Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:47 pm on 9 November 2021.
Darren, what the Conservatives fail here is that this not an issue. It has not been an issue with elections in England and Wales in the same way as it was in Northern Ireland in the 1983 general election. We don't have compulsory IDs in this country as they do in Europe. Do you want that, Darren Millar? Do you want the civil liberties of people being taken away, that they need compulsory IDs wherever they go? And the cost of it—£20 million per general election will be the cost of this ID. It's not needed. It's another expensive waste of time by the Conservative Government.
They say, don't they—. Well, I'll mention the pilot first, the pilot in 2019. Of the 2,000 people in the pilot who turned up to vote—. Sorry, 2,000 people were turned away from the polling stations because they didn't have the necessary ID. Of those 2,000 people, nearly 40 per cent did not return. That was the Westminster Government pilot. And that doesn't even take into account that people didn't turn up in the first place because they didn't have the necessary ID. They say, don't they, you can't put a price on democracy, but, because of your actions, the Westminster Government's actions, we'll soon know what the cost of democracy is—£34, the cost of a first-time driver's licence, or £75.50, the privilege of a passport. In Wales, people are again heading into a difficult winter, facing terrible uncertainty—sky-high energy and fuel prices, cuts to universal credit, higher taxes, rising inflation. One doesn't have to think for too long where the cost of voter ID will come when people are struggling to heat their homes and feed their families. [Interruption.] You say it's free; now, we have no detail about these free voting IDs. They say that councils will need to do the process—councils who are already struggling at the moment. Give us the details of this free voter ID. You haven't done it. And, as I said, it's not free—it's going to cost £20 million per general election. And who pays for that? The taxpayers. There are better ways to spend the money.
I'll go to my questions now, Counsel General, but Boris Johnson's Government really need to tackle the real issues in our politics: cleaning up political funding, bringing in the 9 million people already not included on the electoral roll and, crucially, reforming Westminster, both the House of Commons and the Lords.