← Back to Parliament Matters episode page

This transcript is automatically generated. There are consequently minor errors and the text is not formatted according to our style guide. If you wish to reference or cite the transcript please first check against the audio version. Timestamps are provided for ease of reference.

Intro: [00:00:00] You are listening to Parliament Matters, a Hansard Society production supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Learn more at hansardsociety.org.uk/pm

Ruth Fox: Welcome to Parliament Matters, the podcast about the institution at the heart of our democracy, Parliament itself. I'm Ruth Fox.

Mark D'Arcy: And I'm Mark D'Arcy. And with the Government launching an investigation into foreign Russian influence into British politics, we thought it was a good moment to talk to John Pullinger, the Chair of the Electoral Commission.

Ruth Fox: There are all sorts of concerns about the security and integrity of our electoral system, the dangers of mega donations, and intimidation of MPs and candidates, both real world and online.

Mark D'Arcy: John Pullinger, welcome to the pod, first of all. And there's an elections bill of some kind coming up , perhaps [00:01:00] in the King's Speech, perhaps before, we don't quite know yet. What would you, as the head of Britain's election watchdog, like to see in it? What are the big holes in our electoral system that need plugging?

John Pullinger: Well, the first thing to say is that electoral law is out of date, overcomplicated and inconsistent. So it does need pulling together and really sorting out. It's developed over generations to what it is now, but what we are particularly looking for, there are undoubtedly loopholes in the current system around the risk of foreign money coming into politics.

And we've been recommending for a long time now that these loopholes be closed. It was never Parliament's intention this should happen. So we'd like to see that. We'd like to see some things relating to participation at elections. It is shocking that as many as 8 million people are not even on the electoral register and something that really gets them on, and I think particularly people living in private rented competition where they're moving around a lot, it's just hard to keep up with being on the electoral register. Let's make it easier for [00:02:00] people.

I think also in this space, in participation, we are seeing particular challenge in getting young people interested, something that will promote young people's engagement with political process. And the other group that really struggle are disabled people. And we've recently published guidance to really support disabled people voting in elections. But anything that we can do to help that community, I think we would very much welcome. In relation to the broader modernisation of the system, the challenge for us as a regulator has been, we have two completely different regimes for regulating political parties and regulating candidates at elections.

That causes huge difficulties for them and huge difficulties for us because the responsibility for tracking and following up on offences and sanctioning them is between us and the police. Now we have super relationships with the police, but it's harder to hold either of us accountable, but it's also harder for us to kind of make sure we sort things out and make sure the right things are done.

Mark D'Arcy: And can I take perhaps the first of the areas you pointed to, that is the [00:03:00] threat of foreign money getting into British politics. And that may have seemed like a distant prospect years ago, but with repeated, for example, Russian interference in elections in Europe over recent years, it now looks like a very real danger.

And you've also got, you know, random American billionaires seeming to want to pump large amounts of money into political parties they sympathise with. So it is now a much more realistic danger. There are several mechanisms by which this can happen. Company donations. The rules around company donations are so thin, you could drive a coach and horses through them, and then there is the possibility of, I suppose, donations via cryptocurrency as well, which may prove to be virtually untraceable.

John Pullinger: We think there are three particular loopholes that could really be closed straightforwardly and in a way that is workable for political parties. And I think we need to remember that many political parties operate on a shoestring and we need to be proportionate in any regime that comes in. But the three things we think could really be dealt with are [00:04:00] to have the kind of know your donor check regime that a charity or another organisation would have to go through to check what the true source of the money is. Money coming into a party has to be from a permissible donor, someone who's on the electoral register, but how can you really be confident that it's their money and they're not just acting on someone else's behalf? So to trace the money back down the line. And that's particularly true for things like cryptocurrency where it is a particular challenge to trace it back.

The second one you've mentioned is company donations. And at the moment, anyone on the UK companies register can donate, but they don't actually have to have made any money in the UK. And something that says, well, it's British money, so something that demonstrates the money has come from activity here, would be a significant safeguard.

And then the final one is a slightly more arcane one, something called an unincorporated association. Two people who are allowed to donate can set up an association and donate freely, but there's absolutely no check on where their money comes from. So something that enables you to kind of just [00:05:00] check on that would really be helpful.

So those three things we have recommended for some time, and we would hope very much the forthcoming bill will address.

Ruth Fox: Unincorporated associations, John, for the benefit of our listeners, can you explain what that is? Because that has been a long running issue in terms of the donations policy, hasn't been closed down, there's been some tightening here and there over the years, but hasn't been closed down. So what are they?

John Pullinger: Well, often they are something very simple and very local. They're a club or a community body that a group of volunteers have set up to do something in their community and they have from time to time chosen to donate, typically small sums, to politics in their area. And that's fine. But the rules for setting up an unincorporated association are two or more individuals can come together and form an association to do something. And if that doing something involves donating to political party, it's fine. So the rules were never intended to cover this risk. They were intended to cover something much more straightforward, so we'd be looking for something that [00:06:00] doesn't stop local bodies doing something local for their communities, but would stop someone effectively evading the rules to donate money into politics where we can't track the source.

Mark D'Arcy: On the subject of company donations, is there a thought of perhaps capping what companies could put into a political party they wanted to see succeed, perhaps limiting it to a percentage of their UK turnover or something like that?

John Pullinger: I mean, the primary thing we want to be confident of is that the money that's coming from a company can reasonably be seen to have come from money made in the UK.

And so that's the basic test. It's UK money for UK politics. If you get more complicated, it's a lot easier for people to find their way around the rules and a lot more complicated to draft the legislation. So something simple and straightforward that just says it should be UK money that you can demonstrate by some metric has come from a UK activity.

Mark D'Arcy: But are you comfortable with a situation where a single individual with a lot of dosh [00:07:00] can make a game-changing donation into British politics and suddenly a party that was operating on a shoestring is bootstrapped into an all singing, all dancing national organisation on the back of several million quid.

John Pullinger: Well, we've seen several examples of that over the years, including recently, and we know it's something the public are concerned about. They can see the risk of buying influence over what the party does or buying access to senior party figures. And we track a lot of public attitudes, and this is pretty much the worst one.

The public really do not have confidence in the transparency of the system because they see these donations and they are concerned about them. There have been attempts in the past to try and think about a cap on donations, and they have foundered, and I think probably the reason they've foundered is you have to really go a step back. So how are political parties funded? And to ask the question a bit more broadly, what are the sources of funds for political parties and what do we as the British public want to see those [00:08:00] sources to be? Because if you don't get it from donations, you've got to get it from somewhere else.

They used to have very broad memberships. Few of them have that now. Some countries, there's state funding. There are a variety of different things. But if you ask the public about each one of them, they'd be unhappy about. Probably any of them. But if you say, do we want politics to be well funded so that we know what each party stands for come election time? And this is one of the traditional complaints people have about British elections, we don't know who to vote for. I think we start from the position, political parties need to be well funded. We need to have a system that gives the public confidence, but we need to be careful about making a particular set of changes that could create the incentives for evasion and avoidance.

Ruth Fox: Do you think then there's any sense of a consensus developing around what a cap would look like? I mean, some people say, well, you shouldn't be able to donate more than ten thousand pounds. Some people say, no, that's too low, it ought to be a million, you know, capped for millionaires. Fundamentally, if we are not having [00:09:00] donations, we're going to have to have state funding of political parties, and the public doesn't want that either.

So in terms of the commission's position, in terms of what you understand from the public research that you do, do you get any sense of what sort of figure might be regarded as acceptable and implementable by the political parties themselves?

John Pullinger: Well, if you go in without looking at the broader picture, it will look like you are making an attack against a particular political party or a particular group of political parties, which will be seen as partisan. So you do have to think what sort of financing of political parties do we want, and what is the balance of expenditure that goes around that. But where we are now is not a good place. We don't have a particular remit here, but we recognise this is a problem that needs to be fixed. And you know, an example that I've seen recently, that I think is worth us looking at, is what the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority has done around MPs' pay, where you've got a similar set of concerns, [00:10:00] and to get a debate that brings in the voices of the public that ask exactly that kind of question that you've asked. Well, you don't like this and you don't like that, so what would you like? And get a lot more thoughtful buy-in to it rather than it becoming a political football. So I'm not saying that is the way forward, but, and that'd be the way I think to frame it, that we've got some criteria that we want, which is well funded politics that enables us to know who we are voting for, but that the money is coming from sources that we are prepared to find acceptable. I don't think we'll find a consensus. I don't think you'll ever get a consensus. But if you have a process that's got some legitimacy, then people will accept it and get on with it.

Mark D'Arcy: Isn't the reality here that a party that is not attracting mega bucks will always be in favour of curbing donations that other parties are getting? A party that thinks it's going to be in government next time is probably attracting quite a lot of big individual donors and therefore doesn't necessarily feel the urge to crack down on them. So it's always a matter of self-interest.

John Pullinger: Well, that's why I think the process is so important that [00:11:00] you have a process that isn't driven by self-interest, that's driven by a kind of broader consideration of what the issues are and what the solutions might be.

Ruth Fox: The second area that you highlighted, John, was this question of participation, and obviously it engages questions about the electoral register. It also engages wider questions about turnout. I mean, one of the things we've recently published, our special journal edition of Britain Votes 2024, looking at the last election, and one of the thing that the editors highlight is that turnout was second lowest only to 2001. And you and I will remember after that general election, there was a huge amount of attention from Government and others on the fact that turnout had dropped so low and how could it be encouraged? And yet, after this election, that has rarely rated a mention. Yes, there's a lot of technical work that can be done with the electoral registers, but what else can be done in terms of participation levels and improving them?

John Pullinger: Well, I think a very significant element of it is public education and explaining to people why [00:12:00] politics matters to them.

I think politics is separated from people's worlds in a way that I think it wasn't so much 20, 30, 40 years ago and that's because I don't think anyone's made it their job to really bridge that gap. Now with the Electoral Commission, I don't think there's a particular reason why we should be the body to promote that, but certainly we've highlighted it as a big issue and we've been very well supported by Parliament in this parliament to do something about it. So we have convened bodies interested in curriculum reform and made the case, which the Government has responded to, on a better curriculum in England. Scotland and Wales I think have also made useful changes in this respect. Northern Ireland, I've been talking to ministers there about what we might do in Northern Ireland. I think there is a will to do this now, and I think once you've got materials that work in schools, then you can start seeing how they might work in broader settings with adults too. But I think we've had a generation of people who [00:13:00] just haven't really been thinking about why they should be bothered.

Mark D'Arcy: And this is also a dangerous area, particularly for schools. The Reform MP Lee Anderson was complaining about the content of politics lectures in schools in his constituency. There's a very dangerous line that teachers have to tread to stay neutral while giving political education isn't there? And with 16 year olds getting the vote, that's very much hand in glove with this.

John Pullinger: Well, we have to be concerned about that. We have to make sure that education in schools is about democracy. It's not about a particular partisan position. I mean, I've been into schools with many MPs over the years and every single one I've been to have done it well. I was responsible for 10 years for the Parliamentary Education Service, and we did hundreds of thousands of schools visits without difficulty. But I recognise that teachers are nervous and I recognise that members of some political parties are nervous, and I think our responsibility is to calm those nerves and demonstrate we have to do something and there is a way to do it. And we are now piloting materials for [00:14:00] use in schools that have got the kind of independent stamp of the Commission on that hopefully will give confidence both to political parties and to teachers to be able to teach this properly and seriously.

Ruth Fox: And these materials, are these for secondary schools or are you starting right at the beginning in primary school catching them?

John Pullinger: Well, I think our experience is just the earlier, the better. So yes, it's secondary schools, obviously, particularly those who may well be voting in the next general election. But you've got to start introducing it in Parliament. We had a super programme for schools councils, and certainly the ones that I went to that, it was the primary schools that really took it most seriously, and that was a joy to see.

Mark D'Arcy: And perhaps one of the reasons for low turnout in the last election was that politics has become rather alienating and brutal. And that leads us on to the issue of sort of harassment and bullying, and the dangers that candidates face in their campaigning period. Now there's been a Speaker's Conference, doing recommendations about boosting the security of [00:15:00] candidates and so forth. How big a concern is this for the Electoral Commission because you've got figures showing that an awful lot of candidates, a quite unacceptable proportion, faced, intimidation, bullying, vandalism during their campaigning.

John Pullinger: Well, we do reports after every set of elections on how they've been conducted, and this theme is becoming increasingly significant over the last three or four years, and it's unacceptable and we need to turn it round. If I unpack it into two distinct bundles, they do crisscross the kind of online space and the physical space. Absolutely, more needs to be done with social media particularly. I think there is content that is corroding democracy that should be stopped from being produced. It's being amplified in ways that is very problematic, and it's also not transparent. You can't get into it. You can't research it. You can't understand what's happening. So we have recommended a whole series of measures that would enable content that is abusive to be stopped, for [00:16:00] spreading of that content to be moderated, and for the ability for us and others to get in and see what's happening.

Mark D'Arcy: How cooperative are the social media platforms being about this? Because you get the distinct impression that as long as the money keeps rolling in, they're not really that bothered.

John Pullinger: Well, we have pretty good relationships with the social media companies and certainly during the last general election there was a pretty good record of them taking down material that we identified as misleading people about the conduct of the election. What we don't see so much is them tackling what is already illegal, which is making or publishing any material that makes a false statement about the conduct or character of a candidate. And that's pretty strong. And any material that impedes or prevents an elector in fairly exercising their franchise. So we think more should be done by social media companies to do that. We are very pleased to see the new committee on information [00:17:00] that Ofcom has set up, and I met them very recently and I was pleased to see they are looking at the existing laws and seeing the extent to which they can translate into something that is prosecutable by them of social media companies. So there's progress, but some of them are much more willing than others and much more needs to be done.

Mark D'Arcy: Powers in the new bill would be welcome?

John Pullinger: Powers in the new bill would be welcome. And just on the second point on the physical space, the Speaker's Conference noted significant inconsistency in the actions of the police around elections. And again, we have really good relationships with all police forces, but something that levels up the response and the understanding of police forces to the impact of crimes against candidates and elected officials will be exceptionally welcome.

Ruth Fox: And what about the political parties themselves? I mean, how open do you think they are to the idea that if their candidates or their activists are engaged in, essentially, harassment of other candidates, of which there were some accusations at the last election, they're [00:18:00] willing to take action there and then, rather than wait and retrospective action be taken when it's not necessarily in their electoral interest to do it whilst the election is live? But unless the public sees that action is taken and the candidates see that action is taken, then there's a risk that they're perceived to be getting away with it.

John Pullinger: Certainly the conversations I've had with the political parties is they do take this seriously because they know it impacts on their reputation. They know their potential voters are disturbed when they see things that are going on by a candidate from a party. But I think something that would be much more useful in this space is a code of conduct that all the parties can sign up to, that the public can see has got some teeth, and does actually result in the selection or expulsion of candidates who are transgressing it, and there being that kind of clarity.

Mark D'Arcy: Because the ultimate test of this is that a political party has to be willing to sack a candidate in a seat that it would feel it would otherwise win in [00:19:00] an election if they transgressed that code of conduct.

John Pullinger: Exactly, and I mean the Jo Cox Foundation had a good go at producing a code of conduct at the last general election. I think a number of political parties have got one. The Conservative Party have got quite a good one. But something that brings it all, so there's a common standard of behaviour across the piece, that results in the kind of sanction you are talking about, then we'd start to see some progress and the public would start to see things are getting better.

But in saying that we need to improve the behaviour of candidates, but a lot of the candidates are getting abuse from way outside their own parties too. So I think we need to make sure we're tackling both.

Ruth Fox: One of the arguments that the Government has made is that there should be an electoral sanction here. I mean, do you get any sense that they are actually going to propose anything in the elections bill on this, or not?

John Pullinger: Well, there were increased sanctions in the 2022 elections bill. And I think looking at further sanctions in this bill I think would be [00:20:00] useful - for my money, a lot of these things are illegal already - and to really make sure we are understanding and interpreting the law and applying it to behaviour in politics.

Mark D'Arcy: The last election saw a lot more political activity going on online. The next election will presumably be greater still. You are presumably going to have to spend a certain amount of time keeping an eye on that, even policing it. But one thought that strikes me is that does the online campaigning that will doubtless happen next time erode the distinction between national campaign expenses and local campaign expenses? Because you can have a very locally tailored message without ever mentioning a particular candidate still being used to very effectively target voters in key seats. And so you're getting a situation where the national party can almost overwhelm the local spending limits by putting in targeted stuff that doesn't mention their particular candidate.

John Pullinger: Yeah, I mean this has [00:21:00] been a challenge for some time with things like battle buses and other kinds of techniques, and it's more of a challenge with the online developments that we are seeing, certainly. But one reason why a bringing together of the regime for candidate financing with party financing will help us because we will be able to see the whole picture, whereas at the moment you've got completely different jurisdictions looking at it, so it's quite hard to piece it together. And obviously we do that and we work together with other bodies looking at this, particularly the police and returning officers. But if you bring the things together, we can see what's going on much more holistically and make a judgement about exactly where particular types of expenditures should fall, whether it be against the candidates limits or the party limits.

Mark D'Arcy: Is there a need for a new sheriff in town here? And is that sheriff going to be the Electoral Commission? Are you going to be donning a badge and policing both the physical space and maybe the online space come the next general election in a few years' time, do you think?

John Pullinger: It needs to be policed. And I'm open-minded as to whether it's us. I convene a group of [00:22:00] regulators and we had a lot of conversation ahead of the general election and we had a kind of joint hub website where people could see who was responsible. A single sheriff, I don't think is the answer. I think in the online space, Ofcom have the relationships and the legal powers to regulate social media. In the physical space, it is the police or the National Crime Agency, or the security services if you're talking about foreign interference, and they have the resources that we don't. If it's looking at transparency of political finance, then we have the responsibility. I think the thing is to look at the whole picture and think who is best placed to actually shift the dial on this and give them the powers to do it well.

Ruth Fox: One of the other big risks is misinformation. Deepfake videos, for example, we've seen one for Keir Starmer, one for Sadiq Khan. What role can the Electoral Commission play here? Because again, this is about sort of the technology companies taking down these things with alacrity. If they don't, they're up there, a lot of people will see them and believe them, [00:23:00] and by the time you can take action, it's almost too late because it may have influenced an election. Now, we're seeing these things, it hasn't yet influenced an election, but that's the fear.

John Pullinger: Yeah. I mean it really is horrible. I mean, I've met a group of female members of the Northern Island Assembly, and two of them in particular, one from Sinn Fein, one from the DUP, told their story and it was really harrowing. It was a deepfake pornography experience that they had had, and it was really, really nasty. And similarly, I visited a Jewish Conservative councillor in his office, and just the stuff that he had been subject to, it's just ghastly. It really has to be stopped. So what can the Commission do? I mean, we are looking very closely at something the Scottish Parliament has done. They have got a kind of tracker on social media of members of the Scottish Parliament that screens it for legality, and they've already had one successful conviction because they can kind of draw together the stuff, put a test [00:24:00] of legality against it, and then make sure it's followed up. So we are really quite keen to see if we can bottle that and use it across the UK. The other thing we are looking at, which we've seen in fields not on politics, which is a deepfake detection tool, and we are just experimenting with that at the moment. So whilst we haven't got a particular locus on it, what we do care about is the integrity of British politics. So if there's something where we can be a catalyst that can actually show what can be done, we will do that.

Ruth Fox: Another issue is foreign interference. We talk about risks to our electoral processes, foreign interference, I mean the Electoral Commission itself had a cyber incident a few years ago, which the Government security services subsequently concluded had been the actions of a foreign actor. I think it was China. These things are moving so quickly in terms of what foreign state actors can do and how they can try and interfere with our electoral processes. I recognise there's probably things you can't tell us about how these things are dealt with, but how big a risk is it realistically, do you think?

John Pullinger: One of the great joys of our system is [00:25:00] that most of politics is done on a kind of volunteer shoestring basis at a very localised level. But the line we have taken very strongly - and it was a bit of a catalyst in the experience that we had, which is a very unpleasant experience when you are top of the news and you are on every news news outlet, one after the other - it's just recognise that elections are a part of the UK's critical national infrastructure and need to be protected as you would any other piece of critical national infrastructure, and that means the full powers of the state and the investment in the capabilities that are needed to ensure we are protected are in position. And that's a really key part. Our plan at the moment and what we see is a very active Defending Democracy Taskforce, which the Government convenes, I think, very successfully. That includes all the relevant bodies who can play a part in this. It clearly is a recognition that the UK is subject to foreign actors who really [00:26:00] want to undermine our way of life, and elections are a critical part of that, and we must stop them.

Mark D'Arcy: We don't yet have online voting in this country. I suppose it may happen at some point. We do now have an awful lot more postal voting than we used to have, and there are plenty of people out there who are very suspicious about postal voting, think it's much more manipulable and fallible than in-person voting, without verified identity in a polling station. So I just wondered how confident are you in the security of the postal voting system? Is it delivering fair results? Are people faking it, using it to manipulate elections?

John Pullinger: In our reviews of each set of polls, we will look at the integrity of postal votes. We look at the integrity of in-person votes and a key aspect of our system, which generates very high levels of public confidence actually compared with many other elements of current public life, is that you can see what's happening. You [00:27:00] can see the count, you can see the transparency of what's going on. We have from the Elections Act 2022 now the process of people verifying their identities every three years for postal votes. We are not seeing a huge scepticism around postal votes, but it's a concern we have to think about.

Mark D'Arcy: How much electoral fraud do you think there is involving postal votes at the moment?

John Pullinger: Well, there's very little prosecuted electoral fraud, but there are always concerns about something that people can't see. People's concerns about electoral fraud have gone down. Recently, I think the introduction of voter ID has been something that has contributed to that in the physical space. So I think we need to be even more vigilant in the postal voting space to make sure that returning officers can spot if there are things that are raising concerns and make sure those concerns are followed through. But amongst the various things we are looking at, it's something we are always concerned about. Fraud is something which really matters. It kind of [00:28:00] deprives those people who have voted properly of confidence that their vote has been well counted. But I think we will continue to look at each year the process of postal voting alongside in-person voting, and look at the general confidence that the public has in it. We are not seeing great differences at the moment.

Ruth Fox: You mentioned at the beginning, John, that emerging out of this elections bill, there's so much electoral law now on the statute book. A lot of it is quite old. I mean, some of the electoral rules that apply go back to the 1870s and what we are talking about in terms of technology and deepfake videos and fraud and crypto and so on, these are all developing technologies. They're moving quite fast. Is the legislative vehicle right in waiting every few years for a big bill to come along in which lots of updates are done, and then waiting another few years until things can be updated. Is that the right model or do you need something that is more agile and quicker, but where there's actually a consolidation of what we've already got now and that then can be [00:29:00] updated regularly?

John Pullinger: Well, yes, I mean, the previous Government commissioned the Law Commissions of England and Wales to think about the consolidation of electoral law, and they did a pretty decent job of coming up with a report that shows how to do it, and that has received reasonably good support from a variety of different political parties. I think the thing is finding time for a consolidation bill in Parliament. I mean, you've followed enough areas of law that are also very complicated and out of date, but electoral law is definitely ripe for consolidation. And certainly the conversations I've had with the Law Commission and others and around table or other legal experts that all think the same thing. It's just a question of seeing whether it can fit within the legislative program of any particular parliament to be done. And as I say, we expect the forthcoming bill to have some quite important elements of consolidation. But we'll still be left with something very, very complicated.

Ruth Fox: It's quite ironic because if it were, for example, a Law Commission bill, it could be done relatively quickly in terms of parliamentary time because there's so much [00:30:00] consultation on it. We'll have to see. Can we turn to the question of the independence of the Electoral Commission? You're obviously the independent regulator, the watchdog, and yet in the last parliament, in the elections bill, the then Conservative Government introduced this policy and strategy statement that set out what the Government's expectations are in terms of the Electoral Commission's priorities and what it should be working on. The Labour Party in Opposition then was opposed to it, and yet now in Government they are proposing to retain it. And it has raised a lot of concern in Parliament and elsewhere that that is impinging on your independence. What's your thoughts now?

John Pullinger: Well, this is a bad law and it should be repealed. We said that at the time and we continue to say it.

Mark D'Arcy: Yeah. What's changed do you think? Why has the Government suddenly done a four minute mile up the road to Damascus and decided it likes having the ability to set your priorities and strategy?

John Pullinger: I don't [00:31:00] know. I think you'd have to ask them. I mean, I have spoken to ministers in this Government and ministers in the last Government and made our case. And I think all I can say is that, in my conversations with ministers, they have been listening to our argument. So we'll wait and see what's in the bill.

Ruth Fox: The concern is that this will be used to neuter the watchdog. It clearly hasn't neutered you, but has it affected what you prioritise, how you work, what issues you're picking up, you know, has it had any sort of impact on your priorities as it were?

John Pullinger: No, and I would never let it do that. And indeed, the conversations I've had with ministers, both in the previous Government and with this one, is that they don't want to compromise our independence. But having a piece of legislation on the statute book like this, which I've not seen in any other country in this kind of form, that gives the currently incumbent Government the ability to provide statutory guidance for the independent regulator, just doesn't make sense, and raises in people's [00:32:00] minds the question of whether we are independent. If I felt my independence had been compromised, I wouldn't still be in this job.

Mark D'Arcy: But just to get it absolutely clear, you haven't been made to do something you didn't want to do or stop from doing something you did want to do as a result of this strategy and policy statement so far.

John Pullinger: No, and I wrote to the Speaker as the Act requires me to do, explaining that that's what I had done.

Ruth Fox: One of the ideas behind this statement from the then Government was it would make the Electoral Commission more accountable to Parliament. How are you accountable and are there ways that that could be improved?

John Pullinger: Well, I think we are blessed with quite a lot of accountability to the three parliaments of the UK. We have a special Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission that's chaired by Mr Speaker himself, has a broad range of members on it, and they approve our budget each year, they approve our corporate plan, and the law requires us to produce a corporate plan at the start of each parliament, which we've done, which includes these priorities around [00:33:00] safeguarding the system, education and modernisation as three particular pillars of it. And they're responsible for appointments, including of me and the other nine Electoral Commissioners. So we are in touch with them all the time, but we're also blessed with scrutiny from a lot of other committees, the Housing Communities, and Local Government Committee of course, because they shadow the Minister. But the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, the security committees, all of these people have got a reasonable interest in the Commission. And we've appeared before them pretty frequently.

Ruth Fox: So that's Westminster, John, but what about the devolved legislatures in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland?

John Pullinger: Well, the Electoral Commission is is really well set up for that because we are separately accountable to the Senedd and to the Scottish Parliament. And again, there are dedicated committees that look at our budget for supporting devolved elections in each of the nations. Certainly we [00:34:00] have very significant levels of oversight and scrutiny and accountability to those committees as well. And particularly at the moment in the run up to the 2026 elections in Wales and Scotland, we're spending a lot of time with them working out what is the agenda for the Electoral Commission to ensure that those elections are successful and well run.

Mark D'Arcy: One final thought really, I'm a voter in Sussex and last year had my local elections postponed and apparently I'm going to have my local elections postponed again. This business of postponing elections to local councils that are facing abolition and being replaced by new mayoral authorities seems to be becoming quite fashionable, but it does leave an ever increasing gap between the last time I had a chance to vote for my local rulers and whenever it is in the future, I'm going to get that opportunity again. What's the Electoral Commission's view on cancelling local elections?

John Pullinger: Straightforwardly scheduled election should go ahead as planned. I think anything else is denying voters the chance to have their say. And we are watching very [00:35:00] closely the conversations that are happening in relation to 2026 and 2027. But certainly that is our position unless there's a really significant, overwhelming case not to, for example, as there was during COVID. But if there is a delay, it should absolutely not be more than a year.

Mark D'Arcy: This will take it to two years. Were you consulted about this before it happened?

John Pullinger: There hasn't been formal consultation, but there are conversations.

Ruth Fox: And in terms of the local elections, these are run at the local level by electoral returning officers, the local council. Are you concerned about the level of resourcing of elections and the sheer number of regulations and rules that have to be implemented and the guidance that has to be followed? There's huge pressures obviously, on local government in terms of their finances, and certainly before the general election, there was a lot of concern that the time pressures, the resource pressures were becoming too great, and some of the returning officer organisations were expressing concern about that. Where are we now?

John Pullinger: [00:36:00] Well, electoral administrators are the unsung heroes of our electoral system. You walk around polling stations as I do on elections day, they are people that have been drawn in from all sorts of different jobs to do a vital civic duty, and they do it amazingly well. But every local council in the UK is stretched to a huge degree at the moment, and the resources available for elections are similarly stretched. But what each returning officer knows is that this is a no-fail event that's got their name on the ticket, and they will always do everything they possibly can to pull out the stops to ensure the elections are well run in their area. And we work very closely. We set the standards for the running of elections and we work very closely with returning officers to make sure they've got the support needed to meet those standards consistently. And they do an amazing job. But the problem is as you've described, and becoming more acute, as resources become more limited.

Mark D'Arcy: Thanks to John Pullinger, chair of the Electoral Commission, for joining us on the [00:37:00] pod. Plenty of issues there for Parliament to chew on when that new election bill appears.

Ruth Fox: We'll be back to our normal parliamentary podding on Friday 16 January. Meanwhile, perhaps you might give us a five star rating on your podcast app to help us grow the Parliament Matters audience, it helps other potential listeners find us. And if it's not a five star rating, well don't bother!

Mark D'Arcy: And goodbye for now.

Ruth Fox: See you soon.

Outro: Parliament Matters is produced by the Hansard Society and supported by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. For more information, visit hansardsociety.org.uk/pm or find us on social media at @HansardSociety.

← Back to Parliament Matters episode page