Elections Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-17
Topic: Civil Rights
Kathryn Pinnock (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, there was no intention on my part at all to create any division within our communities. I have spent a lifetime in mixed communities, trying to engage people from every background in the political process. That is the point that I was trying to make and I am sorry if the noble Baroness opposite perhaps misunderstood Here we are today, talking about the costs of voter ID, which the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, has eloquently said will create an even greater barrier to people being able to vote. At this point, I want to draw the attention of the Committee to the fact that I am an elected member of Kirklees Council and a vice-president of the Local Government Association I speak in support of the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman—of course I do. In many ways, she is absolutely right. Any changes in the way in which elections are administered will be an additional cost to already hard-pressed council finances. Returning officers have expressed their concern. They know that there is more to it than just creating the new eligible voter ID for those without it Additional costs are mentioned in the Explanatory Memorandum, helpfully. What it does not do is list them. I am going to draw the Committee’s attention to what some of the additional costs will be. As we have heard, there is the additional cost of creating a photographic voter ID card for those who do not have one, the cost of providing screens for voters who do not wish to remove their face covering in front of others, and the cost of additional equipment to make it easier for those with disabilities to vote in person. The latter is one part of the Bill that is positive. There is also the cost of additional polling clerks to check ID in busy polling stations—perhaps financial incentives will be required to encourage polling clerks to fulfil that role because they will now have to check the ID of every voter before they get their ballot paper. There is the cost of effectively communicating the change, and the hidden cost of more trained staff. And so it goes on As the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, has said, the estimate is £180 million—a mere £3 per person. I say to her that, in my council area, that is £1 million a year—and £1 million does not half fill a lot of potholes. If I asked my electors back in Kirklees whether they would rather the council produced voter ID cards for people or filled potholes, I am fairly confident that I know what the answer would be Can the Minister confirm that the Government will meet all the additional costs of the changes that they want to make? Can he confirm, given that individual councils will have different additional expenditure based on their demographics, that any government grant will be divided to meet the cost of changes rather than on a formulaic basis? Do the Government believe that extra expenditure is value for money? The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, raised that issue and I have just given an example. Have the Government consulted with electors on whether they believe that these additional costs are value for money and can be considered a priority in these straitened times Schedule 3 relates to the changes proposed to postal voting. There is a very high cost to the requirement to reapply after three years. In my local authority, around 50,000 electors currently vote by post; the postage costs alone are very high. In England there are about 8 million postal voters, so the postage costs for writing out to existing postal voters for them to reapply and fill in the postal voter application would be about £4 million. Is that money well spent in the current circumstances?