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Government’s poisonous Elections bill is designed to cement Tory rule

By:   []

Date: 2021-09

There’s an old trick governments use when drafting legislation: put something controversial in the early clauses, and hide the more important issues later on. Opposition MPs and journalists will put all their effort into the first part, and miss the other issues altogether.

The UK’s Elections Bill, which Parliament debates this autumn, is a classic of the genre. It begins with proposals about voter ID – already a controversial issue, with accusations flying about voter suppression. But it has all the hallmarks of a trap.

But surprisingly, this part of the proposal is not as bad as expected. For example, the bill says that local authorities must issue free local voter identification documents, as is already the case in Northern Ireland, with no discernible adverse effect on turnout. The debate will nevertheless rage, and the government might even concede on a few technical points. That debate over, the government hopes that everyone will lose interest in the bill.

But that would be a disaster. The rest of the bill contains three further proposals that are serious threats to the fairness of all future elections in Britain.

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Undermining the Electoral Commission

Of the three, the most important is undermining the independence of the Electoral Commission. Media reports have given a vague impression that the bill would merely increase the accountability of the commission to a committee in the House of Commons to which it already reports. But the reality is much worse.

Clause 12 subjects the commission to strategic and policy control, including guidance on specific cases – not by Parliament, but by government ministers. It is difficult to express just how appalling this is.

Many Conservative backbenchers have been gunning for the Electoral Commission ever since it made various decisions they didn’t like in the aftermath of the Brexit campaign. But Electoral Commissions, like the courts, do not exist to please elected politicians. They exist to protect free and fair elections, which they can’t do unless they are independent and free from the control of the ruling party.
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