house of lords official report - United Kingdom Parliament

1149 Political Parties and Elections Bill [17 JUNE 2009] Political Parties and Elections Bill 1150
returned were rejected. So across the area, about one
in 20 was rejected, and in this particular division, it
was more than one in 10.
I am interested in the Electoral Commission’s comment
on this amendment, and I will read it:
“The Commission has since July 2007 recommended that the
Government should enable Returning Officers and Electoral
Registration Officers to access and use data that identifies electors
whose postal votes were rejected due to a mismatch of identifiers.
This information should be used by the Electoral Registration
Officer to write to all electors whose postal votes were rejected
due to a mismatch of identifiers, inviting them to provide fresh
identifiers. The Returning Officer should also write to any elector
where they believe that their postal ballot was used in error by
someone other than the elector, advising of the correct process
and the possible penalties for malpractice”.
Whether these figures show that people are simply
making a mess of the system, or whether they show
that, in some cases at least, there are attempts at
voting fraud which have not succeeded because the
postal vote identifier system is working, there is a
problem. If one in 20 or one in 10, or something of
that order—450 votes across the borough—are being
sent in by people expecting them to be counted, and
they are not being counted because the personal identifiers
are absent or not matching, there is something wrong.
It seems to me that this is information to which
candidates and political parties should have access
after the election, because it is fairly obvious that, in
some cases, there may be prima facie evidence of
fraud. One of the reasons why candidates and political
parties are allowed access to the marked register and
the list of postal votes returned is precisely so that they
can be investigated, and if people want to challenge an
election or ask the police or the returning officer to get
involved, they can do so. This seems to be a piece of
information that also ought to be available, but at the
very least, the electors concerned should be written to,
because otherwise there may well be a lot of people
who are sending back their votes in good faith, who
are making the same mistake time after time. It may be
that they have two signatures, and they are just using
the wrong one—they are using their personal signature
and not their cheque-book signature or whichever way
around it is—and votes are being lost. There is, therefore,
a problem here arising from the system of personal
identifiers that was very properly introduced in order
to make postal voting a bit more secure. There is a
problem and it needs to be addressed.
My final point is that I am told by Mrs. Hartley
that the information on the proportions and numbers
of these votes which have been rejected for these
reasons are part of the information that is being sent
off, she says, to Plymouth. I assume it is the elections
centre at the University of Plymouth that is collecting
information, as she says, on behalf of the Government.
So there ought to be a lot of this information gathered
in fairly soon from around the country. It is a serious
problem and one that needs to be addressed. This
amendment is an attempt to do that. I beg to move.
Lord Henley: My Lords, I shall comment briefly on
the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord
Greaves. We obviously have some sympathy with the
amendment in that it is designed to help deal with
postal voting fraud, which I stress was an important
issue in an earlier amendment. We have just three
caveats that I shall point out before the Minister
responds.
First, I worry that the amendment could place an
excessive burden on the returning officer, and I am
interested to know whether the noble Lord has carried
out any assessment of the resource implications of the
returning officer writing what might be a rather large
number of letters, particularly in an area such as
Pendle in which, as the noble Lord told us, some
400 or 500 postal votes were held not to be valid.
Secondly, if the returning officer had to write to
each elector setting out why their vote has not been
counted, as set out in proposed new sub-paragraph (3)
in proposed new subsection (2) in the amendment, and
if there was the possibility of a criminal prosecution
of this matter later, I worry that anything that the
returning officer might say might prejudice the chances
of a fair trial. I would need legal advice as to whether
that is the case, but no doubt the Minister will respond
to that point in due course.
My third point relates to privacy. Proposed new
sub-paragraph (2) in proposed new subsection (2) in
the amendment tells us that,
“The list of postal votes returned but not counted”,
would be kept and would count as “a relevant election
document”. As a relevant election document under
Section 42 of the Electoral Administration Act 2006,
it would be available for inspection by the public. The
noble Lord set out his reasons for that, but presumably—
again, I welcome comments on this—it could have a
detrimental impact on privacy of the ballot. People
should not be able to see a list of those who have spoilt
their ballot paper, intentionally or otherwise, so there
are dangers in going down this route. Although I have
expressed a degree of sympathy for the noble Lord’s
amendment, I think that there are one or two problems
with it.
Lord Tunnicliffe: My Lords, the amendment would
require a returning officer to keep information on
postal votes that have been rejected because the postal-vote
identifiers have not been completed, are incomplete,
or do not match the records held on the postal-vote
application form. The second part of the amendment
would require a returning officer to write to all electors
whose postal vote was rejected notifying them of the
circumstances in which it was rejected.
I think Members on all sides of the House are
concerned to secure every possible improvement
that we can to the postal voting system, and the
amendment clearly has very good intentions, seeking
as it does to ensure that votes cast may be counted and
that the integrity of the system is strengthened. These
are aims that the Government of course support, but
while we may agree on the general intention, I have
some concern about the policy prescription set out by
the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. I am not convinced that
compelling a returning officer to write to all electors
who have had their postal vote ballot rejected due to a
mismatch of identifiers is the correct course of action.
In some cases, this may well have the effect simply of
alerting would-be fraudsters to the failure of their
attempt.