house of lords official report - United Kingdom Parliament

1141 Political Parties and Elections Bill [17 JUNE 2009] Political Parties and Elections Bill 1142
whether, in any of those areas, any of the returning
officers felt it necessary to go beyond that 20 per cent
because they began to think that there might be some
fraud? That should be known at this relatively early
stage. The same would be true of the local elections,
which took place on the same day but were counted a
couple of days earlier. Postal voting fraud seems more
likely to happen in local elections; obviously, a smaller
number of votes can make a big difference. In European
elections it would be quite difficult, particularly with
the d’Hondt system of counting the votes, for it to
make much of a difference in the long run.
As I understand it, county council votes would have
been counted on a ward-by-ward basis, which might
have indicated to individual returning officers that it
might have been better to have checked more than
20 per cent in certain wards. I think that the European
votes were counted on a local government basis—roughly
in constituencies, sometimes a bit bigger, sometimes a
bit smaller. Again, I would be interested to know
whether there were any areas where the returning
officers felt it necessary to make such checks.
I hope that that is sufficient and that the Minister
can give us some idea of what happened, and whether
that indicates that there is a need to pursue these
amendments at a later stage. I beg to move.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry
of Justice (Lord Bach): My Lords, the introduction of
personal identifiers for postal voters under the Electoral
Administration Act 2006 has been a key measure in
strengthening the integrity of postal voting. Under
amendments made to the Representation of the People
(England and Wales) Regulations 2001 following the
introduction of the 2006 Act, we specified that at
elections returning officers were required to check at
least 20 per cent of returned postal votes. That is the
minimum requirement, but they have a discretion to
check 100 per cent if they wish to do so. If the
returning officer considers that there is a real risk of
fraud, he may specify from the outset that all postal
voting statements will be checked. The current statutory
provisions also provide the returning officer with the
flexibility to begin with 20 per cent checking but to
increase that level at later postal vote-opening sessions
if any evidence of fraud emerges.
I repeat what I said in Grand Committee: we agree
in principle with the desire for 100 per cent of postal
votes to be checked and we will make that a statutory
requirement once it is safe and appropriate to do so.
The regulations for the recent European parliamentary
elections followed the provisions for parliamentary
and local elections, and therefore required that at least
20 per cent of returned postal votes were checked.
However, at the request of the regional returning
officers, we made funding available to local returning
officers to cover the costs for administrators in checking
all returned postal votes.
While we have been supportive of the 100 per cent
checking of all returned postal votes, we continue to
believe that it would be premature to mandate 100 per
cent checking in law at this stage given, as I said in
Grand Committee, that we cannot be certain that the
necessary software systems are in place to deliver
100 per cent checking across all regions in Great Britain.
In order to establish when it will be appropriate to
move to mandatory checking of postal votes, it is
imperative that we work with the Electoral Commission,
electoral administrators and software suppliers to carefully
review how the 100 per cent checking of postal votes
worked in practice at the European parliamentary
elections. For that reason, we do not consider it appropriate
today to accept the amendment. It is possible to make
the change to mandatory 100 per cent checking of
postal votes through amendments to the existing
secondary legislation. I want to reassure the noble
Lord and other noble Lords that there will be no need
to rely on there being a suitable Bill before Parliament
for this change to be made. I hope that on that basis
the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Henley: My Lords, I am grateful that the
noble Lord has confirmed that this matter can be dealt
with by secondary legislation in due course, when the
appropriate software systems are in place. However, he
did not deal with my principal question, which was
whether the Government have learnt any lessons, other
than the obvious political lessons, from those elections.
Were there any areas where a returning officer at a
local or a wider level felt it necessary to make a 100 per
cent check? The noble Lord must know the answer,
because it obviously happened either on 5 June, when
the local election votes were counted, or on Sunday
7 June, when the national votes were counted. The
noble Lord’s colleague has returned with some advice;
perhaps the Minister can intervene with an answer.
Lord Bach: My Lords, I shall respond quickly. The
elections happened only a few days ago and we await
the Electoral Commission’s report on how the system
worked for the European elections. The noble Lord
must give us a little longer to come up with the
answers. The votes were counted on the Sunday night;
I remember it well. That was 10 days ago, which is not
very long in the Electoral Commission’s life.
Lord Henley: My Lords, I appreciate that it is
possibly too early. I, too, remember watching the
results on Sunday night; the noble Lord will probably
remember them for longer than I will. For the moment,
I must accept what he has said and take that as an
answer. I shall not come back to these amendments,
but I certainly hope that the noble Lord will make sure
that, when the Electoral Commission reports, he notifies
me and other noble Lords who have taken an interest
in this of its findings. I beg leave to withdraw the
amendment.
Amendment 81 withdrawn.
Amendment 82 not moved.
Amendment 83
Moved by Lord Bates
83: After Clause 24, insert the following new Clause—
“Service Registration
(1) Section 15 of the Representation of the People Act 1983
(c. 2) (service declaration) is amended as follows.
(2) Omit subsection (2)(a).
(3) Omit subsections (9) to (12).”