That is an entirely irrelevant observation, if I may say so.
I have heard many noble Lords say that this is a solution to a problem that does not exist, but I believe that that is looking at this through the wrong end of the telescope. I invite noble Lords to read my noble friend Lord Pickles’s report on election fraud, which was published after the disgraceful events at Tower Hamlets. He found that there were risks of electoral fraud in our current system. The fact that relatively few people have been convicted of election fraud is not the point. It is clear that there are real risks; we owe it to the electorate to minimise those risks.
I am astonished that noble Lords can oppose the simple concept of voter ID. As my noble friend Lord Hayward said, voter ID is required if you go to a Royal Mail depot, or indeed the Post Office, to collect a parcel. Let me give a more mundane example: last Friday, I collected a birthday cake from a supermarket and was required to show some ID. It is just part of the way we carry on our lives now. We require ID for all kinds of things. From my perspective, requiring voter ID is a reform that is long overdue.
It is also obvious that, if you go down the route of voter ID, the most secure way of proving identity is photo ID. That is why the Labour Party has required it at some of its conferences—unless the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, is going to countermand that, that is what I believe to be the case. If we go to a meeting at the MoD or the Bank of England, we have to show photo ID, because it is part of the way we live our lives now.