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6.30 pm

Another part of the reason is that the Minister's repeated statements to the House have been contradicted by the Government within just a fraction over four weeks. Let me refer to what he said not once, but on a number of occasions, as recently as 16 December, when the Bill was before the House:

"We remain keen, however, to proceed with all-postal voting in three regions."

He also said, using a phrase of which we have made much mockery:

"In scaling up towards a multi-channel general election"—

he indulged in an equal neologism this afternoon in talking about scalability, whatever that is—

"after 2006, we believe that pressing ahead with a wider range and variation of piloting provides the best opportunity to learn lessons and to develop capabilities in new electoral techniques . . . The Government will consider in more detail each of the potential candidates with a view to announcing the location of the third all-postal pilot in the coming weeks."

As recently as 16 December—the last time this legislation was before the House—there was no mention of four areas. He continued:

"we can conclude which third all-postal voting pilot will proceed."

Apparently, he hoped to come to a conclusion soon on

"which region or nation should be the third choice".

Clearly, he was trying to hold out hopes to all his hon. Friends, who gave him such a hard time and so much friendly fire in pleading the cause of Scotland. He told us:

"I intend to make a decision relatively quickly on which third region or nation we wish to select."—[Official Report, 16 December 2003; Vol. 415, c. 1511–1514.]

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Later, he said that the Electoral Commission had recommended that there should be three all-postal pilots. Of course, it did not make such a recommendation; the Minister himself made a mistake. The commission was asked to recommend three regions, including one for an electronic pilot, and it recommended only two, for very good reasons.

Thus, as recently as 16 December, the Minister said not once, twice or three times, but about six times over five columns of Hansard that there would be three regions—the two that the Electoral Commission had recommended and a third that the Government would impose. Suddenly, though, it all changed. Who knows whether it did so for party political reasons? In a written statement on 21 January, he slipped out this announcement:

"I can today announce . . . that two further regions will also hold all-postal pilots. These regions will be Yorkshire and the Humber and the north-west."— [Official Report, 21 January 2004; Vol. 416, c. 64WS.]

It was announced that, effectively, a swathe of the country—half of England—would be involved. That is hardly a pilot.

What caused the Government to ignore what the Electoral Commission had said about the proposed all-postal pilots for Yorkshire and the Humber and the north-west, and what was the reaction of the Government's own Electoral Commission to that snub? We must now turn to what will undoubtedly become known as the Younger letter—a letter that has already been referred to in several interventions and that was drawn to the attention of the House earlier by my hon. Friends the Members for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) and for Gosport (Mr. Viggers), who answers questions on behalf of the Electoral Commission.

Mr. Foulkes: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Hawkins: I shall give way to the right hon. Gentleman, but only after I have referred to the Younger letter.

In an astonishingly strongly worded letter to the Minister, sent as recently as last Thursday, the chairman of the Electoral Commission says, among other things:

"We felt unable to make a positive recommendation in respect of those regions",

meaning Yorkshire and the Humber, the north-west and the west midlands. That was the quote that we eventually extracted from the Minister when he was trying to indulge in selective quotation. Sam Younger goes on to state:

"The guidance we were given by Government indicated that you wanted to run with three pilot regions and this view was re-inforced by the statement issued in response to our report which accepted the two regions we regarded as most suitable, but added that you would look for a third from those who were potentially suitable."

Mr. Foulkes: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Hawkins: I shall do so when I have finished referring to the Younger letter, as I have already said.

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The chairman of the Electoral Commission also states:

"We always recognised that it was open to Government to have discussions with those regions falling into the 'potential' category to see whether the reasons we had identified for not making a positive recommendation could be satisfactorily resolved. We understand those discussions took place, although the Commission was not involved in them."

The Opposition are very concerned to hear that the commission was not involved in those discussions, and we are suspicious about their nature and extent. That is why I have asked the Minister—he noticeably failed to answer me—to place in the Library the full minutes of all meetings that took place involving him, the Deputy Prime Minister or any other Ministers. We believe that it is implicit in what Mr. Younger is saying that the Government have leaned on returning officers.

Mr. Foulkes: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Hawkins: I shall give way to the right hon. Gentleman in a moment: I have not forgotten him.

Sam Younger's next passage is the most significant of all:

"However, it does not follow that the Commission would be unconcerned about the number of pilot regions. As I have mentioned, we expected the Government to nominate three regions and were surprised to learn that the Bill was to be amended to name four regions.


You are aware of our view"—

the view of the Government's own Electoral Commission—

"that the rollout of all postal elections needs to be underpinned by a more robust statutory framework. We have recognised at the same time that pilots provide the means by which we can test and learn from new ways of voting and that of necessity they have to be conducted without the full range of new measures we would wish to see, in particular individual registration"—

an issue to which we will certainly return this afternoon. Mr. Younger continues:

"To date piloting has been on a limited scale, but you are aware of our view that so far as all-postal elections are concerned, most of the lessons have been learned. Nonetheless, we welcome their use on a regional basis in order to test issues of scalability"—

the Minister's word. Mr. Younger also says:

"But in our view pilots that cover over a third of the English electorate in June go further than we think necessary in order to address those issues".

The Government's own Electoral Commission, through its chairman writing to the Minister, has said that holding pilots in June covering more than a third of the English electorate goes further than it thinks necessary. The letter is very strongly worded, and it goes on to say:

"especially in the absence of the underlying legislative change we consider necessary. There is also in our view increased risk, with combined elections and in some cases new boundaries, in running on such a large scale and we are not persuaded that the risk is outweighed by what we might learn from four regional pilots as opposed to two."

Mr. Hoyle: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Hawkins: I shall do so only after I have given way to the right hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) in a moment.

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The letter concludes:

"It is of course for Parliament to decide the number of all postal regions. But we urge that this matter is resolved as quickly as possible."

The matter could be resolved very quickly if the Government returned to what the Electoral Commission itself recommended—just two electoral regions, which is what the other place voted for, as I believe it will do again.

Mr. Foulkes: I despair of this pettifogging nit-picking from the Opposition. Why does the hon. Gentleman accept the views of an unelected Chamber rather than those of an elected one? Why does he not want to make it easier for people to vote? Why does he not move into the 20th century, let alone the 21st? Is he aware that in the next general election in India, almost 700 million people will vote electronically? When will we catch up with that?

Mr. Hawkins: We debated extensively in Committee the rejection by the Government's own Electoral Commission of their proposal to have electronic voting. I do not think that I would be in order if I went back over the ground that was covered in Committee in that regard, as it is not relevant to the amendments. We believe that the Government are behaving quite wrongly in overruling the clear and strongly expressed view of the Electoral Commission that they set up.

Mr. Gummer: I invite my hon. Friend not to listen to the right hon. Gentleman who interrupted him and who misses the point entirely. It is not that we do not want more people to vote—

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