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Political Parties and Elections Bill

My Lords, this amendment brings in personal identifiers at the ballot box. I spoke on this issue in our long debate on IVR in Grand Committee. At that point, I said that I did not think that fraud at the ballot box in the form of personation was that serious a problem. I have since been advised that it is, in fact, a growing problem, mainly in local elections, because personation is quite difficult to do in large numbers. However, in houses of multiple occupancy and similar establishments it is often easy for people to pick up a number of different polling cards and use them to vote in the names of other people. When he responded in Committee, the Minister did not consider this to be a serious problem and did not seem to think that merely providing some proof of identity would necessarily deal with it, because one would have to decide what type of proof of identity would have to be produced. In the previous group of amendments, the noble Lord prayed in aid Northern Ireland legislation. We have taken our amendment from legislation in Northern Ireland whereby voters have to have personal identifiers, but we have left out the bit that specifies the document that would have to be produced by the individual when they turned up at the polling station. We have left it for the Secretary of State to designate that by order. Most of us normally carry some form of identification that would be enough to stamp out most fraud of this sort—a driving licence or even a credit card. If people were required to take credit cards, which obviously do not have photo ID on them, it would complicate the whole matter and would make it that much harder for them to commit fraud on a large scale, which must be our issue of concern. I feel quite strongly about this amendment, but I shall listen carefully to what the noble Lord has to say about it. At this hour, whether we press this to a vote will depend very much on the support I receive from other parts of the House and on the response I get from the Government as to whether they will consider bringing this measure forward at a future date. I beg to move.