My Lords, I apologise for not being available to speak at Second Reading. I now rise in support of Amendment 20. Along with many other noble Lords, I feel that clause 2 is an attempt by the Government to increase the participation in voting for industrial action. Surely the Minister will support any way of ensuring as large a turnout as possible.
I have taken part in postal votes on industrial action, and other trade union elections, as a member of my present union, BECTU, and as a former member of the NUJ. I have also taken part in elections electronically. I can tell noble Lords that it is much easier for me to take part in the latter ballots. When I talk to my younger colleagues in the media about whether e-voting should be allowed in trade union votes, frankly they are astonished, and in some cases appalled, that it does not happen already. Along with many of us, they already carry out incredibly secure transactions and make huge decisions electronically every day. For them, e-voting would dramatically increase their willingness to take part in any strike votes—which, after all, must be one of the aims of the Bill. Online transactions and decision-making are in every sphere of our lives; they are the reality of the 21st century and ought to be represented in this Bill.
I have read the objections of the Minister in the other place to allowing electronic voting to take place
in industrial ballots and other trade union elections. He quoted from the Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy, which recommended not introducing e-voting yet on the grounds that e-voting equipment could not be trusted—that electronic voting software is not accountable and its complexity makes voting insecure. It strikes me that the Speaker’s Commission was looking at UK national elections and European elections, so the issue of trade union elections was not actually relevant. Even so, its recommendation 26 says that secure systems for electronic voting should be an option for voters in the 2020 general election.
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Like my noble friend Lord Kerslake, I have spoken to Electronic Reform Services. As he said, it has supervised elections involving 400 organisations, and of course the Conservative Party used electronic voting in its own primaries for the London mayoral elections. If electronic voting is fine for these organisations, surely it should be considered for trade union elections as well. I also understand that, under the previous coalition Government, work was commissioned by the then BIS Secretary, Vince Cable, to investigate whether e-voting for trade unions was viable. I would be grateful if the Minister let the House know the findings of that work.
The noble Lord, Lord King, expressed his concern about how insecure electronic voting could be. Amendment 20 is a convincing response to any fears there might be about trade union e-voting being insecure, and whether the systems would be accountable. The Minister in the other place said he was willing to discuss practical objections with opposition parties, and anyone else in society, to overcome those objections. This amendment is a very good basis for such discussions.
Electronic Reform Services has indeed brought out a report, which seems to work very well with paragraphs (a) to (e) of new subsection 6 in the amendment. It has a voting system that could be made secure by separating the database used for the distribution of voter information from the database of the system used to store the votes that have been cast electronically. In that way, ERS can ensure that the voter’s identity is separated from their preference, as currently happens with postal votes in public elections. It can also ensure that the identity of the voter is authenticated by issuing randomly generated single-use security codes to enable them to access the electronic voting system. Alternatively, voters could provide personal identifiers such as dates of birth and membership numbers, but the former has been recommended as less open to manipulation.
New subsection 6(c) would work very well with ERS’s suggestion that security codes be sent only to the email address registered by the voter, a method that could be enhanced by delivering part of the authentication by a separate means—by email or by post. However, ERS points out that splitting information can be problematic. Through new subsection 6(e), we could ensure that the software system used for electronic voting was built independently using industrial standards, and regularly tested by an approved vendor.
These measures have been good enough for the millions of votes cast electronically over the past few years, and for the Government’s own party’s elections
in the London mayoral elections, so surely this method would be good enough to ensure a high turnout for trade union votes. I commend the amendment to your Lordships’ House in the name of democracy.