Sarah Olney

The hon. Gentleman will know that the number of incidents of personation—I was just coming to this point—in 2022 was fewer than 13 and no prosecutions have taken place. He may say it is less than 1%, but that resulted in several thousand people being unable to exercise their democratic right to vote in the general election, because of the unnecessary requirement to produce voter ID. There may well be the risk of voter fraud, but it is yet to materialise in any significant way, and we have seen that this measure, brought in to combat that supposed risk, has resulted in thousands of our fellow citizens being unable to exercise their democratic right to vote. We are therefore opposed to the voter ID scheme and continue to call for it to be scrapped. The shambles of the last Conservative Government created a crisis for democracy in this country with their cronyism, rule breaking and constant sleaze scandals, and public trust in Government is worryingly low. Successive Conservative Prime Ministers acted without integrity and treated Parliament and the people with disdain. The voter ID scheme is just a further example of that. We continue to lead the fight against this deeply unfair, unnecessary and expensive scheme. The impact must not be underestimated. Every vote matters, and we must ensure that we are not preventing people from making their voice heard. The report published today by the Electoral Commission found that around 4% of eligible people who did not vote said that was because of the voter ID requirement. More in Common found that 3.2% said they were turned away at least once on 4 July. If that was reflected across the UK, that would equate to more than 850,000 people. Of that 3.2%, more than half said that either they did not return or they came back and were still unable to vote. It is important to note that recent figures from London councils showed that three in 10 Londoners who were turned away from polling stations due to a lack of appropriate voter ID did not return to vote. It is essential that people who have a legitimate right to vote are not prevented from exercising that right. More broadly, voter ID has not impacted all constituents equally.