The chair of the levelling up, housing and communities (LUHC) committee has written to the LUHC department with concerns about managing voter ID in future elections.
An Electoral Commission report found that the requirement for voters to show ID had a ‘significant impact’ on some people’s ability to vote when it was introduced in the local elections in May.
In his letter to minister Baroness Scott of Bybrook, LUHC committee chair Clive Betts asked what steps the Government would take 'to ensure the proportion of those unable to vote due to voter ID is not considerably higher at a future general election’.
He added: ‘It is particularly concerning that the Electoral Commission found unemployed voters and disabled voters were more likely to be unable to vote due to the voter ID requirement.’
He said the Government should set out what it would do to change this.
Mr Betts also said the LUHC committee had heard that issues recruiting and retaining electoral staff were exacerbated with the introduction of voter ID.
He said the committee heard that local authorities had been reliant on staff from neighbouring authorities and asked if the Government had conducted a review of electoral teams to assess their capacity to deliver a general election ‘effectively and securely’.
