Elections Bill

My Lords, we now move back to the beginning of the Bill, to Clause 1 on voter identification and ...

My Lords, I am not going to take anything but a tiny bit of your Lordships’ time. The noble Baron...

My Lords, the noble Baroness made some interesting points about the issues that will face local g...

My Lords, waiting five hours to speak, you can get a bit anxious. I am not quite sure how you do ...

My Lords, I did not want to be here either today, because of my fractured foot. The noble Lord, L...

My Lords, what a wonderful, emotional, eloquent contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Woolley. I...

I am tired of this divisiveness that keeps coming up. We have been in this country for a very lon...

I have found this absolutely fascinating—I genuinely have. This is not a rhetorical point. I unde...

My Lords, there was no intention on my part at all to create any division within our communities....

My Lords, would it not have been nice if, when the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, finished, we could h...

My Lords, in a previous debate on this Bill, I heard my noble friend say that he would not have w...

No, really?

Sorry? There was a huge collection of different communities. But it is really essential that we e...

My Lords, the amendments from the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman and Lady Meacher, and the noble L...

My Lords, I have listened to this debate with a sense of bewilderment and admiration, but I am st...

My Lords, there is a great temptation to stray into clause stand part issues, which we shall deba...

The noble Lord spoke about reducing turnout. Can he identify the evidence that shows that the int...

I refer the noble Lord to the evidence mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Woolley, and the study b...

To answer the noble Lord’s question, I was citing the review of voter ID from the local elections...

As I was saying to the noble Lord, an accurate study to achieve a careful assessment of the impac...

Does the noble Lord believe that this will be a permanent or a temporary effect? As my noble frie...

I think the noble Baroness would agree that the electoral issues in Northern Ireland are rather d...

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for that long, thought-provoking and interesting debate. I am sorry...

Can I be clear? The House has heard three times from the Government Front Bench about their manif...

It was photo identification—

With respect, it was not photo ID, it was ID. That also means non-photo ID. I am afraid that the ...

I have listened to what the noble Lord said and will check the detail of the manifesto. I will en...

I will not intervene again, but I asked the noble Lord, Lord True, whether he could rely on the i...

My Lords, I am sure that any good electoral system can always be improved and that is exactly wha...

It is really important that we have a level playing field here. Of the countries that the Ministe...

I do not know about mandatory ID cards. All I know is that they have to use voter identification ...

I am sorry to interrupt but surely the important thing is that if they already have to have an ID...

I do not agree with that. I do not think that is necessary. It is in the government manifesto and...

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Baroness in her flow but the implication is that a vote is take...

My Lords, that is if anybody goes back because they have not been intimidated into not going in t...

Will the noble Baroness explain the relationship between intimidation and the intimidating need t...

You need to do both. We are trying to make sure that people in the communities that my noble frie...

I am very reluctant to speak, because I have sat through most of this and I did not take part in ...

If you have the necessary photo ID and your name is on that electoral register—

But surely most countries that the noble Baroness has already said are part and parcel of the ext...

I think that is a different discussion.

This might be helpful, because we were wondering what was in the manifesto. In fact, the Joint Co...

Can we now move on, please?

The Minister might have inadvertently misled the Committee from the Dispatch Box in the figures s...

I am quoting from the 2021 Electoral Commission winter tracker, which was clear that the majority...

The pilot was done in 2019. These are people who actually had the photo ID. When there was photo ...

The noble Lord is conveniently ignoring the experience from Northern Ireland, which is better tha...

I will answer the Minister directly. The Northern Ireland experience shows that between 2% and 3%...

I want to move on, rather than discussing different pieces of information. I will move on to cost...

I specifically asked about education programmes, the rollout of information and how people were g...

As I said, the Electoral Commission has agreed to do much of this. I will come to local authoriti...

I want just to check on the question which has already been raised about the extra security costs...

I cannot tell the noble Lord whether that has been factored in. I will ask the team and come back...

My Lords, this debate has ranged rather wide of the area covered by my amendments, to say the lea...

In the Queen’s Speech in October 2019, the Government announced that they would introduce legisla...

The Queen’s Speech and the manifesto are different things, and the manifesto did not say “photo i...

That is correct. I appreciate what the Minister said about the Queen’s Speech, but, again, my nob...

That was the Queen’s Speech before, not after, the general election. It was established before th...

In that case, can the Minister explain why it was not detailed in the manifesto?

That is because the manifesto referred to clearly established and announced policy on voter ident...

In that case, I will come back to the pilot schemes. If the Government were intending to introduc...

My Lords, I think that we should make progress—

Oh!

Certain pilot schemes, which we have discussed, involve photo ID. I should leave it to my colleag...

Fair enough—we will move on. I will go back to my amendments and discuss cost, which is where we ...

Let me respond to that. I was not talking about modelling; I was talking about groupings and comm...

Modelling was mentioned, but I appreciate that clarification from the noble Baroness. Again, the ...

Moved by

Baroness Hayman of Ullock

56: Clause 1, page 1, line 6, at end insert—