In today’s Guardian Marina Hyde has unearthed this quote from Boris Johnson in 2004:

If I am ever asked on the streets of London, or in any other venue, public or private, to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am, when I have done nothing wrong and am simply ambling along and breathing God’s fresh air like any other freeborn Englishman, then I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded I produce it.

I am reminded of Paddy Ashdown promising to eat his hat in 2015 when the polls were predicting large Lib Dem losses. And of Lib Dem Voice’s former editor, Stephen Tall, who pledged to run down Whitehall naked if we halved our number of MPs in the same election. Stephen, bless him, honoured his commitment, and did the run in full view of TV cameras on a cold Autumn day, although he was permitted a thong. Even Paddy submitted to good humoured humiliation when he ate a chocolate version of his hat on Question Time.

I somehow doubt that the Prime Minister will honour his pledge. But then the requirement for voters to present photo ID in order to be able to vote in a polling station, as announced in the Queen’s Speech yesterday, has already met with a great deal of public opposition, so its chances of reaching the statute books are, in my view, quite slim. However, we must not make any assumptions about how it will play out, and we must ensure that everything possible is done to prevent it becoming a reality.

The reasons for opposing voter ID have been covered extensively, but it is worth reminding people that it was blatantly used in some US states by Republicans to suppress Democratic votes.

Any extra complexity added to voting processes anywhere in the world potentially discourages some voters from exercising their democratic rights, and may even disenfranchise them.

In simple terms, voter impersonation (“personation” as it is correctly called) is a vanishingly small offence in the UK, as indeed it is in the US.  The Electoral Commission has published reports which show that 1 person was convicted of personation in 2017, none in 2018, 1 in 2019, and none in 2020 (although very few elections took place last year). This is not a problem seeking a solution.

On the other hand, it is a solution creating a problem.

In a research briefing from the House of Commons Library, we learn that the Electoral Commission had found that around 25% of voters do not have either a passport or driving licence – the most popular forms of photo ID used in this country. By extending that to include other forms of ID, such as bus passes, some 92.5% would be covered. But that still leaves 3.5 million voters without any permissible form of ID.

The suggested way round this would be to give voters the option of applying for a free photographic electoral ID card from their local council. The Electoral Commission carried out some pilot projects along those lines and concluded:

• However, we are not able to draw definitive conclusions, from these pilots, about how an ID requirement would work in practice, particularly at a national poll with higher levels of turnout or in areas with different socio-demographic profiles not fully represented in the pilot scheme.

• If the policy is to be developed further, Government and Parliament should consider carefully the available evidence about the impact of different approaches on the accessibility and security of polling station voting in Great Britain.

In other words, it is not at all clear the extent to which the proposal would affect disadvantaged groups who would be more likely than others to be without standard forms of photographic ID.

It is estimated that the provision of electoral ID cards nationwide would cost around £2million. We cannot assume that people who are already disadvantaged would find it easy or convenient to apply for them; indeed applications for such cards would present an extra barrier to voting that would not have to faced by more fortunate voters.

Of course, civil liberties arguments come strongly to the fore. The rise of the anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers during the pandemic has demonstrated that the harm principle can, in certain circumstances, over-ride the liberty principle – but only where the risk of harm is substantial, as I argued here: Is wearing a mask a civil liberties issue?

The risk of harm from voter personation is almost zero, so there is no justification at all in imposing such a costly and discouraging process. Indeed, it is difficult to think of any motivation for the proposal, apart from a desire to suppress voting by certain demographics.

As Liberals and as Democrats this topic is core to our identity. We must not be too distracted by imminent by-elections to miss this opportunity to defend the very bedrock of modern democracy and liberty – the right to vote.

* Mary Reid is a contributing editor on Lib Dem Voice. She was a councillor in Kingston upon Thames, where she is still very active with the local party, and is the Hon President of Kingston Lib Dems.