My Lords, I support Amendments 63 to 69 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, to which I have added my name. I was surprised that we had a very long debate on Clauses 1 and 2 standing part but there was very little mention of any concern about the impact of this change on the overall turnout in elections, and the potential skewing of election results. I was delighted to hear the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, focus on elections that might be quite tightly fought with quite close results. You really might question those results, particularly in those constituencies where you might have a very tight result.
Before today, it struck me that this is really the big issue: there does not seem to be an issue about trust in our elections, certainly in relation to people who turn up at polling stations. I understand that there has been a problem with postal votes, but this reform does not touch that at all. I do not get it; I do not understand why there is this tremendous focus on photo ID for people who go to polling stations.
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Of course, this will affect disproportionately people from BAME communities, people living in poverty, disabled people and so on. Without wishing to make a party-political point in any way, the reality is that all those groups disproportionately tend to vote Labour, if they vote at all. At this stage of the game, when we see our voter turnout dropping over time, the emphasis should surely be on doing anything we can to increase voter turnout, in particular among groups that are disinclined to bother to vote—the groups I have just mentioned.
I think it was the Minister who said that if somebody turns up without ID they can come back later. I was involved over the years in many elections, and my experience is that people have a way of doing it: they vote on the way to work and then forget about it, they vote on the way back from work or they vote after having taken the kids to school. The idea that people are going to come back to a polling station a second time seems to me to be something from cloud-cuckoo-land; people just do not do that, in my experience, and will not do that. This will have an impact on turnout and, in my view, in marginal constituencies and closely fought elections—there could be a really serious issue here. That is my main concern.
It is worth noting that Voice4Change England, for example, a BAME organisation, is so concerned about the impact of Clause 1 on BAME communities that it is urging us to challenge the clause as a whole. My view has been that, because some version of this is in the Conservative manifesto, we cannot expect to knock it out, but I am delighted to hear today—I was not familiar with this—that the Conservative manifesto does not actually refer to photo ID. So that at least enables consideration of the points from the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, about extending the types of ID you can bring along. It is excellent that we can at least go that far.
The Runnymede Trust points out that many people from black and minority-ethnic groups are not registered to vote or do not have photo ID—nothing surprising there. It points out that trust in the political process is at a low ebb at the moment. I do not think there is any lack of trust in people being honest about who they are, but there is obviously a general malaise or apathy about voting.
Three major civil rights groups in the US have pointed out that in the absence of evidence of widespread election fraud, such ID systems have a harmful impact. Again, where is the evidence of widespread election fraud? We went over that lots of times during the Clause 1 stand part debate, so I will not go on about it. The fact is that that is not the issue; the issue now is voter participation, particularly among certain groups.
I hope noble Lords will bear with me as I touch on one other aspect. I draw attention to Amendment 68, which proposes that on page 67, at lines 11 and 12 of paragraph 2 of Schedule 1, new subsection (9) should be deleted. Once again, I declare my interest as a member of the Delegated Powers Committee. I want to extend my concern more broadly to the delegated powers in paragraph 2 of Schedule 1. The fact is that much of the electoral ID process is left to regulations. New subsection (9), for example, says:
“Regulations may require an electoral identity document to include other information.”
What other information? We have no idea. It could be devastating if you have to provide a whole raft of information. New subsection (3) is even more concerning. Here we are told that:
“A registration officer must, in accordance with regulations, determine an application made to the registration officer”
for an electoral ID. I hope that the Minister, if he cannot respond to the concern about what on earth that means, can ensure that the Government will take seriously the Delegated Powers Committee’s concerns about the extent of delegation across Schedule 1. Maybe he could ask his officials to try to include more information about the whole ID process in the Bill. Without that, we have very little idea about just how serious this may prove to be.
In the light of the concerns expressed by other noble Lords and our own very real fears about the consequences of the ID system unless heavily adjusted, I hope the Minister will think again and take advantage of the many proposed amendments in this group, which seem to take us as far as we can go towards some sort of level playing field.