Council Tax

I beg to move,

That the draft Voter Identification Regulations 2022, which were laid before this House on 3 November, be approved.

This statutory instrument is a key part of how we implement the voter identification policy in the Elections Act 2022. This area was debated extensively during the passage of the Act earlier this year. Through this SI, we will be fulfilling a Government manifesto commitment to protect the integrity of our democracy by introducing identification to vote at polling stations. Gaps in our current legislation leave open the potential for someone to cast another vote at the polling station. Our priority is adopting legislation that ensures the public can have confidence in the integrity of our elections and certainty that their vote belongs to them, and them alone.

The introduction of a voter identification policy is the best solution to the problem. It has been long called for by the independent Electoral Commission, as well as by international organisations, such as the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which regularly monitors and reports on our national polls.

The Minister mentions the Electoral Commission. It issued a press statement at the weekend that expressed continued concerns about the delays in the Government getting their act together on this policy. It said it was not now sure that all the considerations it wanted taken into account to ensure the policy works properly could fully be met. That was in the press release. That comes alongside the Local Government Association and other council leaders expressing real concerns about whether this matter could be implemented properly and fairly and give people full access to voting in the May local elections. Does the Minister not just want to stop and think for a minute about the timing of the implementation, if not the policy itself?

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his comments. We absolutely are thinking about how best to implement this policy. In the period while I have been in post, I have already met the Electoral Commission to talk about it. I have spoken to the Association of Electoral Administrators about it, and today I have spoken to the LGA about it. There are a range of views, but we are confident and focused on ensuring that this policy is implemented properly. We will continue to be so. On the key point, the Electoral Commission has been clear since as early as 2014 that

“we should move to a system where voters are required to produce identification at polling stations.”

This SI sets out further detail on the new processes that will be put in place to help us to implement this policy in practice. First, it sets out the updated polling station conduct rules for a range of elections and referendums, and details exactly how photographic identification documents will be checked and how data will be recorded by polling station staff. Secondly, it sets out a series of updates to election forms. As Members would expect, a number of existing forms, such as poll cards, have been updated to inform electors of the new requirement to show identification and of the types of documents that will be accepted.

On top of those changes, there are also new forms, such as those for polling station staff, which we will use to record data that will help our planned reviews of the policy in the future. Lastly, the policy sets out the details of the new electoral identity documents that can be obtained if someone does not already have an accepted document: the voter authority certificate and the anonymous elector document. These forms of photographic identification will be available to voters free of charge and will ensure that everyone who is eligible to vote will continue to have the opportunity to do so.

I might be one of the minority on the Opposition Benches who think that what the Government are bringing forward is the right thing. The proof of pudding is in how the voter ID system works in Northern Ireland. The system sets the example for all the UK, and I know the Minister has had many discussions with his officials in Northern Ireland to ensure that the system in Northern Ireland can work here. It reduces electoral fraud and increases fairness in the democratic system. The Minister has had discussions with Northern Ireland, and electoral ID is of some use to people in their daily life. Those are four things going for it; it seems to me to be the thing to vote for. I just cannot understand why anybody would not.

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for outlining the importance of these policy changes. I fear it may be the only thing we agree with coming from the Opposition Benches tonight, but he has made an important point and he speaks from experience and more than 15 years of knowledge about how these kinds of changes make a difference to the integrity of our voter process.

As someone who served on the Elections Public Bill Committee, I know that the regulations that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) referred to were actually brought in under a Labour Government. Might the Minister like to comment on that?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I look forward to hearing Opposition Front Benchers’ comments in support of this statutory instrument, based on their previous support for strengthening the integrity of our democratic processes.

This SI also sets out the processes for how electors can apply for these documents, both online and via paper forms, and for how electoral registration officers can process, determine and issue the documents. Showing photo ID is a part of day-to-day life for people in all walks of life. It is a perfectly reasonable and proportionate way to confirm that a person is who they say they are when it comes to voting.

I reassure the Minister that surely the Opposition will support this statutory instrument, because only three weeks ago, my Labour opponent was selected and as part of the rules for the hustings, people had to bring voter ID.

My hon. Friend makes a significant intervention that highlights the importance of consistency, which I am sure will shortly be coming from those on the Opposition Front Bench. Showing photo ID is a part of day-to-day life already, and as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has already outlined, it has been a requirement to show photographic identification since 2003 in Northern Ireland.

We are all rightly proud of the long history of our democracy, but we should never take it for granted. An essential part of how we keep our system functioning is by keeping the right structures in place, through measures such as this SI, that stop our elections being undermined. This SI will strengthen the integrity of our elections, and I hope that Members will join me in supporting these measures.

Order. I remind hon. Members that this is not a general debate on voter ID; it is about the regulations that pertain to it, so I ask people to stick to the regulations.

I would like to say that it is a pleasure to speak in this debate, but frankly, I am sad that we have reached this point. It is a stain on Britain’s democratic history that, if the Government have their way with these regulations, we will take a historic step away from making our democracy more open and accessible and towards closing it down, shutting people out and making it harder to vote.

Opposition Members have been clear from the start that this legislation is a wasted opportunity. It is a step backwards at a time when so many improvements are needed to widen participation in our democracy and to make it fit for the 21st century. The regulations arise from a slapdash, short-sighted and politically motivated act that turns the clock back on democratic progress. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) for his work throughout the stages of the Elections Act 2022, highlighting the dangers of mandatory photo ID, which we are debating today. I thank him for helping to secure this debate on the Floor of the House when Ministers would no doubt have preferred to sneak it through upstairs.

The basic fact is that voter ID is not only a backwards step for democracy, but completely pointless. It is a solution in search of a problem. Ministers claim it will combat voter fraud, but voter personation—the voter fraud which voter ID apparently targets—is vanishingly rare. Over the last 10 years, there have been about 243 million votes cast in elections, and how many people have been convicted of voter fraud? Four. That is 0.00000005%. I am under no illusion that the Government are in the slightest bit interested in genuinely tackling fraud. The Tories’ Minister responsible for fraud summarised it when he resigned at the Dispatch Box, saying that the Government had

“no knowledge of, or little interest in, the consequences of fraud to our economy or society.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 24 January 2022; Vol. 818, c. 20.]

Will the right hon. Member explain why, if the system is so bad, it is used in Labour selections?

I have just explained why this is such a tiny, not even significant, minuscule issue that the Government are trying to make hay over, when, in fact, we have fraud that results in people being terrorised by scammers pretending to be their banks. Millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money is being wasted on this Bill instead of dealing with the fraud that the hon. Member’s constituents have to face every single day, which is not being tackled. He needs to tackle that.

Perhaps the Minister lives in a bizarre alternative reality where, across the country, people are attempting to impersonate their neighbours to steal their votes, but meanwhile, in this universe, you are more likely to be hit by lightning 54 times than fall victim to voter personation fraud. So let us get back to the reality that we face. The British public face a cost of living crisis, freezing temperatures, with people too scared to put their heating on, and cancelled Christmases, with working parents unable to afford festive treats. And this Conservative Government are planning to spend £180 million of taxpayers’ money to introduce a completely pointless and eye-wateringly expensive change.

We heard evidence from the police in the Bill Committee. They thought that the measures on voter ID and the extra measures that we are taking to avoid intimidation would make the Act really useful for them on polling day, so that they can get on with the job that we want them to do—that is, to keep our communities safe—and not have to spend as much time dealing with cases of personation at polling stations.

I say to the hon. Member: show us the evidence. Where is the evidence of that? We have not seen the evidence, but we do know that people are choosing between heating and eating this winter. We do know that crime is on the rise and that people just do not see the police on the beat any more. We do know that people are targeted by online fraud every single day of the week, with no protection and no action by their Government.

I ask the Minister: why will he not spend his time and energy tackling the huge array of issues that face the British people instead of flushing away yet more hard-earned taxpayers’ cash on this pointless measure? I might be able to hazard a guess. I notice that the regulations allow 60-plus, but not 18-plus, Oyster cards—why is that? I notice that OAP bus passes will be valid, yet students IDs will not—why is that? I notice that some 4.2 million voters do not have a photo ID allowed by these regulations, yet the Government demand that we plough on—why is that?

The Minister said that voter ID does not discriminate, but I am afraid that the evidence does not quite stack up. When the Minister’s colleague, a former Cabinet Office Minister—the right hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith)—said that

“the evidence of our pilots shows that there is no impact on any particular demographic group from this policy.”—[Official Report, 11 June 2020; Vol. 677, c. 394.]—

the answer was based on the Electoral Commission’s evaluations of the 2018 and 2019 voter ID pilots. However, in its most recent report, the commission said that it had no way of measuring the effect of voter ID on minority communities. It said:

“Polling station staff were not asked to collect demographic data about the people who did not come back, owing to the practical challenges involved in carrying out that data collection exercise”.