Electoral Administration Bill

My Lords, I find myself back in a familiar place. Indeed, I am reminded of Sisyphus, who was condemned by the gods to roll a rock up a mountain, only for the stone to fall back on its own weight—a punishment of futile and hopeless labour. The hopeless labour has been to try to persuade the Government on at least three occasions to make it a requirement to provide personal identifiers for all those on the electoral register, not just postal voters. The Government conceded that early on during the progress of the Bill through this place, as the Minister said. We have had a hopeless task getting everyone to have to provide identifiers, despite recommendations from the Electoral Commission, the opinion of your Lordships' House which has been positively tested on at least two occasions, calls from local authorities nationwide and, most intriguingly, despite calls from members of the Minister’s own party from across the country. Letters to the Minister’s department in response to consultation would have made extremely interesting reading, if only we had received them in time. My honourable friend in the other place, Oliver Heald, asked in November for us to see the response to the consultation on these matters. On 15 June, after the first amendments had gone back to the other place for consideration, the consultation responses arrived. I have them here. Within them, the honourable Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk supported the view of the Member for Harlow—a Labour Minister in another place—who stated that he would support the use of individual identifiers, as did the London Borough of Merton, the metropolitan borough of Bury and the Borough of Telford and Wrekin, to name but a few. The East Midlands branch of the Association of Electoral Administrators states that, "““individual forms are the only option, particularly if administrators are going to be required to check the identifiers against each declaration of identity/security statement for postal votes submitted at election time””." Noble Lords will recall the series of fiascos in Birmingham council and my statement on the previous occasion that we considered this matter about people who were in Pakistan managing to appear at the same time at the polling stations in Coventry. The Minister reminded noble Lords on that previous occasion that 10 new security measures were introduced by the Bill, one of which is the need to provide a signature at the polling station, which is contained in Schedule 1. However, there is no formalised means of verifying that signature. Efforts have been rejected on grounds of convenience. The Minister cited the registration system in Northern Ireland as an example of where personal identifiers have put people off registration. But over a million people are on the register in Northern Ireland—some 91 per cent of the voting-age population. The Minister referred to the legislation going through Parliament as we speak that will revolutionise registration in Northern Ireland—the Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill. However, the reality is that that Bill does nothing to seek to end personal identifiers but seeks to alter the timing of the registration canvass. In fact, registration in Northern Ireland is at a high level of participation and a high level of security, so criticism of personal identifiers in that context is a red herring. We are at the end of a long road regarding this Bill. We on this side are pleased with many of the measures that we have helped to introduce, especially the introduction of personal identifiers in postal voting. Much more could have been done to secure the integrity of the vote if we had been able to secure this final aspect of obtaining individual registration and individual identifiers. Both opposition parties in this House, supported by Her Majesty’s Opposition and other parties in another place, have made gallant efforts which have been consistently ignored on an issue agreed in principle by all. I will not take this matter any further today, but it is a fact that now we will either have to wait until the next piece of legislation that would enable identifiers to be introduced—which, given the nature of this place and this Parliament, will be a long time coming—or we will have to wait for a different Government to put the balance right. I accept that this matter has twice been referred back to the other place. This House has done its duty. It has drawn more than attention to this matter. It will not go away; but, for today, I do not intend to press the matter to a vote.