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.
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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.