Elections Bill

Debate between Baroness Chakrabarti and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Wednesday 23rd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is again my great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, and agree with everything she has said. I offer Green Party support for Amendment 139. As the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, said in introducing the amendment, this is a long-term situation where the UK has not complied with its human rights obligations. This is an occasion where I am not going to hold this Government solely responsible; the Labour Government had five years to remedy the situation and the coalition Government had five years to fix it, yet here we still are.

The Green Party policy, as is the case in many things, would go rather further than the amendment. Our policy is that all prisoners should have the right to vote except where the sentencing judge, taking into account the nature of the offence, decides to make the loss of the vote explicitly part of the penalty. The obvious cases where that might happen would be in a case of electoral fraud, for example, or perhaps where an oligarch who has used some of their ill-gotten gains to attempt to buy a political party or a certain political outcome.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said, the question is what prisons are for when it comes to more standard types of offences. Are we cutting people off from society, further reinforcing social exclusion and distancing them from the norms and values that we are hoping they will absorb before they go out into society? After all, nearly everyone who is in prison will eventually go out into society. Are we actively trying to rehabilitate people and equip them for a life outside prison?

Voting is a fundamental part of our society. The blanket denial that says that once you are in jail you cannot vote is a way of saying, “We’re not going to do anything to improve the world that helped to put you into this place”. We know the situation of so many people in prison and the huge disadvantage and inequality that is a background to people who are there. So the amendment does not go far enough but it is an important first step.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, on the amendment, and the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, on moving it. As always, I thank my noble friend Lady Lister of Burtersett. I am sorry that I am outwith my party’s position on this but there are hawks and doves in both main parties when it comes to penal reform, and indeed when it comes to the law-and-order arms race that I believe has been a problem in our country for too many years—perhaps for my whole adult life.

I remember Lord Hurd addressing the Conservative Party conference when I was a relatively small person—even smaller than I am now. Those were the days when all party conferences were televised in total—can you imagine?—and it was a time when people were calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty. He, as a Conservative Home Secretary, faced that audience down and explained to them why that was a terrible thing. Later in my life and career I had the privilege to congratulate him on that moment, which he remembered, and it was something he could be proud of.

I believe this change will come because I am an optimist about the course of progress in world events. It may well be a Conservative Home Secretary and Government who do the “Nixon in China” thing, but whoever does it, I think they should. I will not cite the European Court of Human Rights, as some would groan and expect me to do. I do not pray in aid its judgments; I pray in aid basic principle and practical logic.

I agree with the points that the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, made about the purposes of incarceration. We accept that some people in extremis need to be incarcerated for certain offences for the reasons of retribution, rehabilitation, public protection and deterrence, but none of those four traditional justifications for incarceration after criminal conviction explains why, on a blanket basis, you would take away someone’s vote—particularly people, as in this modest amendment, who will be out very soon and who we want to reintegrate and rehabilitate as best we can. Frankly, we want politicians, activists and voters to be a little bit more concerned about those people whom we are still subjecting to this Victorian notion of civic death.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, we had not pre-planned who would speak but, having attached my name to this amendment and being one of the two people here to do so, I will speak, with some unexpectedness, in favour of it.

Amendment 141 introduces a carefully planned and worked-through plan—as noble Lords can see—for automatic voter registration. It is a great pity that, given the time of this debate, the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, is not able to be with us, but I hope that we might return to this on Report. It would be particularly interesting to hear from both the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, and the noble Lord, Lord Woolley. Many of the issues that the noble Lord addresses in this amendment were similarly addressed in his speech on voter ID and the importance of allowing the engagement of everybody in our electoral process. I urge people who have not read or heard that speech to catch up with it because it is an important one.

To put the case for why we need automatic voter registration, when I was reflecting on this, I thought it sounded like the sort of thing that we would normally do in Grand Committee in the Moses Room, looking at some detailed statutory instrument and going through the dusty tomes. But this is of course far from a bureaucratic detail. Rather, to bring in automatic voter registration would be the long-delayed completion of a democratic progression of a couple of centuries, right through the 19th-century reform Acts and the 20th-century women’s suffrage. It is a vital step in ensuring that everyone who is eligible to vote actually has that vote available to them. The fact is that people do not have that practical opportunity now.

As I said at Second Reading, just because the Government are trying to slash away what little democracy we have in this country with many elements of this Bill, it does not mean that we cannot use this opportunity to set out a way forward to reform and repair our archaic and dysfunctional UK constitution. For there are what is known in shorthand as the “missing millions”— people who are eligible to vote but not registered for the right. An Electoral Commission study from 2019 suggested that their numbers exceed 9 million, while more than 5 million people are incorrectly registered. Those millions are not some random sample of the population. It is the young and those in private rental accommodation, many of whom have to move often, who are massively underrepresented on the rolls and by our so-called democracy. This ties into the debate that we were having earlier about votes for 16 and 17 year-olds. Those people are least likely to vote Conservative.

This amendment, therefore, is about not just people’s individual rights but ensuring that our electoral results reflect the views of the people. The background to this is individual electoral registration, which was introduced in 2014. It cleaned up the messes—I am sure that I am far from the only Member of your Lordships’ House who has knocked on the door of a very small flat at which there are apparently 16 people registered, and it is not a case of fraud but various people have moved in and out and names have been added without any being removed. However, it also cleaned out millions of people who should have been on those rolls, particularly young people and students at university.

This is a really important point and I hope that the Minister might be able to address it. It is not even easy to check whether you are registered correctly. The Electoral Commission website says—this is the only information it provides—

“contact the electoral services team at your local council”.

That is how you go about checking whether you are on the electoral roll. It is a far from simple, easy process. Can the Minister say whether the Government plan any improvements on that simple step so that people can check whether they are registered?

To briefly address the details of this amendment, automatic voter registration need not be complicated or introduce a large bureaucratic burden. Schools and colleges could register young people as attainers—those about to become voters—and university students could be registered by their universities. Changing the address on your driving licence, which is something everyone is legally obliged to do, registering for council tax, or having contact with the Department for Work and Pensions are all things that could feed into the electoral roll—they are how the Government know where people are.

I will make one final point, because I am sure other people will have many other things to say on this important amendment. Of course, automatic voter registration will not guarantee that people turn out to vote. Already, typically, fewer than 70% of people on the roll turn out for general elections, and often 30% or fewer in council elections. But giving people the opportunity by making sure their name is on the rolls as it should be without them having to go to extraordinary efforts has to be essential to make any claim of calling this country a democracy. I beg to move.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, as it is to add my name to this amendment also in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Woolley of Woodford, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Bennett and Lady Warsi. I do not need to repeat the compelling points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, but I will just say this. We all know that to have the option of voting is a fundamental right, just as to pay tax when it is owed is a fundamental duty. The Government worked very hard, as they should, at ensuring that when people reach the age of 18, they are automatically registered for tax purposes. I really believe in taxation, obviously. They are right to do it, and it ought to be increasingly easy to do that in our automated world. If the Government can do that, why on earth would they not do the equivalent thing when people reach whatever the age of majority is—we argued about that—to ensure that people are registered.

We have had the arguments about voter ID, which is ID when you turn up and choose to vote. No doubt, we will come back to those, but this is an earlier step. If the Government are really serious, as they tell us they are, about not disfranchising people and making sure they have this possibility of exercising their right, why would they not at least ensure they are automatically registered, with all the information and all the tools available to the state? If I may say so to the Minister: if the Government would listen on this issue and be prepared to have discussions, it might go some way to ameliorating concerns about potential voter suppression in relation to ID when people to turn up to vote at the polling station.

This is an infinitely sensible proposal, infinitely possible to achieve. A quarter of the way into the 21st century, with all the wit and wisdom we have at our disposal, and all the resources the Government have, if we are really serious about ensuring people are not disfranchised, they should be automatically registered when they reach voting age.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Baroness Chakrabarti and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Lords Hansard - part two & Report stage
Wednesday 15th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend; obviously I do not have his personal experience as a magistrate but just today I looked at published statistics from 2018, which showed that a small number of children were criminalised for criminal damage.

Whether children end up in court or not, if they have criminal responsibility, they can be criminalised. They may never get to court—they may accept an out-of-court disposal—but they will be criminalised and will potentially have a conviction that follows them around for a very long time. This is amoral; it is not the way to treat a vulnerable little person who has probably been neglected and/or abused. They are not ready for criminal responsibility—they are not responsible. All the scientific evidence suggests that their brains are not developed enough at the age of 10.

We weep hot tears for these children when we see them as victims of abuse and neglect, but we do not do so when some of them manage to survive but act out in ways that children will. Some children will never be criminalised for minor theft or criminal damage because they have the protection of their privilege. Other children will sometimes be criminalised, which is wrong in principle and says something very embarrassing about this jurisdiction—even compared with the neighbouring jurisdiction north of the border, as my noble friend pointed out. I do not want to repeat what I said about this in Committee, but I thank and pay tribute to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, who have campaigned on this issue for many years to stop us being an outlier in the world.

I note that next year my noble friend Lord Adonis will bring forward a Private Member’s Bill to lower the voting age from 18 to 16—something I will support but I suspect the Government will resist. The Government will insist on 18 for voting purposes and the age of majority, and perhaps take the view that children and young people are not mature enough to vote until they are 18, but heap criminal responsibility on them at the age of 10. That is a mismatch of eight years. Of course. children and young people—indeed, all people—develop slightly differently. Personally, in an ideal world, I would support 16 as a decent compromise. However, that is not the point.

The amendment in the name of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, to which I have added my name, settles on just 12. I am afraid that the fact that neither the Government nor my own party can support that, despite report after report from the UN on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, is an embarrassment. We are choosing some children over others. These difficult issues about children and criminality are always about other people’s children. However, the difference between believing in and promoting human rights and not doing so is whether you care about other people’s children, and not just at Christmas—and not determining, as a noble and learned Lord said earlier, who is naughty or nice but caring for everyone’s children and all children.

With that, I will spare your Lordships any more of my thoughts on this issue—I feel very strongly about it. I wish your Lordships and your children and grandchildren a very good Christmas when it comes.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and I agree with every word she just said. She noted that the UK is an outlier in the world in having an age of criminal responsibility of 10. However, I notice that my native Australia is now in the middle of the process of looking to raise its age from 10, which I think was inherited from UK law. With that development in Australia, we will be even more of an outlier.

I shall speak to Amendment 90, which appears in my name, but I stress that this is not in any way meant to compete with Amendment 89. I would support Amendment 89 but, like the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, I think it does not go far enough. My idea of a review is that if you were to hold a review, as the Justice Committee in the other place recommended last year, you would arrive at a figure higher than 12. Fourteen is the obvious one.

I apologise that I was not available to present the corresponding amendment in Committee because I was at the COP 26 climate talks. However, I thank my noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb for doing a great job of presenting it then, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, for supporting me at that stage. I also apologise for an administrative oversight on my part. There was extensive debate on the wording of proposed new subsection (2)(b). It was my intention to change the wording but I am afraid I did not. However, I hope noble Lords will look at the overall intention of this amendment rather than getting into the depths of discussion on the detail of the wording, since I have no intention of pressing this amendment to a vote tonight.

In particular, I want briefly to draw attention to proposed new subsection (4) in this amendment:

“The panel must consult with an advisory panel made up of young people currently and formerly in the youth justice system.”


There is a principle there that we should be following much more: people who have the lived experience of knowing what it is like to be the subject of the system have to be listened to, and we have to understand what the lived experience is like.

There is a risk in the situation I find myself in of thinking that everything has been said but not by me. I will try very hard not to do that. Rather than repeat all the arguments made in Committee, I will pick up one sentence said then by the Minister in response to the noble and learned Lady, Baroness Butler-Sloss:

“I have sought to set out why we believe that 10 is the correct age, given the way that our criminal justice system deals with children.”—[Official Report, 17/11/21; col. 263.]


In that context, I point to comments made by the former Children’s Commissioner, Anne Longfield, in late 2019. She called for a wholesale review of the youth justice system, saying that the youth court was

“not a child-friendly environment where you could really help a young person and is not meeting standards that we had hoped.”

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Baroness Chakrabarti and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Monday 15th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly—the noble Lord, Lord Russell, will be pleased to know—to offer the Green group’s support for Amendment 219 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove. I shall simply make two points, one of which draws on the recent intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Russell.

First, the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, referred to the origins of this amendment. Nottinghamshire Police Force has been a pioneer in this area. In my contribution on this subject on the Domestic Abuse Bill, I looked back beyond that. If you look at the history of how Nottingham police came to be doing it, it began with a group called Nottingham Citizens and a survey it conducted among the people of Nottingham. That led to a conference held at the Nottingham Women’s Centre, which informed the police and police action. This is something that very much grew from the grass roots up. In response to many of the contributions from people advocating Amendment 219A instead: this has been proven to work. It is there demonstrably on the ground. The fact is there.

For my second point, I refer to the author Caroline Criado Perez and quote her:

“There is enough data to know that men who kill women do not suddenly kill women, they work up to killing women … If only we were to listen to women and pay attention to the misogyny and aggression and violence that they deal with on a daily basis.”


That is what Amendment 219 seeks to do. The noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, suggests that we have to wait and wait and wait. I would suggest we have been waiting lifetimes—centuries—for this action. We have a proven model that has been shown to work. Let us put it into effect.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, her noble friend Lord Polak, my noble friend Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede and the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool. I want to focus on the amendment, not on a wide-ranging debate about everything that is wrong in relation to sex and gender or discourse in society.

I want to congratulate the noble Baroness because it is a simple and focused amendment. The word “misogyny” does not even appear in it. It is not thought crime. It is not even a speech offence. It follows a well-trodden path of adding protected characteristics or certain characteristics to a list. Hostility towards people with these characteristics will be an aggravating factor in a crime that already exists and has already been proven or admitted beyond reasonable doubt in a court. I say to noble Lords who are worried that I will come back to their fears and try to assuage them.

It seems totally unconscionable to me that, for example, race and religion have been aggravating factors in the code for so long but not hostility towards women. Hence, in the waiting millennia—certainly decades—since the code, these factors have been added. Some people will say that we never needed to add aggravating factors at all, and we could always trust the courts to get it right. Whether that is true or not—and I am not sure it is—we have a well-trodden system, and it is unconscionable, particularly at this moment when women and girls are feeling the way they are, that we should say we must wait because it is all very complex. If it is not complex in relation to race, religion and sexuality, it is not complicated in relation to sex. These are people who have already committed a criminal offence.

Why add aggravation at all? If somebody gets drunk on a Friday night and gets into fights with people they come across, that is bad enough. But if they go out after a few drinks on a Friday night to single out a particular group or a particular type of person based on their race or religion, or go out beating up women, that is an additional public policy problem, and that is why aggravation in relation to the group is a matter for this Committee and for policymakers.