so many disparities stubbornly persist even in this progressive age when there has never been such an acute awareness of racism and so much action and policy against it. All of this underscores the importance of moving beyond gestures and soundbites, to look in depth at the evidence and to challenge many of the deeply held assumptions about race and ethnicity that exist within our society.

The response we have published today, Inclusive Britain, presents a clear strategy to tackle entrenched disparities, promote unity and build a more meritocratic, cohesive society—a society in which everyone, irrespective of their ethnicity or cultural background, can go as far in life as their ambition will take them. The response sets out over 70 actions to level up the country and to close the yawning gaps between different groups in education, employment, health and criminal justice. In many of these areas, we have gone much further than the commission envisaged to ensure that our action plan is as ambitious as it possibly can be.

The UK is a multi-faith, multi-ethnic, multicultural success story and we believe that many of our greatest strengths derive from the diversity of our population. One only has to look at our brilliant NHS—one of the largest and most diverse employers in Europe—to see the benefits of being an open, tolerant and welcoming country. However, it would be naive to say that tolerance and inclusion are the universal experiences of everyone who lives here, so our action plan seeks to right these wrongs with three clear aims: building a stronger sense of trust and fairness in our institutions and confidence in British meritocracy; promoting equality of opportunity, encouraging aspiration and empowering individuals; and encouraging and instilling a sense of belonging to a multi-ethnic UK that celebrates its differences while embracing the values that unite us all.

One of the most basic, but also one of the best, ways to build trust is to ensure that every individual in our society knows that they will be treated fairly and will not be discriminated against on the basis of their ethnicity. We will continue to work with the Equality and Human Rights Commission to challenge race discrimination through investigations and supporting individual cases. We will hold social media giants to account for the vile and racist abuse that is allowed to propagate on their platforms. Our ground-breaking Online Safety Bill will force those companies to comply with a tough new regulatory regime, and if they fail to act then the Bill will allow us to issue hefty fines of up to £18 million. These fines could be even heavier for the big operators failing to take down racist posts and racist accounts. We will also tackle unfair pay through new guidance to employers on how to assess and address their ethnicity pay gaps.

To improve the way in which stop-and-search powers are used by the police we will strengthen scrutiny arrangements so that local communities are able to hold their police forces more effectively to account. We will strive towards the goal of ensuring that police officers and members of the judiciary better reflect the people and communities they serve.

To tackle persistent ethnic disparities in health outcomes, our new Office for Health Improvement and Disparities will even the playing field in access to good-quality care, with measures to be set out in a White Paper this spring. We will place particular emphasis on maternal health disparities, including identifying and driving change through our new maternity disparities taskforce. We will also tackle misleading information that can undermine trust in our public services and the institutions delivering them. This work includes encouraging more responsible and accurate reporting on race issues in the media.

The second strand in our action plan is to promote equality of opportunity, encourage aspiration and foster personal agency. Over the last decade we have made great strides in widening opportunity and giving more people from all backgrounds the chance to fulfil their true potential, but there is still more to do and we are fully committed to removing the barriers that are holding people back.

That starts from birth. We know that a strong start in life, and a stable family support system, can make all the difference. That is why we will invest £200 million in expanding the supporting families programme and £300 million in transforming start for life services and creating a network of family hubs so that children can grow up in a loving, stable and nurturing environment that fosters creativity and learning. This funding also means that families in desperate circumstances will receive the dedicated support they need to turn their lives around, find well-paid jobs and ensure that they and their loved ones can live happy and healthy lives. Indeed, we have asked the Children’s Commissioner to ensure that such services put the needs of children at the heart of everything they do. We also want to see more ethnic minority children adopted by loving parents who can give them everything they need in life to grow and flourish.

Members across this House know that access to high-quality education from an early age will set a child up for success later in life. While some ethnic minority children outperform their white British peers, that is not the case for every ethnic group, so we will look to level up pupil attainment by understanding what works best to drive up standards and bridge the attainment gaps for good.

We are providing the biggest uplift to school funding in a decade—£14 billion over three years—and supporting children to catch up on what they missed during the pandemic, and we will drive up the quality of education outside mainstream schools. Our forthcoming schools White Paper will focus on improving literacy and numeracy standards for the most disadvantaged pupils. We will also continue to invest in what works for pupils, improve access to apprenticeships and demand better transparency from our higher education providers so that all prospective students know there is a wealth of options open to them.

While promoting and celebrating diversity is hugely important, it is ultimately meaningless if people do not feel a sense of belonging or inclusion. That is why the third strand of our action plan is to instil a sense of belonging in those who feel that they are treated differently, left out or left behind because of their colour, class or creed. No child should grow up feeling alienated from the society in which they live. They should know that this country is proud to call them citizens of our United Kingdom and that that applies to every individual who chooses this country as their home irrespective of whether they were born here. To foster that sense of belonging from an early age, we will work with a panel of experts, historians and school leaders to develop a model history curriculum to help pupils understand the intertwined nature of British and global history and their own place within it.

When those children grow up and enter the workplace, we want to ensure that they do not experience some of the biases and unfairness that they do today. To that end, we are appointing a new ‘inclusion at work’ panel to help employers drive fairness across their organisations. The panel will develop a wide range of new and effective resources that employers can use so that they move beyond unverified, low-quality training materials and create a more meritocratic place to work. That is complemented by a new ‘inclusion confident’ scheme to provide employers with the tools to overcome barriers to in-work progression and improve retention of their ethnic minority staff. Finally, in the fields of science, innovation and medicine, we will ensure that new technology, including cutting-edge medical equipment and artificial intelligence, is harnessed for good and not inadvertently biased against ethnic minorities.

It was right that we took the time to consider carefully the commission’s findings. The breadth and scale of our action plan shows that we have put to good use the time since the report was published, but we have not stood by and waited to publish our response before taking action. We began to implement the commission’s recommendations even before the report was published, including moving the Social Mobility Commission into the Cabinet Office. We have also published new guidance on how to write about ethnicity while moving away from use of ‘BAME’, and our recent levelling-up White Paper draws on the commission’s findings.

So much work has been done, and I am grateful to all those who have helped us get here. I thank officials for their support in the race disparity unit—Summer Nisar in particular. I also thank Bryony Bonner in my private office and the special adviser Daniel El-Gamry, as well as Munira Mirza, formerly of No. 10.

Inclusive Britain sets out a clear and comprehensive action plan to tackle ethnic disparities, level up communities and build a stronger, fairer and more united country. I will return to the House in 12 months’ time to report on the progress we have made in delivering those actions.”

19:33

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the Statement and give it a partial welcome, 12 years into this Government. A year ago, the independent Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities published its report, which within hours was unravelling. It has been discredited by many prominent experts and individuals.

As my honourable friend Taiwo Owatemi MP said in the Commons:

“If both the Sewell report and the strategy fail to identify the root causes of racial and ethnic disparities, how can either possibly hope to tackle them? That is why the strategy was always going to be hopelessly ineffective and short-sighted, and that is why it will fail to deliver for black, Asian and minority ethnic communities.”—[Official Report, Commons, 17/3/22; col. 1073.]


The answer that she received from the Minister there was that:

“A rhetorical trick is happening around this question.”—[Official Report, Commons, 17/3/22; col. 1075.]


Perhaps the Minister can explain why her Government find it so hard to accept that we still have a country where there clearly is discrimination and that racial disparities are the result of historic, endemic and still existing structural racism. Unless we accept that and build from that understanding, both individually and organisationally, we will not solve the terrible racial disparities, many of which are described in the original report.

Although I partially welcome this statement, it is based on the wrong premise. It has some good ideas but quite a few half-baked ones. Let us take employment, for example. It has failed completely to implement mandatory ethnicity pay-gap reporting, despite repeated calls from the CBI, the TUC and the Labour Party to do just that. Unlike with gender pay gaps, there is currently no legal requirement for UK businesses to disclose their ethnicity pay data. Will the UK Government follow the recent recommendation of the Women and Equalities Committee and introduce mandatory ethnicity pay-gap reporting by 2023, including urging employers to publish a supporting action plan?

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has previously called for mandatory reporting, similar to the rules in place for the gender pay gap, to apply to all large employers. Commenting on the Government’s decision not to adopt mandatory reporting at this stage, Ben Willmott, head of public policy at the CIPD, said:

“The Government has missed an opportunity to tackle racial discrimination and inequality in the workplace by failing to introduce mandatory ethnicity pay reporting. Unfortunately, we know from previous schemes that a voluntary approach will not help drive the changes that are needed in many organisations.”


For example, if the pay gap is non-existent at entry level but significantly skewed at more senior levels, that can help inform the areas of focus. Employers might decide to, for example, invest in mentoring, with a focus on supporting particularly under-represented groups to progress, or in assessing the progression path to interrogate and root out baked-in bias. The TUC recently warned that insecure work is tightening the grip of structural racism in the labour market, with ethnic minority workers overrepresented on zero-hour contracts. Will the Minister urge the Government to introduce the long-awaited employment Bill to tackle zero-hour contracts?

Health, with a long section in the report, brings one of its major suggestions: for the establishment of an office for health disparities, to look into the issue and to work alongside the NHS to reduce differences in areas such as healthy life expectancy, and the propensity to develop some conditions. There are two issues regarding the NHS, and I declare an interest as a non-executive director of a health trust who has been on the workforce race equality course in the last month or so.

One issue is health inequalities, most starkly demonstrated in the pandemic in the unequal way that it affected and cost lives in our ethnic minority communities, but we know this to be the case over a whole range of health matters. How does the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities intend to change this? What levers will it pull to create the culture change and the investment change which will be necessary? The other issue is employment, concerning the treatment and promotion of ethnic minority employees in the NHS. White applicants are 1.6 times more likely to be appointed from shortlisting, compared with BME applicants. This figure has got worse in the last year or so.

BME staff are 1.6 times more likely to enter formal disciplinary process compared with white staff. The number of BME board members in trusts has increased —we should be very pleased about that. The workforce race equality indicators used in the NHS, which are very powerful tools indeed, will have a significant impact over a period of time. What they say relating to perceptions of discrimination, bullying, harassment and abuse—and on beliefs regarding equal opportunities in the workplace—is that they have not improved over time for BME staff.

It is astonishing that there is so little reference to policing in the Minister’s Statement. It was the actions of the police in the United States which sparked the protests here and led to the commissioning of the Sewell report. Trust and confidence in policing are absolutely fundamental to communities feeling safe and secure, and for addressing disadvantage and racial disparity in every other area of life. What action will the Minister take in the action plan to address a transformation in the culture of our policing which so desperately needs to address racial disparity? The report says that it wants to

“bridge divides and create partnerships between the police and communities”.

Will the Minister explain how she thinks that we can possibly bridge that divide when black schoolgirls are being strip-searched? Is she aware that this is not an isolated incident? The Metropolitan Police’s own figures show that, in 2021, 25 young people under 18 were strip-searched. Most were black or from other ethnic minorities. Some 60% were black, and only two of the 25 children were white.

The Conservative Government have had 12 years to act. Instead, they have failed to deliver and failed to acknowledge the genuine reasons for racial and ethnic disparities in Britain today. Britain and its communities deserve better.

[Lord Dholakia (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for this Statement. There is progress is some areas of disparities, while questions arise on other matters which need clarification. The first major question relates to the Covid pandemic and the Government’s disregard for the disproportional impact on ethnic minorities. Many workers have lost their lives. The pandemic showed how heavily we depend on our diverse communities to serve our NHS. Will the Minister commit to including the impact of the pandemic on ethnic disparity in the terms of reference for the Covid inquiry?

I had to enter a local hospital for a procedure recently, and throughout the seven days I was there I did not meet a single white person. All the services were provided by minorities from various parts of the world. How can we adequately thank them—instead of criticising their appearances as postboxes, as the Prime Minister once said? The actions set out by the government plan do not go nearly far enough to create a more inclusive society. They kick the can down the road on most issues with the creation of new strategies and frameworks in the years to come.

The new framework for stop and search will not build trust between the police and the ethnic communities they serve, unless they end suspicionless stop and search due to its disproportionate impact on minorities. On policing, I was shocked to hear from some crime commissioners that they do not intend to appoint additional police officers. Underrepresentation of police in recruitment, retention and promotion still remains a concern after over 50 years. This is not going to help the adversarial relations between the police and black communities. It is a shame on our police that a young, black student was stripped and searched intimately last week. How are the Government to put these matters right? The Government must be held to account for their actions.

It is worrying that the Government have set out an action plan to tackle inequality based on recommendations from a commission which concluded that there was no systemic racism in Britain. The Inclusive Britain strategy, published on Wednesday evening, was developed in response to a controversial report by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities last year. The commitments in the action plan include revamping the history curriculum for schoolchildren, a cash injection for school pupils who have fallen behind during the pandemic, and clamping down on online racist abuse through new legislation. On this, we do not need to look far: simply examine a football match on a Saturday afternoon to see how much we hate the extent of racism which is perpetrated on football grounds, and the action taken by many football players by taking the knee.

Moreover, I understand that the Department for Education will invest up to £75 million to deliver a state scholarship programme for students in higher education. The Government aim to improve maternal health outcomes for ethnic-minority women, a disparity which experts have linked to systematic racism. I trust that the Minister will have answers to some of these questions.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Stedman-Scott) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, and the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, for the points they raised. I will try to deal with them as best as I can, one by one. I thank the noble Baroness for her limited support for the report. The report has, in many cases, gone down well. There are clearly things with which people do not agree, and we are listening to them. Should any noble Lord have anything which they would want to write to me about the report, I will give an undertaking to discuss it with the Minister in the other place, Kemi Badenoch, and get back to them.

The noble Baroness asked me about structural racism. I cannot rule out that some organisations in the UK may be institutionally racist. Of course, that is why we are funding the Equality and Human Rights Commission to strengthen its investigative work. I also believe that the term should be applied based on evidence. Often, the causes of racial disparity are complex, and not rooted in discrimination or prejudice. As the commission said, they did not find clear evidence for it in the areas it examined. This does not mean that people do not experience racism, but institutional racism is deeper, and we need evidence to say that it is there. I understand that there are structural reasons why some ethnic groups have better or worse outcomes than others. The new strategy aims to deal with those root causes.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, raised the issue of the ethnicity pay gap. We are publishing guidance to employers on voluntary ethnicity pay reporting by summer 2022. No one should have to worry about why they are not being given the same opportunities as their colleagues. Ethnicity pay gap reporting is one of the tools which employers can use to build transparency and trust among their employees. It may not be the most appropriate tool for every type of employer seeking to ensure fairness in the workplace. It is also a complex measure and can be affected by many factors—meaning that it is easy for the data to be misinterpreted or misunderstood. We want to help those employers who want to use ethnicity pay gap reporting to ensure that their approach allows for meaningful comparisons to be made between employers. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has extensively consulted with experts and employers to identify these issues. We will be using this consultation, and robust evidence, to design a trustworthy reporting system which helps employers to identify causes of pay disparities. However, we reserve the right to introduce legislation at a future point, if and when the reporting tools are sufficiently developed, effective in driving positive change and accessible to more businesses.

The noble Baroness asked me why we had not mandated ethnicity pay reporting. A meaningful pay gap reporting standard for ethnicity will necessarily need to be very different from the one for gender reporting—which uses just two categories and we were discussing last week. We will not be legislating for mandatory reporting at this stage; rather, we will support employers with voluntary reporting. However, we reserve the right, as I have already said, to introduce legislation at a future time.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, talked about the NHS Race and Health Observatory, which found widespread ethnic inequalities across a range of health services, with some communities found to have particularly poor access, experiences and outcomes. Why are the findings in our report so different? We welcome the NHS Race and Health Observatory’s examination of health disparities in the UK today. The Government are committed to reducing unacceptable disparities in health outcomes and experience of care, including by ethnicity, many of which have been further highlighted and exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Department of Health and Social Care will publish a health disparities White Paper later this year, which will set out impactful measures to address ill health and health disparities, so that a person’s background does not dictate their prospects for a healthy life ahead of them.

We got to the point of asking about low trust in police among the ethnic minorities, particularly among young people. Recent events have raised serious issues with the police, and it is right that the Government ask those difficult questions to drive positive change. The Government, with policing partners, remain committed to driving forward good progress and improving trust in policing and crime. Our police are more diverse than ever before. Forces have worked hard to improve community engagement and we have seen major improvements in how the police deal with racist crimes, but we know that there is more to do. That is why attracting more officers from a wide range of ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds is a core ambition of our drive to recruit an extra 20,000 officers. The government response to CRED, along with wider activity being delivered across government and policing, remains vital to ensuring that we create safer streets and neighbourhoods for all our community. Our plan is to improve training to provide police officers with the practical skills that they need to interact with communities. That is a matter for the Home Office and, if there are any particular questions that noble Lords would like me to raise with the Home Office, I am happy to do so and report back.

Both the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, and the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, raised the issue of the outrageous case of a black 15 year-old Hackney schoolgirl who was strip-searched. I cannot comment on this case, as I am not familiar with its details, but it raises issues of serious concern, and I shall raise them with my ministerial colleagues in the Home Office and the Department for Education. I believe that there is an Urgent Question tomorrow, when noble Lords will have the opportunity to put their questions to my noble friend the Minister at the Home Office. Let me be absolutely clear: the behaviour of the police in this case was totally unacceptable. The Metropolitan Police apologised on Tuesday for the child’s truly regrettable treatment, and it is vital that the IOPC concludes its investigation into this case and that any findings are acted on swiftly.

The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, raised the issue of the Government being committed to an inclusive Britain, when the powers of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill are used in a discriminatory manner against ethnic minorities. These powers are not discriminatory. When making use of public order powers, the police must ensure that their use is balanced, proportionate and in line with human rights and equalities legislation. Through their training, authorised professionals practise continuous personal development in the police to strive for their management of any protests getting the right balance. The Home Office, again, has conducted an overarching equalities impact assessment for the Bill to consider the impact the measures will have on those with particular protected characteristics.

The noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, raised the point about the impact of Covid-19 on ethnic minorities. On 3 December 2021, we published the final report to the Prime Minister on progress to address Covid-19 health disparities. The report summarises government work to address those disparities since the end of May 2021 and considers the Government’s overall approach to tackling Covid-19 disparities since the review commenced in June. Thanks to our award-winning analysis and new research, backed by more than £7 million in government funding, we now have a much better understanding of the factors that have driven the higher infection and mortality rates among ethnic minority groups. To reduce the health disparities we have seen during the pandemic, the Government will accept and implement the recommendations from the final Covid-19 disparities report.

Stop and search is one of the many vital tools used by the police. It is very important that it is used proportionately and not in any discriminatory way. The police will continue their training to understand how best to use that tool, which in some cases is quite appropriate.

19:55

[Baroness Warsi (Con)]

My Lords, for all the criticism that this report has rightly faced about its findings, many of which are flawed, I tentatively welcome parts of it, not least because it has among its stated intentions a clear acknowledgment that the Government must build trust and a sense that every individual in our society must be treated fairly. As the report says, we must acknowledge failings, improve actions, behaviours and systems that led to the loss of trust, and the Government and other stakeholders must do so with honesty and transparency.

In this spirit, can my noble friend explain why, despite the Government’s commitment to adopt a definition of Islamophobia, they have failed to adopt the APPG cross-party, non-legally binding, agreed definition, which has been adopted by all political parties, including the Conservative Party in Scotland, local authorities, universities, the NUS, charities and numerous other organisations? It is supported by over 800 British Muslim organisations and underpinned by more than 100 academics who are experts in this area. Why is the definition accepted by large sections of the community that it seeks to protect not acceptable to government?

Why, despite promising to appoint two advisers to review the definition nearly three years ago, has only one been appointed? Even he has yet to be engaged by government or given any clarity as to his remit; he has not even been given terms or reference or any resources to support his work. I know that my noble friend will be appalled to learn that he has not even had the decency of a response to his correspondence with No. 10 and from two separate Secretaries of State. Can my noble friend therefore say how many times in the last three years a Minister has met their own cross-government working group on anti-Muslim hatred? When did the meeting last take place?

I am sure my noble friend will agree that this Government’s commitment to equality should be judged not by what they say their intention is or what they intend to do but by what they actually do.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I am grateful for my noble friend’s broad support for the report and the actions. I am alarmed by the other points that she raises about meetings and resourcing et cetera, and I hope she will allow me to take this back to the Minister and write to confirm the position.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I totally endorse the remarks of the noble Baroness—I was about to call her my noble friend, as she is my friend—Lady Warsi. It really is time that we all, on a cross-party basis, gripped the Islamophobia definition. If we do not, we are in danger of having a hierarchy of racisms in this country, with some groups feeling less represented than others. None of us wants that.

I welcome the Minister’s tone and sensitivity, as always, and some aspects of the Statement and the document that goes with it. We are told that there will be new attention to history in the curriculum, but I hope that, when the noble Baroness goes back, as she promises to do, on our behalf to her colleagues in government, she addresses the fact that some Ministers, even in the last couple of years, have said really insensitive things about the Black Lives Matter movement and even about Black History Month, which feeds the so-called culture wars but do not feed the kind of conversation that we all want to have about inclusion.

On pay and other issues around enforcement, I welcome the fact that the action plan talks about reinvesting in the EHRC in enforcement activity and having a landmark new fund of £250,000 to help victims seek enforcement. I am afraid that, legal fees being what they are, £250,000 is not enough. I suggest to the Minister that, if any form of regulation is taken seriously by the Government, there should be some centralised state and government responsibility and it should not all be left to individuals to take up cases.

Finally, on policing, I am sure we welcome what the Minister said about encouraging black and other minority police officers to join the force. But every time we create, in this House and the other place, a new, broad, draconian police power, existing biases will mean that, by accident or design, it is used to the detriment of race equality and against certain marginalised groups in particular. I welcome the Minister’s invitation to a meeting with some of us on a cross-party basis, if she would not mind.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I hope my track record speaks for itself, in that I am very happy to meet noble Lords on a cross-party basis. I am pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, is pleased with the EHRC investment. I take the point about legal fees, and of course I will discuss that with the Minister—without any promises. On the definition of Islamophobia, which the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and my noble friend Lady Warsi raised, I am afraid that we cannot accept the APPG definition of Islamophobia because we do not want to adopt a definition that would conflict with the Equality Act.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, I have two questions. How will the new community consultation arrangements differ from the Section 106 police-community consultative groups established following the Scarman inquiry? And how will the Government counter the inevitable accusations that the new geographic stop and search data will give the police the excuse they need to target innocent black people?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I will need to go back to my colleagues in the Home Office to see how the consultation will differ, and I will provide an answer to the noble Lord. On the issue of stop and search and the targeting of and focusing on young black people, that is not what we want and that is not what we are striving to do. But the question the noble Lord asked is relevant, and again I will feed that into the system, get an answer and write to him.

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for the Statement. I am celebrating that, finally, we are discussing race across all parties in this House and the other place. My noble friend said that it is difficult to get employers to put reporting on a legal footing. Maybe my noble friend would suggest that we start with the public sector, where a lot of entrants come in from minority communities but, as they progress through the organisation, they become less and less. I want to give a tiny example from my home city. I know I bang on about my home city, but it is quite relevant. It used to have better representation within the public sector 15 or 20 years ago than it has now. How do we monitor progress being made through organisations, particularly through the public sector, where people come in in large numbers at entry and then disappear when they get towards middle and top?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

My noble friend raises a very interesting question. On the issue of how we monitor the recruitment and attrition of ethnic minorities, I might start with the Department for Work and Pensions. I will talk to our HR team and see whether I can glean any information there. I know it has data, and I will be very pleased to see it. I would like to take the point about starting with the public sector back to Minister Badenoch and see what we can do.

I am pleased we are discussing race without feeling intimidated in any way. As I said on Thursday, in the International Women’s Day debate, we should be free to speak and tolerant of each other’s positions. I hope that, as the work unfolds on this action plan, which is a marathon and not a sprint, we will do it within those parameters.

[Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon (Lab)]

My Lords, the talk about race has been going on for decades now and all we seem to do is keep repeating ourselves. Reports have been published time and again, but we have not really got to the end of it. The Minister talks about having evidence; I would have thought that there was enough evidence in the Macpherson report, which came out in 1999, to show what the experience of the black community has been and continues to be—including police treatment, especially of young black men. There is enough evidence over decades on race relations between the police and the community. It is there. We do not need any more reports; all we need is to see what the Government are going to do. Actions need to happen.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I take the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence. She has every right to speak in the way she does, with the experiences she has had. Our hearts go out her, even as the years have gone on, for what she has had to experience.

In this report, we want to look back and see what we have learned and gleaned. However, as I said on Thursday, it is not what you say, it is what you do, and it is not what you promise, it is what you deliver. I had a session with Minister Badenoch before this Statement. She asked me to make it absolutely clear that she is prepared to meet anybody and hear any points that they wish to make. I know that the noble Baroness has met and spoken with her before, but the door is open. This is my first appearance at the Dispatch Box on this issue. I would like to think that I can help the noble Baroness by making sure that we do what we say.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I had the privilege of chairing the House’s Select Committee on youth unemployment last year; we reported in November. I draw the Minister’s attention to paragraphs 276 to 278 of that report, which make a number of very positive recommendations for addressing some of the issues that have been identified in the Chamber tonight.

Specifically, is the Minister aware of the report of 29 June last year from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which said:

“Second-generation ethnic minorities are achieving great success in education, but this does not translate into equal success in the labour market … they are less likely to be employed, and some … are less likely to reach managerial/professional occupations, than the white majority.”


A sentence appears in the Statement claiming that

“access to high-quality education from an early age will set a child up for success later in life.”

However, there is a lot of evidence that that is not the case. So can I draw the Minister’s attention to the recommendations, which we have not yet debated on the Floor of the House but which make a number of positive suggestions for addressing that issue?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I wholeheartedly endorse and agree with what the noble Lord says. It is crucial that we ensure everyone is treated fairly in the workplace so that they can thrive and reach their full potential. We recognise that employers stand the best chance of achieving this when they focus their efforts on effective actions that have a proven track record of improving diversity and inclusion. I have spent the majority of my life trying to get people into work, focusing very much on people from ethnic communities. There was a point when we were not doing terribly well on it, but the situation has improved. I am absolutely at one that the best education is the best way for people to get a good start in life. I know that my colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions, our work coaches, are working day in, day out to get people into jobs, to get people into better jobs and to help people have a career, regardless of their ethnicity.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I welcome the Inclusive Britain action plan, but I thought the Sewell commission struck a good balance by acknowledging that racism is a real force in the UK while avoiding framing every racial and ethnic disparity as products of institutional discrimination and systemic racism. However, that was quite controversial, and noble Lords will know that there was a backlash against it. I wonder, therefore, whether the Minister could, rather than having meetings, organise a fuller debate on this new report now so that we can discuss the action plan in some detail. There are lots of myths and misinformation; maybe we could contribute to enhancing the public debate. I was really shocked at the abuse that the original commissioners got, but only last week the University of Nottingham withdrew its offer of an honorary degree to Dr Tony Sewell, the chair of CRED, because, it said, he was too politically toxic. People were saying that he had normalised white supremacy, that he was an establishment black guy, and all that sort of thing. Can we, here, help turn this into a constructive discussion, as well as having an action plan?

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

Forgive me if I have got this wrong, and I am sure the noble Baroness will tell me, but it is up to any noble Lord to put down for a debate or raise Written Questions. So, if I may, I turn the question on the noble Baroness and suggest that she makes the running in getting a debate on this.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, I will follow on from where the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, left off and commend the Sewell commission for its work. I wonder whether my noble friend the Minister would agree that it is perhaps worth quoting directly from the Statement made by my honourable friend the Minister, Kemi Badenoch, last week. She was quite clear in saying that the report “conclusively showed something” that she and others

“know to be true: disparities do persist in the UK and racism and discrimination continue to shape people’s experiences. But it also showed that most of these racial disparities are not driven by individual acts of prejudice committed by people behaving, either consciously or subconsciously, in a racist way. What the report’s analysis shows is that, for the most part, negative disparities arise for reasons not associated with personal prejudice. That is why so many disparities stubbornly persist even in this progressive age when there has never been such an acute awareness of racism and so much action and policy against it.”—[Official Report, Commons, 17/3/22; col. 1070.]

Reflecting on that point, will my noble friend the Minister say how the Government are supporting stronger families? That seems to be important to all of us in terms of reaching our potential, and I know that it was a strong feature in the original Sewell commission report.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for her contribution. I agree wholeheartedly with the words that she read from Minister Badenoch. Family life in the UK needs to be strong and resilient, and it needs to ensure that young people grow up knowing that they are supported and cared for. This does not always happen, so I am pleased that our Government have put around £650 million—I think; do not quote me—into supporting families and, more importantly, into the family hubs and the reducing parental conflict programme, which, I hope, based on the evidence thus far, is making a huge difference to the lives of people who struggle to maintain good family relationships.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, may I draw the Minister’s attention to the very end of this report, on the impact of AI and algorithms? Action 72 says that the Government will address

“potential racial bias in algorithmic decision-making.”

The only word I would disagree with is “potential”, because there have been some shocking examples, such as in facial recognition technologies, where the algorithms used and the data that is fed to set them up has been overtly racially biased. May I invite the Minister to tell the House a little more about what the Government intend to do in this area? I think they are going to need expert help. Would the Minister, for example, consider contacting the Council for the Mathematical Sciences, which is an umbrella body comprising a range of different mathematical experience and expertise? In the world in which we live now and the algorithms which in great part determine our lives, the potential for racial bias is enormous, and I invite the Government to take the advice that will be needed to fix that.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I thank the noble Viscount for that question. I did not catch the name of the council that he referred to, but if he could let me have that afterwards, I will certainly pass it on. The space of decision-making algorithms and AI is fast-moving, and they are increasingly embedded in all our lives. Greater understanding and transparency from those building these systems is crucial to ensure that the public trust the decisions being made. Our first priority is understanding what it means to improve transparency in the use of AI. We want to build the most trusted AI governance system in the world. We also want to ensure diversity of thought and experience in the sector, as this is the best way to avoid in-built bias. To achieve this, up to £24 million of funding is being put towards attracting early career talent into digital and tech roles.

Elections Bill

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Monday 21st March 2022 Lords Chamber

Committee (4th Day) (Continued)

20:16

Clause 2: Power to make regulations about registration, absent voting and other matters

Amendment 85

Moved by

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock]

85: Clause 2, page 1, line 10, at end insert—
“(2) Before laying before Parliament any regulations under Schedule 2, the Secretary of State must provide the legislation in draft to any committee of either House of Parliament which the Secretary of State deems relevant.”

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, my Amendment 85 is about providing legislation in draft to any committee of either House of Parliament which is deemed relevant by the Secretary of State. The reason for tabling this amendment is the same as in previous debates: with very little pre-legislative scrutiny, we really need to see the detail of the legislation ahead of debate. So, this is about seeing that legislation in good time so that we all know exactly what the expectations are and what detail is going to be provided.

The other two amendments are about private renters and private tenants. I briefly draw the House’s attention to some analysis published by the Mayor of London’s office in 2019 which demonstrates that private renters are less likely to register to vote and so are missing the opportunity for their voice to be heard at national and local level. City Hall analysis of the electoral roll and housing in London found that boroughs with the highest number of private renters had some of the capital’s lowest levels of voter registration.

That analysis is backed up by national estimates from the Electoral Commission which show that 94% of owner-occupiers are registered to vote, compared to just 63% of private renters. The reason for this seems to be that many private renters move home frequently, often due to insecure tenancies. Across London as a whole, 25% of households were privately renting at the time of the most recent census and only 86% were registered to vote, which is a lower rate than other areas. One of the reasons for this is the stability of people in private rented accommodation.

I come back to the point that there is nothing in the Bill to help increase the number of people on the electoral register, which I think will be a theme throughout its passage. I know that this Bill is not about housing, but housing is in the same department—both areas are covered by DLUHC—so it would be good if the Minister could point out to his department that private renting could be reformed to increase stability for tenants, so that they are not constantly on the move. In that way, we could increase the number of people registered to vote and try to keep that more stable. I beg to move.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 85 in this group would require the Secretary of State to publish any secondary legislation under Schedule 2 of the Elections Bill for pre-legislative scrutiny. My officials are working at pace on the secondary legislation and it will be shared with Parliament in due course. Any legislation under Schedule 2 will be subject to the affirmative procedure and therefore will have to be laid in draft, debated and approved by each House of Parliament, thus giving opportunity for sufficient scrutiny.

Amendments 86 and 87 seek to place a requirement on the Secretary of State to publish reports and hold a public consultation on measures to increase registration levels among private tenants. I agree with the noble Baroness opposite that the high turnover in this type of accommodation sometimes raises questions. She will know that the Government are seeking to improve the position of private tenants in other legislation, but I certainly take note of her point.

Registering to vote is extremely easy and it takes about five minutes to complete an online application. Since its introduction the register to vote website has revolutionised the ability of electors to participate, with over 60 million applications to register since 2014. In the last election a record number of people registered to vote—47 million. The Government are pleased that the register to vote service has the highest available accessibility rating for a website—a triple A rating—under the web content accessibility guidelines, for those noble Lords who are particularly interested.

I should add that it is for EROs to ensure that their registers are as complete and accurate as possible. It is the Electoral Commission’s duty to promote electors’ participation in our country’s electoral events. The commission runs an annual voter registration campaign encouraging those eligible to take the short time to make an application to register. I am sure it will have taken note of what the noble Baroness has said. Supporting registration in this way is a responsibility of the commission at national level and of local authority EROs at local level. It is our role to ensure that the EROs and the EC have the tools necessary to fulfil these functions.

Therefore, it is not clear to the Government that any specific strategy to increase the registration levels of private tenants is necessary. I acknowledge the points the noble Baroness has made, and I beg her to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his response and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 85 withdrawn.

Clause 2 agreed.

Amendments 86 and 87 not moved.

Amendment 88

Moved by

[Lord Hayward]

88: After Clause 2, insert the following new Clause—
“Evidence of full name
In Rule 6 of Schedule 1 to the Representation of the People Act 1983 (nomination of candidates), in paragraph (2)(a) after “full names” insert “, as evidenced by a birth certificate or passport”.”

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, this is a small group of technical amendments, and I will speak to Amendments 88 and 91 first. When I quoted Richard Mawrey of the elections court on Tower Hamlets earlier today, I referred to Mr Kabir Ahmed. He had actually changed the spelling of his name to ensure that it was impossible to trace him from his previous electoral background from one borough to another. It is not a common case. I checked with the AEA, and it said there was no requirement that people should use a standard name. This is a probing amendment to establish how we can go about ensuring that people validly put in genuine nominations and do not try to hide their background.

Equally, Amendment 91 concerns an anomaly which has already been dealt with by the Senedd in Wales—the use of commonly used names. It makes sense as it stands but in this regard I give credit to the noble Lord, Lord Norton, my colleague in room 23. Where somebody uses their given name, as per christening, they are not entitled to use it in terms of nomination papers. For example, Harold Wilson would not have been allowed to give his name as Harold Wilson and James Callaghan would not have been entitled to give his name as James Callaghan, because they were not “commonly known as” names but their middle names, and this is currently illegal. Therefore, all I am trying to do is to set right an anomaly which I am sure was never intended.

Moving on to Amendment 89, as my noble friend the Minister knows, during Covid we reduced the requirement for nomination signatures from 10 to two. I wrote to him on 17 January raising the possibility of extending this allowance—that we stick with two signatures rather than 10. If there are objections based on the fear that there will be large numbers of candidates because you have reduced the required signatures from 10 to two, first, it did not happen last year, and secondly, a better way of imposing a restriction would be to require a deposit rather than 10 signatures. I am dealing with these amendments briefly because I am conscious the House wants to make progress.

Of the two other amendments in this group, one deals with the curious anomaly of incorrect declarations. If, by chance, an inaccurate declaration of a result is made and the wrong person is declared elected, it is necessary to hold a by-election. That happens surprisingly regularly, virtually every year, even though people are aware of it. It is an unnecessary expense, and I am working on the basis that all parties would come to an agreement at the count that there had been a declaration error. I am conscious that even in a general election—as in West Bromwich at the last election, where we came very close to an error—incorrect declarations are regularly made. It is an anomaly that these declarations cannot be corrected at a count where all parties are in agreement. I just wanted to put on record that there ought to be a solution to that.

My final amendment in this group concerns something I touched on at Second Reading: the mess we have in electoral law, in that there are exclusions for police and crime commissioners which do not apply to local councillors, and which do or do not apply to Members of Parliament when standing for election. It seems logical to me that we should have the same exclusions for any election, not just a hotch-potch in terms of the requirements of exclusions.

I have covered the five amendments very quickly, and I hope I have done it sufficiently satisfactorily for people to understand the objectives. As far as I am concerned, most of them are probing amendments, but on Amendment 89, I really do believe that the reduction in the number of signatures from 10 to two for local government elections should continue to apply. I beg to move.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I would like to comment on Amendments 88 and 89 because for me—and I have read quite a lot of the background—I fear they represent solutions in search of a very significant problem.

Amendment 88 requires the production of a birth certificate or a passport to secure nomination as a candidate. It is not clear to me what widespread problem is being solved by this, nor what problems might actually be created by introducing such requirements. The noble Lord, Lord Hayward, has given one or two specific examples, but it seems to me that a solution which then requires every candidate to produce a birth certificate or a passport when they put in a nomination form is excessive. It is also not clear to me why a passport and a birth certificate have been selected as forms of identification but not a driving licence, which contains a name, or a national insurance number, behind which exists a name. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response, because it does seem to be a proposed solution to a problem which is not that significant.

Amendment 89 would reduce the number of signatures for local nomination from 10 to two. I understand the circumstances in which, during Covid and the pandemic, the reduction to two was wise, because there were difficulties with people speaking to each other. However, in general terms, reducing the total number of signatures to two seems insufficient for nomination to elected positions that carry substantial responsibilities. I remain of the view that 10 is a better number than two.

20:30

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, these amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, the bulk of which are new clauses to be inserted after Clause 2, relate to the administration of elections.

Amendment 88 deals with the nomination of candidates. At present, the Representation of the People Act states that the nomination papers must include the candidate’s full name. The effect of the noble Lord’s amendment would be that a candidate must provide a birth certificate to evidence this. Although I understand the noble Lord’s concerns that the process currently lacks this kind of specific identity check, there is currently a safeguard in the sense that candidates must be registered to vote, and identity checks can take place during the process of registering to vote. None the less, the noble Lord raises valid points on what checks take place on candidates, and I hope the Minister can provide assurances.

Amendment 89 also deals with nomination papers but focuses on the number of electors who must assent to the nomination. The noble Lord has the full support of these Benches for that amendment. Under the current system, regulated by the Local Elections (Principal Areas) (England and Wales) Rules 2006, a candidate must collect the names of a proposer, a seconder and eight other electors. In total, this means that 10 electors must be found.

Amendment 91 also relates to nominations but instead would have the effect that a candidate might select their commonly used name. This seems an entirely sensible step, but I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm whether this is already possible under current regulations. The Committee will no doubt appreciate that many candidates do not use their full name. For example, in Uxbridge and South Ruislip, ballot papers do not list the Prime Minister as Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

Amendment 90 has a different focus and relates to the declaration of a result. Under this amendment, where a result is incorrectly declared in local elections and there is agreement between all candidates, a revised declaration may be made. I would be interested to hear what recent examples there have been of an incorrect declaration. Although it seems entirely right that there should be a means of challenging this, we should also consider whether there is a role for the returning officer in the process.

Finally, with Amendment 208 the noble Lord draws attention to the variation in criteria used for excluding candidates for certain elections. In its guidance to prospective candidates, the Electoral Commission warns that the full range of disqualifications is complex. There would certainly be merit in increasing the understanding of those exact disqualifications. As always, I look forward to the Minister’s response to see whether he can give any assurances in this area.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, the amendments proposed by my noble friend Lord Hayward seek to make a number of changes concerning aspects of the electoral process. I thank my noble friend for his continuing engagement on and interest in electoral matters, which is respected across the House. I will address his amendments in turn. I recognise the intention behind them; the Government share his interest in clarifying and streamlining electoral regulation, but we must be mindful of the length of the changes already contained in the Bill, which has been subject to consideration. In that context, I hope he will understand if they are not all changes we can take forward in this legislative vehicle, but we will continue to work with him and others to undertake the consideration needed for the changes to electoral law separately where appropriate and where there is an opportunity to do so.

Amendments 81 and 91 concern the naming aspect of nomination rules. I understand the noble Lord’s intention to ensure there is no room for confusion for voters on the personal identity of a candidate standing for election. However, in relation to Amendment 88, I am advised that candidates are already required to state their full name in their nomination paper. I can confirm also that it is already an offence for a person to give a name in their nomination paper that they know to be false. This includes giving a name with a different spelling. We do not therefore consider it necessary to make the changes set out in the amendment. I hope my noble friend is reassured that the law already includes appropriate safeguards against candidates providing false information.

On Amendment 91, under the current law, a person who is nominated as a candidate must give their full name but may also provide a commonly used forename or surname, which must be different from any of the names already given, which they would like to have included on the ballot paper. However, this does not facilitate the use of a middle name where someone is commonly known by such a name. The suggestion of my noble friend that a middle name might be allowed as the “commonly known as” name has some merit and I remain open to further discussions on it.

Similarly, I and the Government remain open to further discussion and collaboration on the proposal in Amendment 89 for the numbers of subscribers for local election nominations to be reduced from the 10 currently required. Minister Badenoch has written to my noble friend to set out the Government’s position; we are supportive in principle, but we must remember that the decision to reduce temporarily the number of signatures required to stand for certain polls for May 2021 was taken in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. It was only ever intended to be a temporary solution and the Government have not yet consulted on or conducted research into the impact of making the change last year.

As signatures are presently seen as a necessary check—the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, spoke about this—to ensure that candidates have some level of support within the local electorate, and the policy seeks to avoid having candidates with no real hope of being elected on ballot papers, which can increase the burden on administrators and cost to the public purse, the Government wish to consult further with the Parliamentary Parties Panel and others to identify views and issues. As I say, we heard dissent from the Liberal Democrat Benches on that. This is not to undermine in any way the statement in principle made by the Minister to my noble friend, but to ensure there is careful consideration of the consequences of such a change. Subject to the outcome of that consultation, we will look to start the necessary work to put any new arrangement in place for elections in May 2023. I have asked my officials to keep my noble friend updated on progress.

Amendment 90 proposes to reform the process around incorrect declaration of results. Once a result is declared and made public, the result stands and can be undone, as my noble friend explained, only through a formal election petition process, a court process which serves as a safeguard against elections being improperly run or adversely affected by illegal activity. The law purposefully sets clear requirements and a short timeline in which to bring a challenge. I recognise that this has led to issues in the past where an incorrect name has been called out as winning a seat and then a petition was required to resolve it. Fortunately, in recent years such a problem has been addressed by the returning officer, with the agreement of candidates, correcting the initial mistake before they have finalised their declaration process, although that does not cover all the instances my noble friend was talking about. While we are sympathetic to the issues he has raised, any statutory changes in procedures for the certification and declaration of results have the capacity to have an impact on the outcome of elections. This requires careful consideration. We will consider it further, but there is no time to complete such consideration effectively within the time allowed for passage of the Bill.

Finally in this group, Amendment 208 would require the Government to consult on the variations in criteria to stand at different polls. We hold elections to a wide variety of offices and bodies in this country, which necessarily perform a wide variety of functions. Consideration is given to the criteria for disqualification of candidates on a case-by-case basis to suit the functions of the role for which the person seeks election.

There are good reasons for having different disqualification rules for different offices. For example, the rules governing who can be a candidate in police and crime commissioner elections and hold the office of a police and crime commissioner are the strictest of all those for elected roles in Great Britain, because the role is focused on direct oversight of the police, and because of the need for public trust in the management of police forces.

I am sorry to disappoint my noble friend on this, but the Government’s view is that a consultation on the requirements for standing at different elections and on disqualification rules is not an immediate priority. For this reason we cannot accept the amendment, but I can assure my noble friend that—as he knows from the engagement we have had—he has put these points on the table for consideration, and they will not be lost for consideration even if they cannot be addressed in the Bill. In the light of that, I ask him to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for his positive replies to a number of the amendments, and I apologise for the fact that, in my need for haste earlier, I did not give credit to both him and his officials for having taken the time to discuss these issues with me. I should therefore put that on the record now. In light of his broadly positive approach to the amendments —as I said, they were primarily probing amendments on technical matters—I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 88 withdrawn.

Amendments 89 to 91 not moved.

Schedule 2: Power to make regulations about registration, absent voting and other matters

Amendment 91A not moved.

Schedule 2 agreed.

Clause 3 agreed.

Amendment 92 not moved.

Schedule 3: Restriction of period for which person can apply for postal vote

Amendment 92A

Moved by

[Lord Collins of Highbury]

92A: Schedule 3, page 99, line 2, leave out “3” and insert “5”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would probe the expiration period of postal votes.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I will move this amendment on behalf of my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock. At the outset I want to make it clear that we support steps to ensure that the use of postal votes has integrity, and we want to ensure that any evidence of abuse is properly dealt with. So there are issues in the Bill on which we concur. But I will make the general point that, certainly from 2001 to 2005, when there was a push to open up postal voting, I have been on the register for a postal vote. That was mainly because my job at that time involved travelling all around the country, campaigning in other constituencies, which meant I was rarely able to vote in my own.

If my noble friend Lady Quin had been here, she would have given us some specific examples from Tyne and Wear, where used to be her constituency. She saw turnout go from an average of 20% to 50%, and she points out that eight of the top 10 constituencies for postal voting were in the Tyne and Wear area. So there is clear evidence that, in terms of engagement, involvement and trying to increase turnout, postal votes have a very important role.

That is why we want to probe a little more, particularly with Amendment 92A, on why postal votes expire after three years when Parliaments last longer. We would prefer five years, as we have put down in our amendment. I would like to hear from the Minister why the Government have set the limit at three years, and what the conditions for that are, when five years might be more appropriate. We would be pleased to hear his arguments.

The noble Lord, Lord Scriven, has raised other issues, and I want to ask again why the number of postal votes that may be taken to a polling station is in secondary legislation. If there is an issue of principle, why is that not in the Bill, rather than in secondary legislation? Those are my brief comments, in particular on Amendment 92A. We really just want to probe why the Government have set a period of three rather than five years. I hope we can ensure that postal votes remain an important feature of our electoral system.

20:45

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I wish to speak to the amendments in my name in this group, namely Amendments 96A, 96B, 96C and 96D. The Government have proposed limiting the number of postal votes a voter can hand into polling stations or to the returning officer to two. This would be specified in secondary legislation and is not on the face of the Bill in Clause 5. Secondary legislation could also require that the person must complete a form if handing in a postal vote. While we on these Benches recognise that there have been cases of postal vote fraud reported at some elections, the rationale for the limit of two has not been set out. In any case, whatever limit is specified may be easily circumvented.

Clause 5 ultimately derives from the recommendation in the report from Sir Eric Pickles—as he then was; now he is the noble Lord, Lord Pickles—on securing the ballot in 2016. It said:

“Completed postal ballot packs should only be handed in at a polling station by the voter or a family member/designated carer acting on their behalf—a limit of two should be applied for any one person handing in completed ballots and require an explanation as to why they are being handed in and signature provided.”


The justification offered in the report, that postal votes handed in on the day might be subject to less scrutiny and checking than postal votes arriving sooner, is simply inaccurate. All returning officers perform the same checks on postal votes regardless of when they are received. Placing a limit on the number of postal votes that could be handed into a polling station might be an effective tool in deterring people from turning up at polling stations with a higher number of postal votes. However, it would not stop industrial-scale vote harvesting. This is because, under the Government’s proposals, a person could still collect any number of postal votes and post them prior to polling day, although any political campaigner who did so would certainly commit an offence under the new Section 112A of the Representation of the People Act 1983 inserted by Clause 4.

It is unclear how the secondary legislation will be cast in respect of council offices, where returning officers are usually based. For example, does using a postal box in the wall of the office constitute returning by hand to the returning officer? If it does, it would mean posting boxes at council offices would have to be sealed during the election period, or a member of staff would have to be stationed at said postal box 24 hours a day in order to prevent people returning more than the prescribed number of postal votes. This would create unnecessary difficulty in delivering other items to a council. Perhaps legislation is intended to capture only the handling of postal votes, at a reception desk for example. Moreover, there seems to be no reason why someone who posts a voting pack back in a posting box at council offices should face any additional hurdle compared with a person posting in a post box elsewhere.

So Clause 5 will not prevent postal vote harvesting and could easily be circumvented. Yet the Government’s proposal will cause additional complexity and delay, for example if a form has not been filled in, or a voter turns up at an office or a polling station with too many postal votes. Potential lengthy or adversarial discussions about the fact that the postal vote would be rejected could take place.

The reason I am asking for an amendment to Clause 5 to include a limit of five and not two, notwithstanding the problems I outlined, is that it would enable family households to hand in votes more easily, as there are fewer households with more than five adult members. I also think that any limit should be set out in the Bill, rather than the Secretary of State being able to determine it in secondary legislation. I ask the Minister to clarify how these provisions will operate at council offices, where returning officers are based, and to give a justification for the limit of two, particularly in light of the fact that many households have more than two adults living there.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, these amendments investigate some of the safeguards for postal ballots introduced in the Bill. I welcome the underlying sense of the comments made: the Committee recognises that, as we move through the suite of arrangements which the Government suggest to protect electoral integrity, there is more support here than there was for the first measure.

Clauses 3 to 7 require voters to apply more frequently for a postal ballot, ban political campaigners from handling postal ballots, introduce, as the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, just explained, new limits on the number of postal ballots that can be handed in, limit the number of electors for whom someone can act as proxy and increase secrecy protections for absent voters. As has been said, all these changes implement recommendations in the report by my noble friend Lord Pickles into electoral fraud, which suggested addressing weaknesses in the current system. We submit that they are sensible safeguards against known vulnerabilities and, taken together, they will reduce the opportunity for unscrupulous individuals to exploit the process and steal votes, as we have seen in Tower Hamlets—often referred to in your Lordships’ House—but also in other locations mentioned during debates in the other place, such as Peterborough, Birmingham and Slough.

I noted the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, on her amendments and her amendment probing the expiration period of postal votes, in which the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, also expressed an interest. Currently, an elector may have a postal vote on an indefinite basis as long as they provide a signature sample every five years. The noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, has benefited from this.

The Pickles report recommended that voters should reapply for a postal vote at least every three years as a safeguard to prevent postal voter fraud. More frequent applications would not only enable EROs to regularly assess a person’s application and confirm whether they are still an eligible elector but give an opportunity for someone who was initially pressurised—that is obviously not the case for the noble Lord—into having a postal vote to break out of that situation and thus not have their vote influenced on an ongoing basis. Additionally, ensuring that electors’ details are kept up to date and that each postal voter’s signature is refreshed more frequently will reduce the likelihood that their postal vote is rejected should their handwriting change over time. You have only to ask my wife to hear how illegible mine has become in recent years.

The Government consider that the timeframe of three years still enables a person to have a postal vote for a reasonable length of time, while ensuring the person normally replies during every Parliament.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

I thank the Minister for giving way. I understand the logic he is setting out. Do the Government intend that that this three-year renewal process will also apply to overseas voters added to the list to assess their eligibility and so on?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, had the noble Lord not made a very legitimate intervention, I would have read the next sentence. While an indefinite postal vote presents a significant security concern, we must also recognise that annual applications for overseas electors goes too far in the other direction and creates an excessive burden for administrators. That was perhaps the implication of his intervention.

Therefore, in order to ensure that arrangements remain harmonious across domestic and overseas electors, we will extend the registration period for overseas electors from one up to three years and tie the three-year postal vote cycle in with the new three-year cycle for renewal of overseas electors’ declarations. Overseas electors will be able to reapply or refresh their absent vote arrangements as appropriate at the same time as renewing their declaration. This alignment between absent vote and renewal arrangements will encourage overseas electors to remain on the register.

We recognise that this means more time spent on processing by electoral administrators. To balance that, we are working to introduce an online application process. This will benefit electors and is very much welcomed by administrators in reducing handling of paper and enabling automation.

Of course, the Government recognise the importance of having transitional provisions in place for existing long-term postal voters, so under the Bill those voters will continue to be able to vote by post until either the 31 January following the commencement of the provision or, if this is sooner, the 31 January following the commencement date by which the postal voter would normally be expected to provide a fresh signature. These arrangements will ensure that the change is phased in over a reasonable period of time. Electoral registration officers will be required to send a reminder to existing postal voters in advance of the date they cease to have a postal vote and provide information on how to reapply for a postal vote.

The amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, to Clause 5 seek to prevent the powers of the clause to limit the number of postal votes that can be handed in from being used to impose any limitations on handing in via a council posting box and set a minimum of five for any limitation imposed in secondary legislation. There is significant concern that permitting a high number of postal votes to be handed in could facilitate electoral fraud and undermine the integrity of elections. This has been a long-standing issue in elections and has undermined confidence in the system. It does a disservice to many legitimate electors who make use of postal votes for valid reasons. Setting a limit on the number of postal votes that can be handed in is therefore necessary in our judgment. This clause will allow regulations to require persons handing in postal votes to complete a form giving details of the numbers they have handed in, which will help promote compliance with the new requirements and aid investigations into allegations of fraud.

However, I heard the point the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, made about the number, and his suggestion of five. We will keep his suggestion in mind as we continue to work with the Electoral Commission and electoral stakeholders on the issue as we develop the legislation. However, we will maintain the position that the permitted number should be confirmed in secondary legislation, giving time for further consultation. This is the right place for such details and allows flexibility for change should it be needed later if the figure initially established does not prove to be right in practice. I hope that with those assurances noble Lords will feel able to withdraw or not move their amendments.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his explanation. In light of those comments, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 92A withdrawn.

Schedule 3 agreed.

Clause 4: Handling of postal voting documents by political campaigners

Amendment 93

Moved by

[Lord Collins of Highbury]

93: Clause 4, page 2, line 12, after “person” insert “knowingly”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would mean that an offence is only committed if the person knowingly handles a post voting document.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I stress that this is a series of probing amendments to try to better understand the sort of guidance that might be issued and ensure that people engaged in campaigns and the electoral process are not caught out by some genuine error or mistake. I know from when I have been out campaigning that somebody will often say, “Do you mind taking this postal vote to the postbox?” or something like that. People ask for all kinds of assistance innocently, so it is really important that we do not catch people out. We have also raised the question of how families and households may operate. Again, clear guidance needs to be provided.

21:00

We know, as the noble Lord the Minister has indicated, the abuses that have taken place in terms of harvesting postal votes, forced registration in households and those sorts of things that we need to stamp out to ensure the integrity of our electoral system. In doing so, we want to make sure that we are not using a heavy hand and that people who may do something innocently are not criminalised. I hope that the Minister understands why we have tabled this series of amendments: it is to probe and get a better understanding of how we would deal with those sorts of innocent situations that should be dealt with more clearly by guidance. I beg to move.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, these probing amendments seek to test the defence for political campaigners set out in Clause 4, which bans said campaigners from handling postal votes issued to other persons. Clause 4 is designed to address activities and behaviours that have been a cause for concern at previous elections, such as the practice of postal vote harvesting whereby voters are coerced or tricked into completing their postal voting statement before handing over their papers with the ballot paper unmarked to campaigners to be taken away and filled in elsewhere.

Amendment 93 seeks to provide that a person commits an offence only if they knowingly handled a postal vote issued to another person. The clause currently provides that it is a defence for a political campaigner charged with the offence to show that they did not dishonestly handle the postal voting document for the purpose of promoting a particular outcome at an election. This Government entirely share the concern that no offence should criminalise innocent behaviour. For this reason—

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

I thank the Minister for her explanation. In preparing for this particular debate, I looked at the defence that is set out on page 2 of the Bill—I thank the Minister for reading that into the record. It further says, in new Section 112A(5), inserted by Clause 4, that

“the court must assume that the defence is satisfied unless the prosecution proves beyond reasonable doubt that it is not.”

The burden of proof there is upon the prosecution. I mention this because, as a political campaigner who quite often gets asked to take a postal vote and hand it in on behalf of an elector, it is clearly of considerable importance to know that we are—if you like—excluded from the purview of this particular offence.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I think that all of us campaigners have been asked the same question many times on the doorstep.

This Government entirely share the concern that no offence should criminalise innocent behaviour. We have been especially careful to target the wording of the new offence to ensure that it is reasonable and proportionate where somebody acts with honest intentions. For these reasons, the Government consider that the offence provisions are appropriately worded and are therefore unable to accept that amendment or the others in this group.

In fact, against the concerns of Amendment 94, new Section 112A(2) of the Representation of the People Act 1983, inserted by Clause 4, already provides that a person who handles a postal voting document for use in a relevant election does not commit an offence if they are responsible for or assist with the conduct of that election and the handling is consistent with the person’s duties in that capacity.

Amendment 95 seeks to exempt legal guardians from the offence. There is an exemption in the clause for a political campaigner, if they are close family—

“spouse, civil partner, parent, grandparent, brother, sister, child or grandchild”—

of the other person whose postal vote they are handling. Legal guardians are not included, as they do not have the relevant powers when acting for adults, and their powers are primarily to do with decisions about a person’s medical care and their finances.

Amendment 96 also seeks to change the definition of political campaigner for the purposes of postal vote handling offences to include those who have donated to a campaign. The definition in the Bill is comprehensive and includes candidates, electoral agents and members of a registered political party who carry on an activity designed to promote a particular outcome at an election. Donating to a campaign is not the same as actively canvassing. Therefore, I am not persuaded that it should be amended to such a disproportionate extent. For this reason, I beg that the amendment is withdrawn.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for her response and, in light of her comments, beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 93 withdrawn.

Amendments 94 to 96 not moved.

Clause 4 agreed.

Clause 5: Handing in postal voting documents

Amendments 96A to 96D not moved.

Clause 5 agreed.

Clause 6: Limit on number of electors for whom a proxy can vote

Amendment 96E

Moved by

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock]

96E: Clause 6, page 9, line 7, at end insert—
“(2) Schedule 4 must not come into force until the Secretary of State has made a statement to Parliament on the impact on people with disabilities.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would probe the impact of proxy vote limitations on people with disabilities.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I have tabled Amendments 96E to 96J. Similar to the last group, these are probing amendments on the proposals for proxy votes. During the progress of the Bill, the Government have given a number of instances to demonstrate where proxy voting has been abused in the past. It was notable in the PACAC oral witness evidence that Helen Mountfield QC said that, in her view,

“It is uncontroversially a good thing to stamp down”


on people holding multiple proxy votes. PACAC agreed with the Government that it is sensible to limit the number of proxy votes that can be exercised by individuals to two for domestic electors and four for overseas electors.

My Amendment 96G is the same kind of probing amendment on proxies as that just spoken to by my noble friend Lord Collins on postal votes. What happens if somebody accidentally voted on behalf of four or more electors, without appreciating that this was no longer allowed? It is just about ensuring that people are given proper guidance and information by local authorities and that the local authorities have the proper guidance and information, so that these sorts of mistakes do not happen.

I have just mentioned PACAC. The Electoral Commission also made a few points, because proxy voting is clearly an important option for people who cannot vote in person. It said:

“Changes to limit the number of voters for whom a person may act as a proxy could disadvantage some people who need someone to vote on their behalf.”


That comment was the reason behind tabling Amendment 96E, which probes the impact of proxy vote limitations on people with disabilities. Clearly, people with disabilities often need some support or someone to vote on their behalf.

As we know, when a voter applies to appoint a proxy, to protect against fraud, they are already required to state their relationship to the proposed proxy and the reason they cannot attend the polling station. My Amendment 96H is because I thought it would be interesting to draw attention to economic crime and election fraud, and to probe whether there is any evidence or information of any connection between the two. That is the purpose behind that particular amendment.

In the 2019 UK parliamentary general election, we know that some overseas voters struggled to find a proxy in their constituency. Tightening the limits on the number of people for whom a voter may act as proxy could potentially make it harder for overseas electors to cast their vote. This is where my Amendment 96F comes in. It probes why the number of four electors was chosen. Has the impact on overseas electors been taken into consideration?

Finally, Amendment 96J looks to probe the application of this particular schedule to parliamentary by-elections. Do Ministers have any information as to whether there has been any kind of impact assessment? Has any thought been given to the impact on different kinds of elections, in particular by-elections? I beg to move.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, I support the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. These Benches concur with a lot of what she had to say. When I asked why the number of postal voters should not be in the Bill, the Minister replied that it was better to deal with it flexibly, under secondary legislation. I note that the Bill states that the number of proxy votes which can be used by an elector is four. What is the difference between having this in the Bill for proxy voters but not for postal voters?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I have a question more out of ignorance than expertise. I am old enough to have gone round as a young man in the days when different parties competed in treating the matrons of care homes, and relying on them to collect all the votes up and make sure that everyone voted in the right direction. I am sure that that no longer happens—let us hope that it is something that we left behind in the 1960s. However, this raises questions about care homes. How are people assisted to vote? Who posts their votes for them or holds their proxies? I wish for a little assurance about this.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, in answer to that question from the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, keeping the numbers at four and not allowing anybody to have as many proxy votes as they like will help control this sort of behaviour. We all know that it happened in the past.

I will get an answer on why postal votes are to be in guidance and proxy votes are in the Bill, and write to the noble Lord, Lord Scriven.

I turn to the amendments concerning the measure in the Bill designed to strengthen the current arrangements for proxy voting. Currently, somebody can act as a proxy for up to two electors and for an unlimited number of close relatives in any constituency in a parliamentary election, or any electoral area at a local election. This can give rise to situations where somebody could cast an extremely large number of proxy votes, over which they could also exercise undue influence. This is where the issue of care homes and such like comes into play.

The Bill introduces a new limited of four on the total number of electors for whom a person may act as a proxy in UK parliamentary elections or local government elections in England. Within this figure, no more than two may be domestic electors—that is, electors who are not overseas electors or service voters. All four may be overseas electors or service voters. This approach will tighten up the rules on proxy voting, while also providing appropriate support for overseas electors and service voters wishing to appoint a proxy.

21:15

We of course intend to phase in the measures for existing proxy voters, so that all voters will have advance notice of the changes to enable them to prepare for their new requirements. We currently intend to phase in this change over the course of a three-year period. We will work with the Electoral Commission and electoral stakeholders in order to publicise the changes and the new requirements. Electoral registration officers will also be required to send a reminder to existing proxy voters in advance of the date they cease to have a proxy vote under current arrangements, and will provide information on how to reapply for another proxy vote.

Turning to the amendments, I have heard the concerns which motivate the amendments that we are debating and I will address each amendment in turn. With respect to Amendment 96E, the Government share the concerns that the new requirements should not have an adverse impact on voters, particularly voters with disabilities. I can reassure noble Lords that it will still be possible for a disabled person to apply for a permanent proxy vote to enable them to participate in the democratic process. It is only the number of voters on whose behalf a proxy can vote that will be affected. We are also carrying out extensive engagements on these changes, alongside the rest of the measures in this Bill, including with disability groups, to ensure that they are aware of any changes.

I note the proposal in Amendment 96F to reduce to three the number of electors for whom a person may act as a proxy. While two was the original recommendation in the Pickles report, we have, as I set out, expanded this to four, in recognition of the particular needs of overseas and service voters. I am not persuaded that a reduction to three would strike the right balance.

Amendment 96G would amend the statutory question that may be put to a person voting as a proxy when applying for the ballot paper, which asks if they have already voted as proxy at an election for more than four electors. It will be the electoral officers who will ask the question, so they will remind the person that they have four. If they have done more than four, it is an offence. The amendment would add the word “knowingly” to the question. We consider this as unnecessary, as a person will know how many times they have voted, and on whose behalf, and so will be able to give a clear answer to this question if it is put to them.

I now turn to probing Amendment 96H, which seeks to add to the list of questions that a returning officer can ask a proxy voter whether they have been convicted of offences under the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022 and have been sanctioned. The statutory questions which the returning officers will be required to ask proxy voters are designed to establish if the proxy is seeking to vote in breach of electoral law—for example, by voting on behalf of more than the permitted number of electors. I understand the concerns expressed by the noble Baroness, but it would be inappropriate to require polling station staff to ask questions that do not relate to the elector’s ability to vote or act as a proxy. For this reason, we cannot support the amendment.

Finally, Amendment 96J would provide that the proxy voting measure does not apply in relation to parliamentary by-elections. Once the measure is commenced, we see no good reason why we should specify that the new proxy rules should not apply in UK parliamentary by-elections. The reasons for introducing the measures are equally strong for all elections. I ask the noble Baroness not to press her amendments.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for her comprehensive reply. I was particularly pleased to hear that disabled people will be able to apply for a permanent proxy vote; that is very useful to know. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 96E withdrawn.

Clause 6 agreed.

Schedule 4: Proxy voting: limits and transitional provision

Amendments 96F to 96J not moved.

Schedule 4 agreed.

Clause 7: Requirement of secrecy

Amendment 97

Moved by

[Lord Khan of Burnley]

97: Clause 7, page 9, line 13, after “communicate” insert “, or attempt to communicate”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment expands the offence to include attempting to communicate the number or other unique identifying mark on the back of a ballot paper sent to a person for voting by post at a relevant election.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, the amendments in this group all relate to the secrecy of the ballot. Amendment 97 from my noble friend Lady Hayman would expand the offence to include attempting to communicate the number or other unique identifying mark on the back of a ballot paper sent to a person for voting by post at a relevant election. Amendment 100, meanwhile, expands the offence to include those who obtain or attempt to obtain information or communicate at any time to any other person any information as to whether a person voting by post at a relevant election has spoilt their ballot.

The purpose of these amendments is to draw attention to the various ways that an individual could circumvent the secrecy of the ballot for nefarious purposes. I am sure the Minister would agree that legislation must cover each of the possible intrusions. Given that this is not the only legislation that deals with voting in private, I hope the Minister can assure the House that this amendment is not necessary and that this is already an offence.

Government Amendments 83, 99, 101 and 102, meanwhile, each make minor changes to inserted Section 66(3A) of the Representation of the People Act 1983. These all appear to be technical amendments which I have no intention of opposing, but I look forward to the Minister explaining their purpose in more detail.

Government Amendment 103 ensures that no criminal liability arises where information is sought from, or given by, a postal voter at an election for the purposes of an opinion poll or exit poll. Again, this amendment seems to be a technical clarification which has been rightly introduced.

Finally, Amendment 109 from the noble lord, Lord Hayward, allows for a more general debate on the secrecy of the ballot. It would mean that the Secretary of State could issue guidance on steps that presiding officers or clerks should take to ensure the secrecy of the ballot in polling stations, including debarring anyone accompanying the elector into the polling booth, unless on grounds of infirmity. This raises issues similar to those raised in earlier amendments from my noble friend Lady Hayman regarding how we can ensure that votes remain private. The noble Lord is right to table this amendment and to draw attention to further ways that this principle could be compromised. I hope the Minister can allay the House’s concerns ahead of Report. I beg to move.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, earlier this evening the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, made reference to the original secret ballot of the 19th century. To a large extent, what we have seen over the last 150 years is what should happen: a ballot should be secret, in that one person goes into the polling booth alone, marks their vote and then casts it in the ballot box. Unfortunately, because of a series of interventions, with the Electoral Commission and others denying who is interpreting the legislation in whichever way, this issue has been called into question. I am going to cite Tower Hamlets again, but I know that this problem is broader than that. Too regularly, presiding officers in polling stations are faced with a problem whereby people attempt to accompany somebody else into the polling booth, effectively to influence the casting of that ballot.

I can do no better than to quote research undertaken in 2018 by Democracy Volunteers, an organisation of lawyers who operate a system of reviewing the processes of elections, within Tower Hamlets and other similar locations. I make no apologies for quoting the research in full:

“QUESTION 9. Was there evidence of ‘family voting’ in the polling station? … In 58% of polling stations our observer teams identified so-called ‘family voting’. OSCE … describes ‘family voting’ as an ‘unacceptable practice’. It occurs where, generally, husband and wife vote together. It can be normalised and women, especially, are unable to choose for themselves who they wish to cast their votes for and/or this is actually done by another individual entirely. It is a breach of the secret ballot. We identified this in 58% of polling stations (74 separate occasions). As family voting, by definition, includes more than one person this means that we observed this 74 times in the 764 voters we observed. This means that over 19% of all the voters who we observed were either engaged in, or affected by, this practice.”


This is the key qualification:

“We would, however, like to add that the vast majority of cases of this were prevented, or attempts were made to prevent it. However, we believe that this constitutes an unacceptably high level of family voting in an advanced democracy and further steps should be taken to discourage and prevent it. However, this activity is generally not the fault of polling staff, in fact we commend the staff for being so active in their attempts to prevent it.”


As one of the observer teams said:

“Family voting is a definite concern in Tower Hamlets. At the best-run polling stations, the Presiding Officers kept an active watch for potential cases and took steps to prevent it happening. They took care to issue ballot papers to family members one at a time, and then direct them to polling booths in different parts of the room. With three members of polling staff, this meant that while two clerks checked the register and issued papers, the”


polling officer

“could remain vigilant for possible family voting or other problems. All the observed cases of family voting took place when the”

polling officer

“was absent or distracted, or their attention was elsewhere.”

There is no criticism here of the polling staff; they try to do their best. But I am afraid, as this report from Democracy Volunteers identifies, that this is a far too pervasive problem, and we need clear guidance. Most people believed that we had clear guidance for a century and a half, but because of varying interpretations, my amendment is an attempt to ensure that we move away from this practice and back to what was originally intended.

As the noble Lord, Lord Khan, identified, I have tried to allow for those people who need accompaniment. As we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, in a previous debate, there may be other people in similar circumstances who need assistance. Generally, the assistance will come from a polling officer, but there may be special reasons why somebody needs accompaniment from a member of the family. However, these should be virtually unique occasions, not—as the report from Democracy Volunteers identified—a pervasive problem. I therefore believe that my amendment is attempting to tackle a problem which is quite widespread and needs clarification, and that it is in the best interests of conducting elections across the country.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hayward. As an aside on families and secrecy of the ballot, I have had to ask somebody to be a proxy only once: during the very fraught referendum on Brexit, I had to ask my husband. I can tell your Lordships that, to this day, I still do not know which way I voted. I think I know which way I voted, but the secrecy of the ballot is absolutely sacrosanct, and I do not know.

On a more serious point, these Benches support the raft of amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and those in the name of the Minister that support the secrecy of the ballot. The only difference we have with the noble Lord, Lord Hayward—this has been an ongoing issue with him—is that if guidance has to be given on such issues, it probably would be better coming from the independent Electoral Commission rather than the Secretary of State, although we do not dispute that such guidance would be helpful. However, we understand from previous discussions and debates with the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, why he seeks the Secretary of State giving such guidance, but if it was to come, we feel that it should come from the Electoral Commission. With those points, we support these amendments.

21:30

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, the figures that the noble Lord gave will of course be of concern to the Committee and to any reasonable person following our proceedings. I have just been reading the Ballot Act 1872, Section 2 of which makes it clear that the vote shall be secret. It makes no reference to anybody conducting a voter and is particularly scrupulous, because of the great concern that there might be intervention by public authorities, that the presiding officers and staff in polling stations are kept completely apart from the act of voting; all they can do is check that the official mark has been made. The noble Lord’s point is well made, whether it is the Electoral Commission or the Secretary of State—although one would hope that the Secretary of State would be acting on the Electoral Commission’s advice on this matter anyway.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, as has been said, these amendments are to Clause 7, which concerns the important issue of the secrecy of the ballot for postal and proxy voters. The clause extends the requirements currently in place to protect the secrecy of voting for persons voting in polling stations to postal and proxy voting. These sensible change implementations are an important recommendation from the Pickles report.

First, in bringing forward government Amendments 98, 99 and 101 to 103, we have listened to feedback from political parties about the scope and effect of the provisions as drafted. Currently, the clause includes provisions that make it an offence for a person to obtain, attempt to obtain or communicate to anyone information about whether a postal voter has voted or about the candidate for whom they have voted. As drafted, this applies for the whole period that the elector is in possession of their postal ballot paper, which could be up to three weeks.

We now recognise that this approach goes beyond what is helpful to protect the voter and strays into unnecessarily criminalising not only legitimate political activity to engage electors in campaigns but important public information, such as opinion polling. The amendments would limit the scope of these provisions by providing for it to be an offence for a person to seek information about for whom a postal voter has voted at the time they are completing their ballot paper, or to communicate such information obtained at that time. Campaigners could therefore seek and communicate information that they obtain outside this period. This is in line with the protection for voters in polling stations, who are protected when they are in that polling station.

The amendments would also remove the restriction on asking whether a postal voter has voted so that campaigners can ask a postal voter whether they have voted, to encourage them to do so. Further, under the amendments, the offence would not apply to opinion-polling activity asking how a postal voter has voted, or intends to vote, to avoid criminalising opinion pollsters. The amendments seek to address the unintended consequences that the provisions, as they stand, would have. They would narrow the scope of the provisions so that they do not prevent legitimate campaigning by political parties and candidates outside the time when a person completes their postal ballot paper or legitimate opinion polling at any time.

I reassure noble Lords that the measures will improve the integrity of the postal vote process by reducing the opportunity for individuals to exploit the process and coerce other voters. They will give greater confidence in the integrity of absent voting; I therefore urge the Committee to accept these amendments.

The amendments tabled by the noble Baroness seek to provide that attempting to communicate information about a person’s postal vote as well as actually communicating the information is covered in the secrecy offence. Also, the amendments seek to include in the offence obtaining or attempting to obtain information or communicating information about whether a person voting by postal vote has spoilt their ballot. The Government consider that these amendments are unnecessary, as I have explained. The amendments that the Government have tabled seek to bring the protection for postal voters into line with that for those voting in polling stations.

The amendments tabled by the noble Baroness would mean that there would be inconsistency in the requirements for voters in polling stations and postal voters, which would not favour them. I note that, currently, it is an offence for a person to obtain or attempt to obtain information or communicate information as to the candidate for whom a voter has voted in a polling station, and we are applying this to postal voters.

Spoilt ballot papers are not included in the existing provisions, which relate to the time when a voter is casting their vote. It is for the returning officer to decide if a vote has been spoilt and cannot be counted. That cannot be done before it is cast. To try to include such a provision could lead to uncertainty about the scope of the offence and the role of the statutory independent returning officer in making any such determination. The Government therefore cannot accept these amendments.

I turn to the amendment from my noble friend Lord Hayward, which would provide the Secretary of State with a power to issue guidance on the steps that presiding officers or clerks should take to ensure the secrecy of the ballot in polling stations. I reassure noble Lords that the Government take this and the concerns that have been raised very seriously. The Government’s view is that the secrecy of the ballot is fundamental to the ability of voters to cast their vote freely, without undue pressure to vote in a certain way. The Government fully endorse the principle that someone’s vote must be personal and secret, and that no elector should ever be subject to intimidation or coercion when voting. There are already provisions in place in electoral law to ensure the secrecy of voting in polling stations. The current legislation requires that voters should not be accompanied by another person at a polling booth except in specific circumstances, such as being a child of a voter, a formal companion or a member of staff.

Returning officers and their staff in polling stations are responsible for making sure that these requirements are upheld. In this way, they are supported by the Electoral Commission, which issues guidance to returning officers and polling station staff to help them to undertake their duties.

I note that the Electoral Commission guidance specifically advises polling station staff that they should make sure that voters go to polling booths individually, so that their right to a secret vote is protected. Therefore, I do not consider that it is the role of government to issue such guidance as provided for in the amendment. However, given the important concerns that have been raised on the secrecy of voting, Minister Badenoch will be writing to the Electoral Commission and the Metropolitan Police to confirm our common understanding of the position set out in legislation—that the only people who should provide assistance at a polling booth are polling station staff and companions who are doing so only for the purpose of supporting an elector with health and/or accessibility issues that need such support. We are confident that the Electoral Commission will be able to respond promptly, and I reassure the noble Lord and the rest of the House that we will report back on this matter.

For these reasons, I hope that the amendments from the noble Baroness and the noble Lord will not be pressed.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response and the noble Lords, Lord Hayward and Lord Scriven, for their contributions. I want to say how impeccable the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, was in reading the Ballot Act 1872 in the space of this debate, and I congratulate him on his reading skills. In doing so, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 97 withdrawn.

Amendments 98 and 99

Moved by

[Lord True]

98: Clause 7, page 9, leave out lines 21 to 24
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment leaves out paragraph (c) from inserted section 66(3A) of the Representation of the People Act 1983.

99: Clause 7, page 9, leave out lines 25 to 28 and insert—
“(d) obtain or attempt to obtain information, in the circumstances mentioned in subsection (3AA), as to the candidate for whom a person voting by post at a relevant election (“V”) is about to vote or has voted;(e) communicate at any time to any other person information obtained in contravention of paragraph (d).(3AA) The circumstances referred to in subsection (3A)(d) are where V is about to mark, is in the process of marking, or has just marked, a ballot paper sent to V for voting by post at the election.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment inserts, in substitution for paragraph (d) of inserted section 66(3A) of the Representation of the People Act 1983, provision clarifying the scope of the prohibition on obtaining or communicating information about the candidate for whom a postal voter has voted.

Amendments 98 and 99 agreed.

Amendment 100 not moved.

Amendments 101 to 103

Moved by

[Lord True]

101: Clause 7, page 9, line 33, leave out “any of paragraphs (a), (c) and (d)” and insert “paragraph (a) or (d)”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment updates cross-references in consequence of the amendment in Lord True’s name at page 9, lines 21 to 24.

102: Clause 7, page 9, line 37, leave out “any of paragraphs (a), (c) and (d)” and insert “paragraph (a) or (d)”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment updates cross-references in consequence of the amendment in Lord True’s name at page 9, lines 21 to 24.

103: Clause 7, page 9, line 38, at end insert—
“(3BA) Subsection (3A)(d) and (e) does not apply where the purpose (or main purpose) for which the information is sought or communicated is its use for the purposes of—(a) a published statement relating to the way in which voters intend to vote or have voted at the relevant election, or(b) a published forecast as to the result of that election which is based on information given by voters.(3BB) In subsection (3BA)—(a) “forecast” includes estimate;(b) “published” means made available to the public at large or to any section of the public, in whatever form and by whatever means;(c) the reference to the result of the relevant election is a reference to the result of the election either as a whole or so far as any particular candidate or candidates at the election is or are concerned.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment ensures that no criminal liability arises where information is sought from, or given by, a postal voter at an election for the purposes of an opinion poll or exit poll.

Amendments 101 to 103 agreed.

Clause 7, as amended, agreed.

Amendments 104 and 105 not moved.

Clause 8: Undue influence

Amendment 106

Moved by

[Lord True]

106: Clause 8, page 10, leave out line 30 and insert—
“(1) After section 114 of RPA 1983 insert—“114A Undue influence(1) A person is guilty of a corrupt practice if the person is guilty of undue influence.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment inserts section 114A into the Representation of the People Act 1983, which contains a new undue influence provision that applies in relation to parliamentary elections and in relation to local government elections in England.

Amendment 106 agreed.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)]

We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 106A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire.

[Noble Lords]

Amendment 106ZA.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord McNicol of West Kilbride) (Lab)]

Well spotted. The amendments are the wrong way round on Today’s Lists—apologies. The Marshalled List takes priority over the printed list so we will go back and take Amendment 106ZA.

Amendment 106ZA

Moved by

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock]

106ZA: Clause 8, page 11, line 10, after “person” insert “or political party”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would expand the list of activities which may constitute undue influence to probe whether causing or threatening financial loss to a political party should be included.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I shall move this amendment very swiftly because I was intending to spend most of this speech discussing what the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, said about his amendment, but I have missed my opportunity on that.

Amendment 106ZA is about expanding the list of activities which may constitute undue influence to probe whether causing or threatening financial loss to a political party should also be included. At the moment, it just refers to financial loss due to persons, but clearly undue pressure could be put on political parties, particularly the smaller political parties, around potential financial loss if they go down certain policy routes, for example. It is just to probe that, so I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 106A. As I have already said to the Minister, this is very much a probing amendment. Clause 8 is an important clause. We all recognise that it has to be in any elections Bill. I note that in various references to the clause the statement is made that there is a need to clarify the law on undue influence. One of the things I asked the Minister in advance was whether he could tell us how often there have been successful prosecutions for undue influence, because it is not that easy to prove.

21:45

My experience of elections in Bradford is that intimidation—the sort of stuff in new subsection (4)(a),

“using or threatening to use violence against a person”—

has on occasion been quite evident, particularly when Respect and Labour were contesting for support in central Bradford constituencies, between cousins and, in one election, between supporters of two different Labour candidates. We will talk about that off the Floor.

That is the clearest example one can get from this clause. Some of the others are much more difficult to demonstrate. I assume that the new subsection

“causing spiritual injury to, or placing undue spiritual pressure on, a person”

arises from the Pickles report and the experience in Tower Hamlets. I could entertain noble Lords for quite a long while about my experience of spiritual influence. My wife and I once spent a very long evening with a crate of Guinness with the nine Catholic priests in the Manchester Moss Side constituency. They talked to us about the most important issues in the campaign, which were abortion, Northern Ireland and Catholic schools. The following night, Father Kelly took me round the Irish social clubs, saying as we went that I had to recognise that we would be the only two people there who were not drunk and who did not claim to have a cousin interned in Northern Ireland. I could also tell various stories about Methodists and Congregationalists, but the hour is late.

Spiritual influence is an interesting and difficult concept. It is easier with closed denominations than open ones. I recognise that there will be occasions where this might come up in the various factions in different religions, but my point in tabling the amendment is to ask: is the Minister advised that these are sufficiently clearly defined to be of use in bringing successful prosecutions? If so, congratulations. If not, ought we to take some of them back and consider further?

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I will follow on from the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, on undue influence. I think that a large part of this stems from Richard Mawrey’s judgments in the Tower Hamlets case. Anybody who has not experienced what the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, has clearly seen in places such as Bradford and Kirklees and I witnessed in Tower Hamlets will not appreciate what one is talking about, which is a serious problem. The first time I went to an election in Tower Hamlets a friend of mine, Councillor Peter Golds, to whom my noble friend Lord True referred, identified this: “See those people there? See that person there?” We are talking about people standing 100 metres to 150 metres away from a polling station. They walk alongside people going to vote. They stop people going into the polling station. When complaints are made to the police, the police feel that they are powerless to intervene. Anybody who has not experienced that sort of undue influence cannot appreciate the intimidation involved. I welcome the clause and the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, because it is an important change to electoral law.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, the underlying issue here clearly might lead to concern in certain circumstances, but the point I took the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, to be making is that this is a very new category of injury. I have never seen in legislation before the concept of “spiritual injury” or individuals being placed under “spiritual pressure”. Could the Minister give us any precedents for these terms in legislation so that we can get some idea as to what other matters they have referred and how they might actually be applied?

Although we can understand the issue, how do we define what counts as spiritual pressure? If, for example, a religious group put out literature supporting one candidate or another, as often happens, would that count as undue spiritual pressure? There could be a freedom of speech issue here, which I do not think we want to get into, so it would be useful if the Minister could explain to us other contexts in which this has been used so that we can get some idea of what a proportionate judgment on “spiritual injury” and “undue spiritual pressure” might be.

[Lord Scriven (LD)]

I want to follow on from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, because his concerns were also mine. I am not clear what the definition of some of these issues would be in law and how they would be taken by the courts. Are there issues like this in legislation elsewhere and has there been interpretation by the courts, particularly regarding spiritual injury? For example, if someone was to stand up in a Catholic church and ask for people not to vote for candidates who supported abortion, would that constitute spiritual injury? Would that be undue spiritual pressure in determining which way people vote?

This is a very finely balanced issue, and I have not come across it before. Therefore, the Minister needs to explain very specifically where the lines and the boundaries are. It is a balance between people having the right to freedom of speech and of faith—I say that as somebody who does not have a religious faith—and the issue of them not being unduly influenced or forced to go against what they believe in. It would be really interesting to hear a clear definition and clear examples from the Dispatch Box for us to be able to determine exactly what this means in legislation.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

I shall give my noble friend an American example, which has been debated in the United States very recently. There have been Catholic bishops who have suggested that President Biden should be denied communion, as a Catholic, because he is not prepared to be sufficiently anti-abortion. That, it seems to me, would be undue spiritual influence—although the spectacle of a Catholic bishop or archbishop being prosecuted for undue spiritual influence would be quite an interesting one.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

I will elaborate on the noble Lord’s point. There is a difference here, in the ordinary reading of the words, between pressure and intimidation. I took the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, to be referring to intimidation, which is clearly something that we want to guard against. But what constitutes spiritual pressure? As noble Lords have just said, would a sermon in a church constitute pressure? A reasonable person might think that it would; after all, it is not serving much of a purpose if there is no pressure. This is a lay man speaking, but I think there is a difference between pressure and intimidation. We want to guard against intimidation, but we absolutely do not want to curb freedom of religious speech.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

This is unexpectedly lively, but the focus really is on new sub-paragraph (3)(e). I think most of us would say that there is, if you like, a simple lay person’s interpretation of new sub-paragraph (3)(a), (b), (c), (d) and, for that matter, the catch-all of new sub-paragraph (3)(f), which is

“any other act designed to intimidate a person”.

In the light of new sub-paragraph (3)(f), it may be that the difficulties of new sub-paragraph (3)(e) are best avoided by their omission, because if such spiritual injury was demonstrated, it would come under new sub-paragraph (3)(f).

I just point out that the preceding activities have “using or threatening”, “damaging or threatening”, “causing or threatening”, but new sub-paragraph (3)(e) has “causing spiritual injury”; not “threatening” to cause spiritual injury. Obviously, it depends on one’s personal understanding of what spiritual injury might consist of, but the threat is surely going to be offered far more often than the reality will be delivered, if I may put it in those terms, although it does not mean that it is not effective. There are some problems in the straightforward interpretation of what new sub-paragraph (3)(e) really says, why it does not say “threatening” to cause, as does new sub-paragraph (3)(c) and (d), for instance, and why it is necessary, separate from the catch-all of new sub-paragraph (3)(f):

“doing any other act designed to intimidate a person”.

I want to bring a little bit of local colour to new sub-paragraph (4)(e). In 1992, I stood for the Liberal Democrats in Hazel Grove. On the Sunday before polling day, every Catholic church in the constituency had a letter read out from the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, which clearly expressed the view that a vote for me would be a major spiritual error. I failed to win that seat by 923 votes. I do not attribute the result to that letter, but noble Lords will understand that I had a sense of grievance for some time afterwards that this letter had been read out.

This brings me to my second critique of new sub-paragraph (4)(e)—it is a little bit in the eye of the beholder. If that provision had been there in 1992, I would have gone straight to the returning officer to say that this was a clear case. It would be an invitation for people to complain about things which were in fact simply within the bounds of free speech, fair comment, and so on—even if it was unfair in the opinion of the recipient.

There is a double problem. First, what is “spiritual injury”? Secondly, do we mean causing it, or threatening to cause it? Do we think that the injury is to the voter who is deterred from voting for a candidate, or to the candidate by virtue of the voter not supporting them? I suggest that we are not very clear what we are trying to pin down. The Minister might like to carefully consider what the disbenefit would be of removing new sub-paragraph (4)(e) and simply relying on new sub-paragraph (4)(f) to deal with cases where “spiritual injury”—or threats of it—was part of the reason there had been intimidation.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, in Christian teaching, the alpha comes before omega, so I was a bit puzzled, like others, that Z comes before A. I was set up to answer the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, first, and I hope that the noble Baroness will not be offended if I do that.

In any case, both are seeking to probe the reference to “spiritual injury” and “undue spiritual pressure” in the clarified offence of “undue influence” of “an elector or proxy”. The “undue influence” offence is intended to ensure that all electors and proxies are able to cast their vote free from intimation and malicious interference. It is true that the 2015 Tower Hamlets petition, about which my noble friend Lord Hayward spoke eloquently, demonstrated that protection from undue influence remains highly relevant and important in 21st-century Britain. However, the existing offence of undue influence dates back to the 19th century. Indeed, the freedoms of religious authorities and priests to hold and express political views were first set out in a judgment in 1870, and those freedoms remain. However, the complexity and outdated terminology of the current offence makes it difficult for the police or prosecutors to apply it, leaving electors and proxies without necessary protection.

I was asked about convictions. According to our data, between 81% and 86% of allegations of undue influence lead to no further action at all, with only one court case initiated in the last eight years. While the defendant was found guilty of undue spiritual influence in the Tower Hamlets petition, Commissioner Mawrey highlighted insufficient clarity in the law, as well as the high bar which was required to convict someone of intimidation. The commissioner recommended that the offence of

“undue spiritual influence … be more clearly articulated”

and brought in line with 21st-century language and society, to ensure that it remains enforceable. The Law Commission, in its 2016 report into electoral law, similarly called for the offence to be restated more clearly. All respondents in the Government’s public consultation in 2018, entitled Protecting the Debate: Intimidation, Influence, and Information, agreed that the offence required greater clarity.

22:00

The drafting of the clarified offence was subject to a targeted consultation with the Crown Prosecution Service, the National Police Chiefs’ Council, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, Police Scotland, the Police Service of Northern Ireland and others. None of the stakeholders raised any concerns about the proposed modernised offence that is before your Lordships.

We have redrafted the offence to capture three overarching categories of activity—harm, deception in relation to the administration of an election, and intimidation—where these activities are carried out with the intention to induce, compel or cause

“an elector or proxy … to vote in a particular way or to refrain from voting, or otherwise”

impede or prevent

“the free exercise of the franchise of an elector”,

or on account of an electoral proxy having, or having been perceived to have, voted in a particular way, or refrained from voting.

As per the recommendation from the Pickles review, we retain reference to “undue spiritual influence”—a term previously there within the category of “harm”. New subsection (4)(e), as inserted by Clause 8, would replace the current wording of

“spiritual injury, damage, harm or loss”

with “spiritual injury” and “undue spiritual pressure”, on which noble Lords are asking questions. To elaborate, “spiritual injury” is intended to cover the potential detrimental impact to an individual’s spiritual well-being that could be directly caused by another individual. This could include, for example, excluding a person from the membership of an organised belief system or banning them from attending a place of worship.

Paragraph 289 of the Explanatory Notes provides examples of activities that would be captured under “undue spiritual pressure”, although ultimately that is a matter for the courts. To summarise, these would include actions to suggest that to vote or not vote for a particular candidate or party is a duty arising from a person’s spiritual or religious beliefs and it would improve or reduce a person’s spiritual standing, or would lead to specific spiritual consequences such as going to heaven or hell.

This clarified “undue spiritual pressure” was drafted with the intention of drawing more clearly the line between legitimate spiritual influence, which the Government recognise is inherent in all positions of spiritual authority in all religions, and improper or inappropriate pressure that amounts to undue spiritual influence. The provision was constructed to strike a balance to ensure the protection of electors while, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, quite rightly said, preventing encroachment on freedoms of thought, belief or expression. This would not stop, for example, a religious leader expressing their opinion on political or other matters that have implications for the principles of that religion, or the behaviour of religious groups for whom not voting is an established doctrine. This is about ensuring that all electors and proxies are able to cast their vote free from intimidation and malicious interference. Therefore, the Government cannot support this amendment.

Amendment 106ZA seeks to include reference to a “political party” in new subsection (4)(d) under the undue influence offence. That would mean that the activity of causing or threatening to cause financial loss to a person would explicitly include causing or threatening to cause financial loss to a political party, as proposed by the noble Baroness opposite. Legally, the reference in new subsection (4)(d) to a “person” already captures both a natural person and a legal person, such as a company, organisation or indeed political party, where it has a corporate personality. The effect that the noble Baroness seeks is already achieved by the term in the Bill through the clause as currently drafted. Therefore, while well-intentioned, this amendment is unnecessary. I respectfully ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment on the basis of that clarification.

I hope that these explanations are helpful to your Lordships. I repeat that the balance has to be articulated, and has always been articulated, in case law, alongside more recent protections provided through the European Convention on Human Rights.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I was not absolutely clear from what the Minister said whether the phrase “undue spiritual pressure” exists in existing legislation. He may not have the answer to that, but could he write to us about it?

[Lord True (Con)]

Yes, I had better write at this hour. I had it somewhere, but I have lost it in the folder. I will certainly write to the noble Lord. I tried to answer the question. If I have not, I will write; sorry.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I think it is the sense of quite a few of us that it might be wiser to remove the phrase “causing spiritual injury to” because that is, I think, the most difficult element of it. I think most of us would understand

“placing undue spiritual pressure on”.

I respectfully suggest that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, might be a useful person to consult on this. Some of us may remember the occasion when, as Lord Chancellor, he attended a requiem mass for a Catholic judge in Glasgow and was threatened with exclusion from his own church, very clearly threatening to use spiritual pressure. He has presumably thought all of this through extremely well.

I thank the Minister for explaining the efforts that have gone into defining “undue influence” rather better. I still feel that we are looking at something which we all know is there but we are not at all sure that the police, let alone the Crown Prosecution Service, are going to want to take on very much. This is an area involving the boundaries between campaigning, free speech, improper behaviour and downright offences which we will probably have to live with, unsatisfactorily, because that is part of the nature of democracy.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, it has been a particularly interesting debate on the definition of spirituality and so on. We need to get more definition and clarity in order to move forward, so that there are no unforeseen or unfortunate consequences.

I thank the Minister very much for his clarification. It makes perfect sense to me now and, on that basis, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 106ZA withdrawn.

Amendment 106A not moved.

Amendments 107 and 108

Moved by

[Lord True]

107: Clause 8, page 11, line 23, at end insert—
“(7) This section does not have effect in relation to a local government election in Scotland or Wales.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that the inserted section 114A does not apply in relation to local government elections in Scotland or Wales.

108: Clause 8, page 11, line 23, at end insert—
“(1A) In section 115 of RPA 1983 (undue influence)—(a) in subsection (1), after “influence” insert “in relation to a local government election in Scotland or Wales”;(b) in subsection (2), after “influence” insert “in relation to a local government election in Scotland or Wales”;(c) in the heading, after “influence” insert “: local government elections in Scotland and Wales”.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment confines the existing undue influence provision, section 115 of the Representation of the People Act 1983, to local government elections in Scotland and Wales.

Amendments 107 and 108 agreed.

Clause 8, as amended, agreed.

Amendment 109 not moved.

Schedule 5: Undue influence: further provision

Amendments 110 to 118

Moved by

[Lord True]

110: Schedule 5, page 109, leave out lines 23 to 32
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment confines the amendment to section 80(1) of the Local Government Act 1972 so that it does not cover incapacity where the holder of a devolved office in Scotland or Wales is reported guilty or convicted of undue influence.

111: Schedule 5, page 110, line 4, leave out paragraph 3
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment removes the amendment to section 80A of the Local Government Act 1972.

112: Schedule 5, page 110, line 41, leave out from beginning to end of line 7 on page 111
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment confines the amendment to section 4(1) of the Local Government Act (Northern Ireland) 1972 so that it does not cover incapacity where the holder of a devolved office in Scotland or Wales is reported guilty or convicted of undue influence.

113: Schedule 5, page 111, line 15, leave out paragraph 5
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment removes the amendment to section 31 of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973.

114: Schedule 5, page 113, leave out lines 15 to 25
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment confines the amendment to section 21 of the Greater London Authority Act 1999 so that it does not cover incapacity arising where the holder of a devolved office in Scotland or Wales is reported guilty or convicted of undue influence.

115: Schedule 5, page 114, line 2, leave out paragraph 8
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment removes the amendment to Schedule 1A to the Government of Wales Act 2006.

116: Schedule 5, page 114, leave out lines 14 to 23
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment confines the amendment to paragraph 9(1) of Schedule 5B to the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 so that it does not cover incapacity arising where the holder of a devolved office in Scotland or Wales is reported guilty or convicted of undue influence.

117: Schedule 5, page 115, leave out lines 4 to 9
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment confines the amendment to section 66(3) of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 so that it does not cover incapacity arising where the holder of a devolved office in Wales is reported guilty or convicted of undue influence.

118: Schedule 5, page 115, line 24, leave out paragraph 11
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment removes the consequential repeals made by paragraph 11 of Schedule 5.

Amendments 110 to 118 agreed.

Schedule 5, as amended, agreed.

Clause 9: Assistance with voting for persons with disabilities

Amendment 118A

Moved by

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock]

118A: Clause 9, page 11, line 29, leave out paragraph (a) and insert—
“(a) in paragraph (3A)(b), for “a device” substitute “equipment”;(aa) after paragraph (3A)(b) insert—“(c) such equipment as it is reasonable to provide for the purposes of enabling, or making it easier for, relevant persons to vote in the manner directed by rule 37.”;”

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 118A on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, who cannot be in his place today. I am doing this to allow for debate at this time on Amendment 122A, which is on the same topic. Amendment 118A is a retabled version of Amendment 120 and this has been done in order to place it in the correct part of the Bill. As the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, has already spoken to his amendment on an earlier day, he has nothing further to add.

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 122A, on an issue that I do not think has received sufficient attention for a long time: the significant group of voters who lose their votes at each election because they inaccurately fill out the verification forms to be enclosed with their postal vote forms. The problem is that, depending on the whims of a particular returning officer, a voter could be doing this, year in and year out, at every election, without realising that the vote they thought they had cast has not actually been validated because of an error—perhaps on the voting paper itself but, in my experience, it is far more likely to be an error on the verification form required to go with it.

I have listed certain categories of voters in my amendment—for example, those with failing eyesight or those with limited or no literacy. To fill in the paperwork that allows one to complete a postal vote form can be incredibly complex. There is a range of options open to returning officers. My own personal experience of filling them in is that some are straightforward and some are mind-bogglingly difficult. Those voters who are particularly vulnerable ought to have an automatic right, whereby an agent of the returning officer should, if requested, be able to visit them and assist them in the completion not of the voting paper itself—the experience I have is that that is rarely spoiled—but of the verification form that goes with it.

The percentages are very high indeed. In a local election in the area I once represented, one could easily see 300 postal votes that were lost because of this. In a general election, one is multiplying that, and anything up to a thousand votes could be lost, purely because people have been unable to accurately complete the paperwork. Some will do that carelessly, but there is a whole range of more vulnerable voters who, given the opportunity for assistance, would complete the verification form accurately and then vote and have their vote counted.

It seems to me that, whether it requires legislation or clearer guidance to returning officers, this is a rather important point in ensuring that maximise the actual turnout in elections, rather than the theoretical turn out of those who have returned postal votes but do not have them counted. The numbers are significant if we multiply across the country those that I have seen locally. It is a significant group of voters, and it is through no specific fault of their own—other than, for example, their literacy or their failing eyesight, which is the example I am most familiar with.

Better advice from returning officers would be appropriate. I put this forward as an option, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for speaking on behalf of my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond. We did debate his Amendment 118A, and we are in contact with him on the issues he raised, so I am happy with that.

Amendment 122A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Mann, would require that the returning officers consider whether to appoint designated people to assist electors in completing their postal votes at home or at other locations for various reasons. I commend the spirit of this amendment in looking to improve the accessibility of elections for people who may struggle to mark their vote. We know that there are people who, for many reasons, do that, but I contend that it is not necessary, given the existing assistance avenues already in place.

When voting by post, it is important that the postal vote is completed by the person to whom it is given. When someone is unable to sign the postal vote, as is required, they may get a waiver of their signature. If they need help from the returning officer, they may attend a polling station where staff are empowered to assist electors to vote, or a companion can assist them in a supervised environment. If the person cannot attend a polling station, they may appoint a proxy to vote on their behalf. This proxy may themselves choose to vote by post. An elector may also appoint an emergency proxy to vote on their behalf up until 5 pm on the day of the poll in certain unforeseen circumstances.

For these reasons, while I understand everything that has been said, I ask that the amendment be withdrawn.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

As the Minister said, we had an extensive debate on this at our previous Committee sitting, so I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 118A withdrawn.

Amendment 119 not moved.

Amendment 120 had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.

Clause 9 agreed.

House resumed.

House adjourned at 10.16 pm.