A minister has repeatedly refused to tell MPs whether the number of voters turned away from polling stations because of a lack of ID at local elections next week will be properly recorded, arguing that it is ultimately up to individuals whether or why they decide to vote.
In sometimes chaotic scenes in the Commons, a week before the first mass use of voter ID in the UK outside Northern Ireland, Rachel Maclean, a junior levelling up minister, was accused by a number of MPs of being unable to answer basic questions on how it would work.
In the end, Clive Betts, the Labour MP who asked the urgent question, provided the information at the end of the debate, having been contacted by the Electoral Commission while it was taking place.
Betts’ question sought clarity on how the number of people who do not vote because they lack photo ID will be tallied, after the Guardian reported that officials stationed outside some polling stations will not be making a count.
While clerks inside polling stations will take a formal register of those lacking ID, some venues will use “greeters” outside to remind people about the need for ID before they go in. They will not record the numbers who then leave because they do not have ID and do not return to vote.
Asked by Betts to confirm that this would be the case, Maclean replied: “It may be appropriate for me to follow up in writing because the honourable gentleman is requesting a considerable amount of detail.”
A series of MPs asked again, among them Alex Norris, the shadow elections minister, who called voter ID “a solution in search of a problem”, and said the policy would deprive hundreds of thousands of people of their ability to vote.
He said: “Will those people who were turned away by someone outside of a polling station who asked an individual if they have the ID, will they or will they not count as someone who has been denied a vote?”
Maclean again dodged the question, telling Norris: “I do find it very surprising that their party is not committed to protecting the sanctity of the ballot box.”
In further confusion, Maclean said the plan was needed because of “the absolute fiasco” seen in Tower Hamlets and Birmingham – a reference to previous cases of postal vote fraud, which are not affected by voter ID, which targets in-person impersonation.
Questioned by several opposition MPs about the need for voter ID and worries about assessing its impact, Maclean accused them of making “shrill and hyperbolic claims” about suppression, and “hysterical scaremongering activity”.
She also argued that it was not necessarily up to ministers to make sure people voted, or check why. “Sometimes people just don’t want to vote. We live in a free country,” she said. “If someone decides not to exercise the right to vote in a free and democratic society, it is not for an agent of a local authority to intrusively ask why that person decides not to vote.”
At the end of the debate, Betts used a point of order to say the Electoral Commission had informed him that greeters would not count the numbers of those they turned away, meaning that two sets of data would be collected – from those with and without a greeter system.
He said: “How can that be a sensible and coordinated information collection to show what the impact of this measure actually is?”
Maclean said there would be “a full evaluation of the policy, of which formal data collection in the polling station is only one part”.
