Part of 2. Questions to the Counsel General and Minister for the Constitution – in the Senedd at 2:34 pm on 16 March 2022.
Well, as you know, our position is very clear, and that is the fact that 99 per cent of people from hard-to-reach groups have some form of photo identification that would enable them to vote in elections, and 98 per cent of the population as a whole. The remaining 2 per cent that don't can have free photographic voter ID cards. We don't see an issue with that at all. And of course, it was the Labour Government that introduced photographic voter identification in order to vote in Northern Ireland some years ago.
Do you accept that if the Welsh Government is continuing in this opposition to voter ID and that this does cause greater divergence, as you've already suggested is likely to be the case, that one of the consequences of that—and I know that you have urged this in the inter-ministerial group for elections—is that it's highly likely that you'd have to potentially hold elections on a different day than the police and crime commissioner elections, or general elections, which, hopefully, will never clash in the future, of course? What sort of cost implications might that have for the Welsh taxpayer if you were to choose to hold elections on different days, when, frankly, efficiencies in terms of costs might be an issue?