My Lords, I should first declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. My other interests, including my advisory work with a number of metro mayors, are listed in the register. I too enjoyed the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Moore, and welcome him to the House. It reminded me that he once wrote a piece taking me to task for doing a speech about the moral superiority of the Civil Service. It was a powerful piece with only one flaw: I did not make the speech. Somebody else made the speech, but I did enjoy the attention.
Our democracy is precious to our way of life in this country, but it is also fragile. We need only to look at Russia, Turkey and Hungary to see what happens when the democratic process is suborned. We should never be complacent about the risks. It follows from this that any changes to the laws governing our electoral process must be made with extreme care, be guided by clear evidence, enjoy cross-party consensus and be subject to extensive pre-legislative scrutiny and consultation. Had that path been followed by the Government in this instance, I think all sides of the House would have welcomed such a Bill.
There clearly are ways we can improve the security and transparency of our elections in the UK, and we can all agree on those. Sadly, and although there are some positive things in the Bill, this consensual and open approach is not the approach the Government have followed. The Bill is being pushed forward with unseemly haste and with some provisions both deeply flawed and deeply partisan. As such, all Members in this House should be concerned about a Bill that seriously risks weakening—not strengthening—our democracy.
There is not time to do justice to all my concerns, and other noble Lords have spoken on many of them, so I will highlight just four areas of particular concern. First is one that has been commonly mentioned: the undermining of the independence of the Electoral Commission by giving the Secretary of State powers to direct its work through a strategy and policy statement.
If we had any doubts about the issues involved here, they should have been removed by reading the Electoral Commission’s extraordinary letter, signed by all bar one of the commissioners, which said in clear terms that they were concerned about these provisions. Given that and the debate we have had today, the Minister should seriously acknowledge the issues and consider urgently rethinking this part of the Bill.
My second concern is the introduction of the requirement to have photo ID in order to vote, which the campaign organisation Liberty, as others have quoted, has accurately called
“a solution in search of a problem.”
It is particularly frustrating given that we have many real problems that are not being sorted. The evidence for personation is tiny—I am a former returning officer—and far outweighed by the evidence that people will be prevented or inhibited from voting by the proposals put forward by the Government. Moreover, we know it will be younger and lower-income people who are most affected. I am very doubtful that we need this at all, but if it is going to go forward there must be much stronger mitigation measures in place, as others have said.
My third concern is the change to the rules on campaign expenditure, which could significantly curtail the campaigning ability of a number of organisations, including the trade unions. Let us be clear about it: these provisions are poorly thought through and laden with unintended consequences. They need to be either taken out or fundamentally revised.
Fourthly and finally is the change in the voting system for the election of mayors and police and crime commissioners from the current supplementary voting system to first past the post. As we have already heard, this was introduced late into the Bill in Committee, so the normal scrutiny was avoided. It has been argued that it is a fulfilment of the Conservative 2019 manifesto commitment. It is nothing of the sort. That manifesto said:
“We will continue to support the First Past the Post system.”
“Continue” is the key word here—a clear reference to retaining the existing first past the post elections, not changing the existing elections run by a different system. It rides roughshod over the original consultation done at the time the London mayoral post was created, which showed a clear majority in favour of a different voting model from first past the post.
I have to say that, despite searching, I can find absolutely no evidence of public concerns about the current voting arrangements. It is, to coin the Minister’s phrase, a tried-and-tested system that has run for 22 years in five elections in London. I am reluctantly forced to conclude that the only reason the change is being put forward is that the current party in power has not been very successful in elections under this system recently. That is not a good reason for changing the system. In short, I see no case for this provision being in the Bill and I think it should be removed.
To conclude, all the available evidence, including the report of PACAC, as we have heard, tells us one clear thing: that there are deep concerns and issues with the Bill that need a great deal more time and consideration than the five days currently being allocated
for Committee. Unless the Bill gets proper consideration by this House, I fear that we will be legislating in haste now and deeply regretting it later.
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