Elections Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-21
Topic: Civil Rights
Andrew Adonis (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I want to return to what the Minister said in the last group, because it is going to be of great importance as this House proceeds with the Bill. I totally and completely refute his proposition that the Bill in its current form is covered by the Salisbury convention. My contention, which I will elaborate at greater length in future if need be, is that something as significant and of such great constitutional import as a requirement on all voters to have a wholly new form of photo ID is not covered by the Salisbury convention. What is covered is the requirement that there should be some form of voter ID—that is why I would not support the removal of Clause 1 in its entirety—but not photo ID. That is a fundamental distinction. Indeed, the conflict between the Blair Government, of which I was a member, and this House, which led to the loss of a substantial part of the ID cards Bill, was precisely that this House contended with a significant majority that there was not sufficient manifesto cover for the proposition being put forward I say this very directly to the Minister now, because I think this is going to be a very significant issue in due course. It is going to be particularly important that my noble friends on the two Front Benches of the Labour and Lib Dem parties—I am speaking to them as much as to the Minister at this point—do not fall for the argument that, simply because this Bill has come from the House of Commons and has photo ID in it, and because it is asserted that it is covered by the Salisbury convention, it is covered by the Salisbury convention. It is a particular tradition of this House, which goes to the heart of the constitution, that the occasions on which we are prepared to assert our power against the Government where they do not have manifesto cover particularly relate to constitutional issues, where we have a special role as guardian of the constitution to see that one particular party cannot gerrymander it at will, claiming a general manifesto commitment for something that specifically has a very big impact. The noble Lord, Lord Willetts and I—I hope he does not mind me saying that he and I are old friends—both approach public policy from a fairly centrist perspective, applying rationality and so on. Not only was his speech on Amendment 80 brilliant and very compelling but he went to the absolute heart of this issue in his analysis of the distinction between the Government claiming that their manifesto contained, and gave a mandate for, an identity document requirement, and it being a photo-identity document requirement. Those are two fundamentally different propositions. The proposition that they are fundamentally different is made by the content of Amendment 80 itself, because although the noble Lord did not deconstruct his amendment, I have had time to deconstruct it since he moved it In Amendment 80 the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, lists 21 forms of personal identification. By my calculation, only five of them are necessarily photo IDs: driving licence, student ID card, 18+ student Oyster photocard, National Rail card and, I assume, the Young Scot National Entitlement card, because young people’s documents require photos. Of the other 16, only another three may—and I think it depends on who the issuing authority is—require a photo: a trade union membership card, a library card, and a workplace ID card. That varies very much between local authorities and trade unions, and so on. All of the rest are non-photo ID documents: birth certificate, marriage or civil partnership certificate, record of a decision on bail, bank or building society cheque book, and, and, and The noble Lord from the Conservative Benches made the argument that this is completely consistent with the Conservative Party manifesto. That point will be of huge importance as the House takes forward consideration of this Bill, passes amendments and then gets into what I assume will be—is very likely to be, if there is time in this Session; the sand is going through the hourglass quite rapidly—a significant standoff between this House and the other place. I have no doubt at all that not only is it within our powers but it will be our duty to resist the mandatory introduction of photo ID requirements. I suspect that Amendment 80 may well be the fundamental amendment that we take forward in some form in later stages of the Bill I will quickly deal with Amendments 78 and 64. We have dealt with Amendment 64, and I hope the Minister will be able to give us satisfaction on it. It is an absolutely crucial point. It is not enough for it to be possible to apply at the same time; it has to be a requirement that people can apply at the same time, or else it will become a matter of postcode lottery across the country as to whether you can apply for your identity document at the same time as you apply to register to vote One point that has been made which we have not debated enough is covered by Amendment 78. When I first came to the Bill, not being an expert in the evolution of the Government’s thinking, I thought that they were going to propose that people needed to turn up at the polling station with some form of ID. I thought that that alone was going to be off-putting. It never occurred to me until I read the Bill and heard what they were doing that not only were they going to have to turn up with some form of ID but it was not even sufficient for them to have an existing photo form of ID. Over and above that, even if you were going for a photo ID requirement—which, as I said, is not even covered by the Conservative manifesto—surely it would be proportionate for you to turn up with your passport or driving licence that is an existing form of photo ID. What is the great security risk of saying that people can turn up at a polling station with a passport or a driving licence? Why on earth can the Government not regard that as adequate?