Elections Bill

Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

My Lords, I rise with some diffidence, because almost everybody else in the House has much greater personal experience of electoral law than I have. One of us, so we have learned today, has had his visit to the polling station followed by a visit from the constabulary. I join those who congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Moore, on his remarkable maiden speech.

I think my credential to speak is that I lived abroad for a while and have a basis for comparison of our system with those of other countries. My impression is that ours is relatively clean, reasonably efficient, well understood and rather well liked—so what is the problem? My first question about the Bill is why, and what is the disease that it is trying to cure? As the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, has just said, why has it been given priority over long-delayed measures responding to very real demands, such as the reform of social care, for example, or more pertinently, for real action against foreign interference and foreign finance in our elections? I would like to find a respectable rationale for the Bill, but I have not heard it yet.

My concerns are particularly about four provisions: voter ID, back to first past the post, denying the local election vote to EU citizens newly resident here, and Clause 13, Schedule 8 and the attack on the independence of the Electoral Commission. In all four, my question is why?

On voter ID, as the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee in the other place put it, the Government’s answer

“simply is not good enough”.

The experts tell us that personation is very rare. My noble friend Lord Janvrin reminds us that the missing millions is a far greater problem. We know that disadvantaged young people who are on the register, particularly those in minority communities, tend not to have passports or driving licences and, frankly, I do not see them queueing up in town halls to get specific electoral identity cards. There can be very little doubt that the Bill would further reduce participation, not because fraud has been widespread but because we would make voting harder. The conspiracy theorists say that that is the point and that some people have been looking at what is going on in the American Deep South and are taking a leaf from the Republicans’ voter suppression playbook. I do not want to believe that. I tend not to believe in conspiracy theories, but I have yet to hear a good reason why we should act in a way that is inconsistent with wider public policy on social inclusion.

As for first past the post for mayors and police commissioners, in one sense, it is no big deal. I am told that only 17 of the 217 such elections which have taken place using the SV system would have produced a different result under first past the post. Yet something quite important would be lost if we go backwards here. Fewer people in the community would see the winner as someone they had chosen. There would be an enhanced perception that party affiliation, rather than personal quality, mattered most. So why do it? The experts tell us that SV is easily understood. If it ain’t broke, why fix it? Unless of course you really want mayors to be more subservient to national political leadership, but do we not believe in more devolution?

Then there is disfranchising the EU citizens lawfully resident here with leave to remain, just because they arrived after Brexit. I have to say that this looks a little like Brexiteer spite. Surely residence, not nationality, is the right test for the local election franchise. If these people pay their council tax, then is it not a case of no taxation without representation? It is like that in Scotland, so why not in England?

Finally, much the most significant of my four points is the attack on the Electoral Commission’s independence. Having lived in America, I am convinced that what America badly needs is an impartial boundary commission to stop gerrymandering and an impartial electoral commission to see fair play in campaigns. So I was rather horrified two years ago when the then Chairman of the Conservative Party called for the abolition of the Electoral Commission—at least the Bill does not do that. However, one cannot say that wiser counsel has prevailed, because what Clause 14 of the Bill does is plain wrong in principle. I do not need to labour the point, because the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, put it far better than I could, but supposing we were to give the Government the benefit of the doubt and assume that, in practice, they would never use this new directing power to guide the commission, what about future Governments? Why leave this loaded gun on the table? This is wrong in principle and dangerous in practice.

I look forward to our debates in Committee. I hope the Government will listen and allay my fears. If they do not, I am sure we shall have to truncate their Bill.