Elections Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-21
Topic: Government Operations
Robert Andrew Stunell (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): The noble Lord makes an interesting point. At the 2017 election, when I was present at the normal polling station that I attend, I had some difficulty in preventing the polling clerk issuing me with a ballot paper. He was not deterred by the fact that I was disqualified by virtue of my membership of this House. I assure your Lordships that I rejected his tendered ballot paper—"tendered" with a small "t", obviously The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, made a powerful point on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, and his report. He referenced the Pickles report recommendation 8, and further parts of the report have also been read into the record in this debate. Recommendation 8 said that there was no need to be over-elaborate, and utility bills would do. My two years of junior ministerial office were in the then Department for Communities and Local Government, whose Secretary of State was the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, and I am pretty sure that, unless the noble Lord has changed his tack very considerably, he will remain fundamentally opposed to gold-plating. He was an enthusiastic pursuer of the red tape challenge, which was designed to reduce the amount of legislation and regulation, and I do not even have to consider whether he would regard the spending of £180 million on fulfilling his report as a sensible use of public money, or proportionate. I do not even have to imagine whether he regards the present arrangements as over-elaborate. I am sure that in due course the noble Lord will speak for himself. No doubt he is wisely keeping out of the way at the moment, but at some point, when his memoirs are published, we shall get to the truth The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, talked about which demographic would be hit the most. We can debate that, but there is clearly a proxy, which has been mentioned already. Some parts of the population do not have bank accounts. I would just say to the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, that for them, adding a credit or debit card to the list would not help. People who do not have bank accounts, and therefore do not have bank cards, are people who are very likely to be unable to produce evidence of other things either. But they nearly all have utility bills, and that seems to be a route that the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, recommended to the Government when he drew up his report The Minister should remember his own first principle, which is "No precautionary principle: don’t do anything unless there’s evidence to show it is needed". There is no evidence to show that this is needed. His next principle is "Don’t gold-plate"—and he should remember the red tape challenge. The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, has provided the Government with the solution they are looking for, which would allow them to say to whoever they have to give an account to, "We’ve fulfilled our manifesto pledge, and we have a scheme that doesn’t strip out electors and reduce their propensity to come along and vote". I support all the amendments in the group, but Amendment 80 ought to be the foundation stone for the Government to do a diplomatic and nuanced U-turn.