hazylavender/hi huggingface dataset:
Date: 2023-04-27
Kevin Brennan: I think the Speaker's Committee should have discussions about this issue. Has my hon. Friend seen some recent examples of Conservative party leaflets, where people are being encouraged to return postal vote applications to Tory headquarters rather than back to the local authority, and where millions of people are being disenfranchised through lack of voter ID? Leaflets have also gone out--in Norwich, for example--saying that people do not need ID to vote. Should not the Electoral Commission take the view that although such practices may technically be legal, they are in fact harmful to our democracy?
Date: 2023-04-27
Cat Smith: The code of conduct is of course voluntary, but the code of conduct for campaigners states that parties can provide applications for postal votes but the forms must include the address for the electoral registration officer as the preferred address, even if an alternative address is provided. Campaigners should send on any application forms they receive to the relevant address within two working days, and the commission recommends that any concerns that the code has been breached should be raised first with the candidate, political party or campaigner in question, and any further concerns should be drawn to the attention of the commission. The commission is aware of the Conservative party leaflet in Norwich and has had conversations with the party.
Date: 2023-04-27
Andrew Selous: Grants that would cover kitchens, loos or disability access, basic repairs to rooves and windows and so on are in many cases unavailable to Church of England parish churches because of an inconsistency in the way in which local authorities are applying the law, and the Bishop of Bristol has tabled an amendment to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill to resolve this so that parish churches can apply for such grants, and I hope the Department will be supportive of it.
Date: 2023-04-27
Selaine Saxby: I recently visited Meshaw Together near South Molton to discuss plans for its local church, St John the Baptist, reordering the church for wider community use. The project led by Jeff Souch and supported by the vicar was unsuccessful in securing platinum jubilee funding, but might I be able to meet with my hon. Friend to try to find additional funding that may be available for this community initiative that also secures the future of the church?
Date: 2023-04-27
Andrew Selous: Yes, of course I will meet with my hon. Friend. I have also heard of the good work of St John the Baptist, Meshaw. The Church Commissioners  have given PS11 million over the next three years to fund specialist support officers to advise on community projects of this nature and to help with fundraising. Small grants are available to help with repairs and towards buildings becoming net zero. Parishresources.org.uk may also provide helpful information. The Exeter diocese recently held a "meet the funders" day, to which more than 100 people turned up, to learn how churches such as St John the Baptist can approach funders such as the Benefact Trust. I encourage Meshaw to follow that up.
Date: 2023-04-27
Jerome Mayhew: My hon. Friend has made reference to the speech of the Bishop of Bristol in the other place highlighting an apparent inconsistency between the Local Government Act 1972 and the 1894 Act, which gives cause for concern as to whether local government funding for Church buildings is legal. Does my hon. Friend recognise that as a serious concern, and if so how does he propose to clarify the issue?
Date: 2023-04-27
Andrew Selous: My hon. Friend is right about the Bishop of Bristol, whose amendments in the other place have the support of heritage bodies and the National Association of Local Councils, whom I have also met on the issue. All we are asking is for Church of England parish churches to be treated the same as other faith and community buildings, which does not seem a lot to ask for, and I would hope that both my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean), and the Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood), are listening hard to what I have said and representations will be made to Ministers about these issues.
Date: 2023-04-27
Andrew Selous: My hon. Friend speaks so well, not only for Kettering but for England. He is right to draw attention to the fact that England is among the countries with the least tree cover in Europe. The Church absolutely wants to play its part in changing that. To help achieve that, it participated in the Queen's green canopy initiative, including through work on an 8,000 mixed-tree plantation in north-west England. We also work with farming tenants across England to explore every possible planting opportunity, including planting trees in hedgerows, agri- forestry and field-scale woodland planting, and will carry on doing so.
Date: 2023-04-27
Cat Smith: The Committee discussed the commission's work supporting the implementation of the voter ID requirement at its recent public evidence session in March. A transcript of that session is available on the Committee's website. The commission continues to support voters, campaigners and electoral administrators ahead of the implementation of the voter ID requirement at local elections in England next week. Its research shows that public awareness of the requirement increased from 22% in December to 76% at the end of March. Voter ID will also be required at police and crime commissioner elections in England and Wales, UK parliamentary by-elections, and recall petitions from 3 May, and in general elections from October. The commission will run further public awareness activities and provide guidance for electoral administrators ahead of future elections, including in Scotland.
Date: 2023-04-27
Kirsten Oswald: The SNP has consistently opposed the requirement for voter ID since it was brought in under the Elections Act 2022. The requirement is about to take effect for the first time in England. It will effectively disenfranchise many people, including disabled people and people from minority ethnic backgrounds. Given that only about 50,000 people have applied for the free ID certificate, while the number of voters without the necessary ID is thought to be about 2 million,  and given the gulf between the enfranchisement of older and younger voters, what steps will the Electoral Commission take to make sure that all people, even those who do not vote Conservative, can take part in elections?
Date: 2023-04-27
Cat Smith: The commission has said that voter authority certificate applications were lower than might have been expected. That may reflect the number of people wishing to vote in the elections, the take-up of postal or proxy voting, or some voters not having taken action in time to meet the deadline, as the hon. Lady suggests. The commission will consider the levels of take-up and the reasons for them in its evaluation of the implementation of the requirement for voter ID, and that will include detailed public survey work. The commission has been working with key groups who have been identified as needing additional support to navigate voter ID requirements, including the over-85s; people with sight loss or learning disabilities; Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities; people experiencing homelessness or living in refuges; trans and non-binary people; and anonymous voters.
Date: 2023-04-27
Cat Smith: My hon. Friend is entirely correct: electoral administrators have been reporting difficulties to the Electoral Commission in recruiting polling station staff. That was the case in recent elections, too, but the issue   has been exacerbated by the new role that there will be in administering voter ID requirements. Local authorities are working to address recruitment difficulties, including by calling on staff who work in areas that do not have elections in May to work in the areas that do. Of course, there is the additional challenge of needing a woman at every polling station to verify the identity of women who wear face coverings for religious reasons.
Date: 2023-04-27
Andrew Selous: I can reassure my hon. Friend that the Church is doing a great deal in that area. We are supporting the Big Help Out to promote volunteering, along with many charities and businesses, as well as the Big Lunch to break down barriers and combat loneliness. We also have Sing for the King and Ring for the King to promote choral singing and bell ringing, linked to the coronation. [Interruption.]
Date: 2023-04-27
Rachel Maclean: It is vital that we keep our democracy secure. This Government stood on a manifesto commitment not only to protect the integrity of our elections but to enhance it. On that basis, this Government won a majority. We have introduced legislation to implement that commitment and we are now in the process of delivering on our promise. Voter identification is central to protecting our electoral system from the potential for voting fraud. Its implementation at the local elections next week brings the rest of the UK in line with Northern Ireland, where people have had to bring photographic ID to vote in elections since 2003. [Interruption.] I remind the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), who is chuntering from a sedentary position, that that legislation was introduced by the then Labour Government under direct rule. The data collection processes for polling stations are set out clearly in the Elections Act 2022 and the Voter Identification Regulations 2022. Polling station staff will record details of any electors turned away--should there be any--for the purposes of complaints or legal challenges and, in the short term, to provide data to evaluate the policy, which will be conducted by the Government and the Electoral Commission in line with the legislation that was voted on, debated and passed by this House. The Electoral Commission has published suggested templates of the necessary forms and has updated its guidance in the polling station handbook to reflect the new processes. As required by legislation, the Government will publish a number of reports on the impact of the voter identification policy. Our intention is that the first of those reports will be published no later than November 2023. The data collected will be a significant part of that evaluation. There are few tasks more important in public life, as I am sure every member of a political party represented in this House and the general public would agree, than maintaining the British public's trust in the sanctity of the ballot box in our democratic processes. We on the Government Benches take that duty very seriously. I look forward to our first experience of the policy in polling stations in Great Britain on 4 May.
Date: 2023-04-27
Clive Betts: I was not my intention to get into an argument about the appropriateness of the policy. I was trying to recognise that it will be important to know the impact of the voter ID regulations once the elections have taken place. When people go to polling stations and are turned away because do not have the requisite ID, will those numbers be recorded? We know that if someone speaks to a polling clerk and is turned away, the total number of those people--not their names--will be recorded. But because of concerns about the collection  of people around polling stations, some authorities will have meeters and greeters outside who will check in advance, perhaps when people are in a queue, whether they have the required ID. We do not know whether people who are turned away at that point will have their numbers recorded--that is the confusion. At a recent Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee hearing, Peter Stanyon, the chief executive of Association of Electoral Administrators, made this important point: "The returning officers are required where they have a meeter-greeter to report those they have advised at the door and turned away, and those at the desk as well. They will be reported as two separate things...The base standard is it is at the desk, because that is where the ballot papers will be and that is where the question is asked. Where there is a meeter-greeter, the commission is asking for that statistic and the Government are asking for that statistic as well." So two sets of statistics will be collected. That seems fairly clear. The problem is that this week the Electoral Commission said something very different. It said that when meeter-greeters turn someone away who does not have the voter ID that they should have, those numbers will not be counted. I have a simple question for the Minister: is it the Government's intention that that information will be collected, so the total number of people who attend a polling station but are denied a vote because they do not have the requisite ID will be counted? Was the statement made by Peter Stanyon to the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee correct? If it was correct, why did the Electoral Commission issue different advice this week? Was that information incorrect? Or, if it was correct, was the information provided by the Electoral Commission this week given with the consent and approval of the Government? If it was, and meeter-greeters are going to turn people away and the numbers are not going to be collected, how can it be said that it is the Government's intention to collect information that includes the number of people who are turned away? Surely both elements have to be added together in order to get the total numbers correct and to properly assess the impact of the measure.
Date: 2023-04-27
Rachel Maclean: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his forensic scrutiny, as we would expect from the Chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee. I will make a couple of basic points, but it may be appropriate for me to follow up in writing, because he is referring to some conversations--[Interruption.] I would be grateful if the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) would stop chuntering so I can answer the question appropriately, because the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) has requested a considerable amount of detail, which I am attempting to give.
Date: 2023-04-27
Rachel Maclean: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I will make a couple of points. First, the hon. Gentleman asked whether the Electoral Commission has been directed by the Government. That is not the case. As he will know, the Electoral Commission is a completely independent body. I was just present in the Chamber to listen to one of the hon. Gentleman's colleagues, the hon. Member  for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith), answering questions on behalf of the Electoral Commission. The Electoral Commission is subject to scrutiny and plays a vital role in these processes. For the avoidance of doubt, I remind the House that we are very concerned to get the process of data collection correct. As set out in the voter identification regulations, data collection will take place in polling stations via two forms: the ballot paper refusal list and the voter identification evaluation form. The first records data in case of a later complaint or legal challenge. The latter records data for the purpose of evaluation of the policy. As has been discussed many times in the House, Cabinet Office research in 2021 showed that 98% of electors already have one of the accepted forms of photographic identification. An expired identification is also to be accepted if the photo remains a good likeness.
Date: 2023-04-27
Peter Bottomley: Following the remarks made by the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the key points are, first, whether people know they need voter ID, and I hope these questions and answers will help to encourage that; secondly, they need to take that ID; and thirdly, that if they go to a polling station without it, they can go home and get it. Will the Electoral Commission be able to tell how many people who were initially unable to vote were able to come back and vote? Finally, did the Electoral Commission recommend voter ID in England in 2015? And am I right in thinking that it is not only in Northern Ireland that voters require ID, but in the Republic of Ireland as well?
Date: 2023-04-27
Rachel Maclean: I thank the Father of the House for his comments. He is right in saying that voter ID is required not only in Northern Ireland--introduced by a Labour Government--but in the Republic of Ireland, along with many other European countries and Canada. This country is currently an outlier, and many experts have made that point. My hon. Friend mentioned the arrangements at polling stations. We all play an important part in raising awareness. All of us who have local elections coming up have certainly been playing our part in reminding voters that ID is essential. There is a free form for which people can apply, as well as the 20 other forms of ID that are acceptable at polling stations. Local authorities have been given additional funds to raise awareness, working with all communities to ensure that voter engagement is as high as it possibly can be.
Date: 2023-04-27
Alex Norris: Colleagues will have been dismayed to learn that fewer than 90,000 of the up to 2 million people without appropriate ID have applied for a voter authority certificate. Voter ID has always been a solution in search of a problem. Millions of pounds have been squandered on this process, and we now find that hundreds of thousands of people have had their votes taken off them. The Minister talks of experts, but all the experts--the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators, the Local Government Association--begged the Government not  to introduce voter ID for the May elections because there was not enough time. Ministers did not listen, and this is the consequence. The sole accountability is theirs. We wait to be shown the scale of this travesty; that is rightly a role for the independent review, but the review will work only if it has the correct data. Last month, during oral questions, I raised the point that many returning officers intended to use greeters outside polling stations to turn away those without ID, and that those turned away would not count as having been denied votes. That is deeply wrong, and not acceptable. The Minister did not address this point in responding to my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), so let me press her again. Whose advice is right? Will people who are turned away by someone outside a polling station who asked whether they had appropriate ID count as people who have been denied a vote, or will they not?
Date: 2023-04-27
Rachel Maclean: I find it interesting that the hon. Gentleman has sought to rehash arguments that we have already had numerous times in this place, and I find it surprising that his party is not committed to protecting the sanctity of the ballot box. The reason we have had to introduce this legislation is the absolute fiasco that we have seen unfolding in Tower Hamlets and Birmingham over the years. We need to protect the sanctity of the ballot box, and that is what we are doing. We are introducing a number of measures to collect the data that will enable us to conduct the detailed analysis that is required by the legislation and by the electorate, and that is the right way of doing things. May I ask why, if the Labour party is so opposed to voter ID, it requires ID for all its candidate selection meetings? Why have Labour Members stated time and again that they know full well that most people in this country have a valid form of ID? What is good enough for candidate selection in the Labour party should be good enough for our local elections.
Date: 2023-04-27
David Davis: I must tell the Minister that I am very uncomfortable with this policy. She is right to say that Tower Hamlets and other parts of the country are having problems, but they are principally about postal votes rather than personation. We have had one conviction in a decade in this context. The Electoral Commission said that the pilot was not big enough for conclusions to be drawn, although there was a reduction of up to 6% in turnout. In Northern Ireland, which the Minister cited, there was, according to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, a 2.3% reduction. I am afraid the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) had a valid point. Will the Minister please write to everyone, not just the hon. Gentleman, giving proper answers to his questions?
Date: 2023-04-27
Rachel Maclean: Pilots have been conducted on a number of occasions in, I think, Woking and Pendle. A thorough study was carried out, and we found no evidence of turnout being lowered. We also observed very high engagement with the new processes. The forms of ID that were available were very clearly communicated to people. What is more, this policy intervention has served the purpose of raising public confidence in the sanctity of the electoral process, and I think we should all welcome that.
Date: 2023-04-27
Kirsty Blackman: I am sure the Minister did not intend to give inaccurate information when she said that all Conservative candidates and campaigns have been giving out correct information. A leaflet went out in Norfolk saying that people do not need photographic ID, so they clearly failed to pass on the correct information there. We in the SNP have consistently raised our opposition to voter ID, because it disproportionately disenfranchises vulnerable and under-represented groups such as disabled people, young people, trans and non-binary people, and those from ethnic minority backgrounds. Given that local councils, this place and politicians at all levels are disproportionately white, non-disabled, older and non-trans, what assessment have the Government made of the impact that requiring voter ID will have on the representativeness of democracy in these isles?
Date: 2023-04-27
Rachel Maclean: I thank the hon. Lady for her question. I would reflect that she and her party are extremely keen to rejoin the European Union and that very similar electoral systems operate in many EU countries, and in many other advanced western democracies. That is what we are seeking to introduce in this country. Of course, the hon. Lady is right to highlight the need to make sure that various groups of society are not disenfranchised. Research has demonstrated that 99% of black and ethnic minority communities already possess a form of voter ID that is perfectly appropriate for voting. It is also the case that some ethnic communities are more disadvantaged by abuses at the ballot box, which is why we will always fight for all people in our United Kingdom to have trust and confidence in the sanctity of our electoral processes.
Date: 2023-04-27
Nick Smith: For this set of elections, bearing in mind they are taking place only in England, the Electoral Commission tells me that 250,000 to 350,000 people should have applied for a voter ID certificate. At the deadline, just 85,000 had been issued, despite the estimated PS4 million advertising spend. Given that less than a third of voters requiring voter ID applied for this certificate, does the Minister accept that voter suppression has already occurred?
Date: 2023-04-27
Helen Morgan: As the Local Government Association indicated earlier this month, and as the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) has reiterated, there are significant practical problems for polling clerks. Meanwhile, the chief executive of the Association of Electoral Administrators has said that discussions are taking place with the police for extra resources on polling day. With a week to go, can the Minister confirm whether enough polling clerks have been recruited and whether additional police resources have been secured to support the additional burden next Thursday? What strain will this place on police services?