Local Elections: Voter ID — House of Lords, 2018-04-24
Topic: Civil Rights
George Young (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, with the leave of the House I should like to repeat an Answer to an Urgent Question given in the other place yesterday by the Parliamentary Secretary at the Cabinet Office. I apologise in advance if it is somewhat longer than it would normally have been. The Answer is as follows: "The British public deserve to have confidence in our democracy. There is clearly the potential for electoral fraud in our system, and that undermines confidence and promotes perceptions of vulnerability. When fraud is committed in elections, it is not a victimless crime. People’s votes are stolen, or someone is elected who should not have been elected Earlier this year the Government announced that they would be conducting pilots for voter identification at the local elections in May this year in line with our manifesto commitment to legislate to ensure that a form of ID must be presented before voting Voter ID is part of the Government’s commitment to improve the security and the resilience of the electoral system that underpins our democracy and will promote greater confidence in our democratic processes. In making these changes, we will bring our electoral system in line with others, such as that in Northern Ireland or Canada, which operate successful programs and recognise that there is an increasing expectation that someone’s vote should be protected and carefully guarded We already ask that people prove who they are in order to claim benefits, to rent a car or even to collect a parcel from the post office, so this is a proportionate and reasonable approach. Democracy is precious, and it is right to take that more robust approach to protect the integrity of the electoral process Since 2014, the independent Electoral Commission has pushed for the introduction of ID to strengthen the system, and it has welcomed the voter ID pilots as a positive first step towards implementing its own recommendation that an accessible, proportionate voter identification scheme be introduced in Great Britain. In a recent report for Democratic Audit UK, academic Stuart Wilks-Heeg stated that after the scheme was introduced in Northern Ireland there was no evidence to suggest a fall in turnout but that there was plenty of evidence that fraud declined sharply Indeed, it was the previous Labour Government who introduced photo ID at polling stations across Northern Ireland in 2003. As I have said, it has not affected turnout there and it has helped to prevent election fraud. The Labour Minister at the time said: ‘The measures will tackle electoral abuse effectively without disadvantaging honest voters’, ensuring that, ‘no one is disfranchised’.—[Official Report, Commons, 10/7/01; col. 739.] The opportunity to pilot voter ID in May 2018 was offered to all local authorities in Great Britain, and five—Woking, Gosport, Bromley, Watford and Swindon —have committed to do so. Proxy voters in Peterborough will also be required to show ID before they can vote on 3 May 2018. The Minister for the Constitution has taken the opportunity to speak to each local authority about the design of their pilots and the methods that they have applied to ensure that their electors are aware of voter identification and that each elector’s needs are understood. Local authorities will notify every eligible voter by including information of the ID requirement on their poll card No one will need to buy ID documents to be able to vote, and the ID requirements will not be limited to a passport or driving licence. In the pilots, voters can use a wide variety of ID, from marriage certificates and passports to bus passes and bank cards, depending on where they live. If voters do not have the required ID, local authorities are providing alternative or replacement methods to ensure that no one is disenfranchised. Everybody eligible to vote will have the chance to do so The pilots will help to identify the best way of implementing voter ID, and we look forward to each authority’s findings. The Minister for the Constitution has responded to the recent letter from the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and a copy has been made available in the Library of both Houses. All the local authorities involved have completed equality impact assessments, and the Electoral Commission will independently evaluate the pilots, with results published this summer We want to ensure that our elections are as accessible as possible and that there are no barriers to democratic participation. We have recognised that, for example, people with a disability face different issues when registering and voting. We have run a call for evidence to hear directly about their experiences to enhance the Government’s understanding so that we can help those people to register and cast their vote. We have also recently made it easier for survivors of domestic abuse to register to vote anonymously for fear of revealing their address to an ex-partner, as there were fears that that was preventing survivors registering to vote The aim of the pilots is to protect voting rights, and it comes in the context of protecting and improving our democracy. Pilots are important in order to find out what works best. Electoral fraud is unacceptable on any level, and its impact on voters can be significant. It takes away an elector’s right to vote as they want, whether through intimidation, bribery or impersonating someone in order to cast their vote. The Cabinet Office, in partnership with the Electoral Commission and Crimestoppers, launched the Your Vote is Yours Alone campaign only last month to encourage people to report electoral fraud if they see it The impact of electoral fraud is real and it is criminal. It steals something precious from a person and undermines the entire system for everyone. I do not want to see our democracy dumbed down; it is rather a shame that the Labour Party appears to".