Big constitutional news: the cross-party Public Administration & Constitutional Affairs Committee has called for the controversial Elections Bill - which imposes Voter ID, allows ministers to direct the Electoral Commission & extends FPTP - to be suspended committees.parliament.uk/committee/327/…
On Compulsory Voter ID: "there is currently no evidence of widespread personation at UK elections". Voter ID "risks upsetting the balance of our electoral system & making it more difficult to vote". "The Govt should not proceed" until it has shown evidence to justify the change.
Allowing ministers to set the direction of the Electoral Commission "risks undermining public confidence" in the electoral system; yet there was "no formal or public consultation". The whole section, it concludes, should be "removed" from the bill, pending further consultation.
As several witnesses to the report noted, the Electoral Commission is not like other regulators: it is not there to ensure that government policies are carried out. It is there to police the process by which governments are elected. Ministerial control is wholly inappropriate.
On imposing First Past the Post on mayoral contests (a change stuffed into the bill at a late stage in Parliament). There are different views on the best electoral system, but the change was made without consultation & no evidence was offered that the current system is at fault.
The Bill also expands the use of "secondary legislation", allowing ministers, rather than Parliament, to set the terms of electoral law. This not only risks further complicating electoral law: it is obviously problematic when ministers are drawn from a single political party.
The Elections Bill proposes major changes to our democracy; yet "there was limited to no public consultation on more controversial or contested elements of the Bill". There was so little pre-legislative scrutiny that the Report urges a statutory commitment to *post*-leg scrutiny.
It is a major weakness of our constitutional arrangements that one participant in the electoral process can rewrite the rules of our democracy without public consultation, without proper evidence-gathering, without pre-legislative scrutiny & against the will of every other party.
The Public Administration & Const Affairs Committee is a senior, cross-party committee, chaired by a Conservative. That it has called for the Elections Bill to be paused should be taken very seriously indeed. MPs of all parties should think carefully before they vote. [ENDS]
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