Alex Norris – 2023 Speech on the Ballot Secrecy Bill

The speech made by Alex Norris, the Labour MP for Nottingham North, in the House of Commons on 24 March 2023.

I add my congratulations to Lord Haywood on initiating this important Bill in the other place and on securing its progress so far. If it is successful—I think we can have complete confidence in that success—it will be the first private Member’s Bill in several years to start in the other place and make it on to the statute book. That will be no mean achievement and I know that we will get a decisive step closer to that goal today. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow) on his leadership of this legislation in its proceedings in the Commons and on the case he has ably made for his Bill today and in previous sittings.

Significant contributions were also made by other Conservative Members. I want to cover the point made by the hon. Members for North Devon (Selaine Saxby), for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) and for Darlington (Peter Gibson) about disability in a moment, because it is such an important point—let me associate myself with the comments they made about its importance.

First, however, I wish to deal with something that the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) said in an intervention. He always has interesting points to make on our democracy and how it runs, some of which I agree with and some of which I do not, as he knows. The one he made about guidance is so important—guidance is always important. We are all saying today that voting is an individual act, a “private act”, as the hon. Member for Blackpool South (Scott Benton) characterised it. If that is the case, we have to make it easy to do, so that, in general, a person would not need to solicit support because the guidance is so clear and things are obvious.

I am less of a fan of the more complicated and novel systems of election, but sometimes there may be multiple candidates and that does get tricky. When the single transferable vote is used, people wonder whether to vote in the first column or the second column—that can get tricky. It is up to the regulators and, obviously, the leadership in this place, to make sure that that guidance is so clear. That touches on the point made by the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan) about the staff working in the polling stations, as we need things to be easy for them too. We cannot now have a significant range of burdens, or even tensions or anxieties, for them in respect of having to become enablers and supporters of votes; they do not want to be going anywhere near those booths either. The guidance has to be really clear, both for the individuals and for the staff we ask to administer those elections.

I wish to make a point or two of my own, but I am pleased that there is such consensus on this issue. As the hon. Member for Peterborough said, this is fundamentally a point about clarity. No matter how well established the spirit of the Ballot Act may be, 151 years later there is a lack of clarity, and the Bill adds that clarity. Our democratic processes must be free from intimidation and—a point made by the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Dr Mullan)—free from inducement as well. That was the spirit of the Act which put into law the secret ballot that we enjoy to this day. In one fell swoop, it put an end to the egregious practices of landowners and employers influencing their workers’ or tenants’ votes.

However, a clear and identifiable problem remains with the Act: it does not give presiding officers the right tools to fully tackle the problem of people being compelled to vote in one particular way, or indeed not at all, by others. Those practices are always unacceptable, but they do happen, and this is the moment for us to act to end them. Intimidation of this kind goes against all our democratic principles, but there is an ambiguity, which the Electoral Commission has highlighted, so the case for change is clear.

In the other place, the Government provided important reassurances about the continuation of any assistance that disabled voters may need in order to vote. That is right and proper, and I am glad that it will not be affected by the Bill. As we heard from my hon. Friend for Darlington (Peter Gibson), there was a “build-out” for this in the Elections Act 2022. Nevertheless, I think that, as far as humanly possible, we should collectively seek to render this moot by providing appropriate assistive technologies enabling disabled people to vote independently, which would remove the need for another person to be there.

In Committee I mentioned the My Vote My Voice campaign, which aims to improve participation in voting by adults with learning disabilities and/or autism, as well as campaign groups representing deaf people, blind people, people living with Usher syndrome, and deaf-blind people more generally. They want the right technologies and support to ensure that as many people as possible—indeed, virtually everyone—can vote, and vote independently. That should be our aspiration. As I have said, the Elections Act has moved us in the right direction, but I suspect that we will need to monitor the success of its provisions and those of the Bill, and I dare say we may need to go further still in the fullness of time.

Notwithstanding those points, the Opposition welcome the Bill and are glad to support it today. It is vital for us to have clear law in this area, with no ambiguity about what is and what is not acceptable practice at polling stations, and the Bill constitutes an important step towards ensuring that happens.