Elections Bill — House of Lords, 2022-02-23
Topic: Civil Rights
Thomas Coke (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, what a treat it was to listen to the wonderful maiden speech from the noble Lord, Lord Moore of Etchingham. Let us hope for many more in this Chamber I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I speak to just one aspect of the Bill: photo identification. The Elections Bill will implement photo identification in polling stations in UK parliamentary elections in Great Britain and local elections in England. Councils will offer a free voter card if an elector wants one. Some form of photo ID is needed to deter and prevent personation fraud. At present, it is harder to take out a library book or collect a parcel from a post office than it is to vote in someone else’s name. In 2003, the last Labour Government introduced photo identification at polling stations in Northern Ireland. It has helped prevent election fraud and has not harmed voter participation. Labour Government Ministers said then that: "Personation at the polling station will be made much more difficult by the requirement for all voters to provide a specified form of photographic identification … The measures will tackle electoral abuse effectively without disadvantaging honest voters … to ensure that no one is disfranchised because of them."—[Official Report, Commons, 10/7/01; col. 739.] They said they would not be introducing the measure if they believed that thousands of voters would not be able to vote because it If Labour now thinks identification to vote is so wrong, why is it not campaigning to repeal its own laws? Should electoral fraud be tolerated in Great Britain but not in Northern Ireland? Does Labour believe that most European countries which require photo ID engage in so-called voter suppression? Many constituency Labour parties currently require two types of voter identification to vote in Labour Party candidate selections—members are told to bring photo ID. Shadow Minister Cat Smith has attacked voter ID, saying we should consider "how difficult it is for so many people in this country to have access to ID, because it is expensive—£80-odd for a passport and £43 for a driving licence."—[Official Report, Commons, 7/9/21; col. 210.] But photo ID in either of those two forms was required to attend the 2019 and 2021 Labour Party conferences. This is political opportunism by the Labour Party Labour has claimed that the rollout of individual electoral registration in Great Britain, as used in Northern Ireland, would lead to mass disfranchisement, yet the electoral register in the 2019 general election was at its highest ever level. Its shrill claims on voter identification are similarly bogus and are also shown to be false by the extensive Northern Ireland experience and the 2018 and 2019 pilots held in some areas of England There have been no reported cases of polling station personation in Northern Ireland since the law changed in 2003. Indeed, the Electoral Commission observed in 2015 that "there have been no reported cases of personation. Voters’ confidence that elections are well-run in Northern Ireland is consistently higher than in Great Britain, and there are virtually no allegations of electoral fraud at polling stations" Furthermore, in its 2021 public opinion tracker, the Electoral Commission did not record a single Northern Irish respondent reporting "I don’t have any ID / I wouldn’t be able to vote" International election observers have repeatedly called for the introduction of identification in polling stations in Great Britain, saying that its absence is a security risk. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the OSCE, has said that "serious consideration should be given to introducing a more robust mechanism for identification of voters." Furthermore, our own Electoral Commission has called for the introduction of identification in Great Britain for many years, at least since 2014. With regard to some noble Lords on the Opposition Benches stating that there is very little voter personation in our elections and that there has been only one successful prosecution, by definition personation is a crime of deception. A low number of reported cases equally suggests that such deception may not be detected. Personation is very difficult to prove and prosecute. Data is limited by the nature of the crime Finally, on the possibility that photo identification might deter hesitant minority groups from voting, I find this view somewhat patronising. Electoral fraud undermines the fundamental right to vote in free and fair elections. It deprives voters of their voice and their ability to have their say. Evaluations of the 2019 election pilots found that voter identification increased confidence among ethnic minorities that elections were free from fraud and abuse to 97%. Confidence also increased among younger voters. The Electoral Commission’s research has warned that residents are at greater risk of electoral fraud in ethnically diverse areas. I commend and support the Bill.