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Mr. Duncan: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Government also refused to accept the clear advice of the Electoral Commission on this matter, and proceeded in defiance of it.

Another aspect of the current voting system that is becoming a massive turn-off for anyone contemplating doing their bit at the polls is that, quite simply, it is all becoming too complicated, and people are getting fed up with the way it works. They almost need a PhD in political science to get to grips with all the different systems of voting, counting, and casting their vote. Voters cannot be expected to know their STV from their SV from their FPTP, and they are becoming increasingly confused about their preferences.

One of merits of the traditional British electoral system has been its simplicity and transparency, yet the proliferation of voting systems and voting methods under this Government has become a voter's nightmare. It risks hindering, not helping, democratic participation. Let us take the London elections. The public faced the confusing prospect of casting five different votes under three different voting systems: one vote for a regional party list in the European elections; two votes for the Assembly via the additional member system; and two preferences for Mayor via the supplementary vote, an electoral system so obscure that it is only otherwise used in Sri Lanka. It is no wonder that, in the Assembly elections, a worrying 6 per cent. of all constituency votes were rejected, as were 3 per cent. of all list votes.
 
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In the vote for the Mayor, 60,000 voters had their first preference rejected, and while some people admittedly would have chosen not to express a second preference, 330,000 second preference votes were still labelled as rejected. Yet, lo and behold, here is another fiddle: those rejected votes were all counted towards the overall level of turnout. This creative counting gives a profoundly misleading impression about the real levels of democratic participation, and is yet another sign of the spin behind the arguments.

Claire Ward (Watford) (Lab): Surely it is part of anyone's democratic right to go along to the polling station and to participate by spoiling their ballot paper, if they wish. That is democracy, and those votes should be counted towards the turnout level because those people have participated. They may not have voted for the hon. Gentleman's party or for mine, but they have still participated.

Mr. Duncan: One of the problems is that many people could not go along to a polling station, although they could in London. No doubt, if people scribbled "I hate Claire Ward" all over their ballot paper, they would know that they were registering a protest and that their vote would be rejected. However, it is clear from the process that we saw 12 days ago that many people simply did not understand the system and did not register a proper vote.

One of the main advantages of the first-past-the-post system is that it is clean and simple. People understand it, they trust it and they accept it. Perhaps that is why it is the world's most widely used system. But now, with all this variety, people often do not understand the system, and do not trust it. We seriously risk them eventually not accepting its results.

Mr. Betts: I actually agree with what the hon. Gentleman says about first past the post, but would he accept that one of the biggest causes of confusion in the all-postal ballots, certainly in my constituency, was the requirement for a witness statement that was imposed on the process by the Tories and the Liberals in the House of Lords at the last minute, against the advice of the Electoral Commission, which said that it would add nothing to voting security?

Mr. Duncan: When there is so much scope for fraud already, removing the requirement to have a witness statement would merely compound that problem and lead to an even greater lack of confidence in the system that the Government have forced on the British people.

The greatest problem with all-postal ballots lies in the loss of confidence caused by the massive scope that exists for electoral malpractice. Under the traditional system, there was perhaps a minor chance that someone would be able to impersonate someone else, and exercise another person's right to vote. Under all-postal voting, there is massive scope for fraud and undue influence. It is, at every turn, open to fiddles. So much can go amiss between the ballot paper being sent out by the returning officer and it coming back to him. Votes can be gathered up when lying on the doorstep or in flats. They can be pinched, transferred, chucked over a hedge or fished out of dustbins.
 
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Andrew Bennett: If the hon. Gentleman is so concerned about the postal vote issue, what recommendations will he give to Tory candidates in the next general election? Will he recommend that they should encourage people to have postal votes, or, given his concern about possible fraud, will he recommend that they have nothing to do with encouraging the electorate to have postal votes?

Mr. Duncan: It is a matter of choice. People should be able to ask for a postal vote, but it should not be universally forced on them and sent to them out of the sky.

Mr. Robathan: While my hon. Friend is talking about choice, one thing that seems to be ignored, particularly on the Labour Benches, is that many couples do not vote in the same way. We hear a lot about domestic violence, and many women do not wish their husbands to know which way they vote. When it comes to a postal vote, however, they are of necessity likely to cast their vote in the presence of their husband. That is something about which many women feel strongly, and which they do not wish to do.

Mr. Duncan: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In fact, there have been fairly widespread reports of household intimidation. There can be intimidation in households and in the workplace, as was reported in Bradford. The Minister may want to speak to someone on his Benches who has often been brave on this matter. The hon. Member for Keighley (Mrs. Cryer) has argued that voters can be subjected to what she calls, delicately and politely, "community pressure". I suggest that he looks behind him instead of barracking the Opposition about the dangers that can be involved in the system.

Then there is the so-called harvesting of votes, with party activists pressuring people on the doorstep to hand over their vote—a practice recklessly encouraged by the Labour party in its official postal voting guide and document, the Labour party postal vote handbook 2004, with its sinister advice to

"have a ballot box for people to put their votes in which you can then deliver . . . if your volunteers are wearing Labour stickers or rosettes it is unlikely that supporters of other parties will give you their votes."

If there is many a slip twixt cup and lip, it takes only the Labour party to turn it into an art form. In the face of that, our position is clear—no one should be forced to vote by post.

No doubt, in response to all this, the Minister will simply say that we should await the inquiry due to be undertaken by the Electoral Commission. I can just see the Minister sitting there satisfied already that he will be able to stand up in a couple of months and assert to the House that there have been few if any proven cases of malpractice. The Minister seems to share that view. That, if I may say so, is exactly the problem.

The whole point about the malpractice that can so obviously take place in an all-postal ballot is that it is almost impossible to detect, and even more so to prove. People are not stupid. They can see it, and they do not like what they see. They suspect that many elements of the process are like a series of unreported crimes—we know that they are happening, but there is no chance of
 
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prosecution, so why bother reporting them. But it undermines their confidence. People will be utterly incredulous about the Government's absurd assertion in their amendment to today's motion that

"there is currently no evidence to show that all-postal ballots are more susceptible to fraud than traditional elections".

The Minister says that that is correct. Even someone with limited common sense, or a five-year-old, can work out that they are most definitely susceptible. There are probably a few five-year-olds who have doubled their pocket money proving it. All that matters for the system to be undermined, and for people to lose confidence in it, is that all these abuses are able to take place. One would think that a Government who bang on about perception would have worked that out.

If the Minister announces to the House in the autumn that the Electoral Commission has found no systematic evidence of malpractice, that is no defence whatever of a system that is so obviously open to it. It is not even as if the Electoral Commission has been at all in evidence walking the streets of Britain over the last few weeks to see things for itself. It is not in any way equipped to conduct such an inquiry.

The Government cannot get away with just bleating on about turnout. Even the headline figure is not what it seems to be. In the past, the number of rejected ballot papers has been so insignificant that it has hardly mattered. But when it reaches the level of say, 1 per cent. or 2 per cent., it begins to matter. That is not just because it might be thought to have an effect on the result of marginal contests, but because when subtracted from apparent total turnout, it shows that increased participation is not quite what is claimed. [Interruption.] The Minister says that that is nonsense, but it is basic arithmetic. No one is therefore surprised that the Government have insisted on including rejected ballot papers in the turnout figure. It makes the increase in all-postal areas look bigger than it really is.

We cannot concur with the rosy ministerial statement issued yesterday proclaiming that what the Government call the "multichannel approach" is a "positive result" for "electoral modernisation". The fact that all-postal voting leads to more votes in the ballot box is not in dispute. The key test is whether the integrity of the electoral system is compromised as a result. The Government's claims of doubling turnout, as one Member mentioned, are a statistical sleight of hand. Turnout in the pilot regions was a mere 5 per cent. higher than in non-pilot regions. Turnout rose because the European and local elections occurred on the same day; contests in which all councillors were up for re-election due to boundary changes increased campaign activity; people wanted to protest against the Government's plans for a European superstate; and paradoxically, the controversy about all-postal voting itself gave front-page coverage to what was being dubbed "Super Thursday".

The Government use the base year of June 1999 to make comparisons, which saw a turnout of just 20 per cent. in the pilot regions. They omit to make comparisons with the last set of local elections, which always have a higher turnout than European ones. Indeed, in areas that have had all-postal local elections
 
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for many years, turnout fell. It was down 3 per cent. in Newcastle, 7 per cent. in Sunderland and Gateshead, and 7 per cent. in Trafford.

The Government point to the anti-fraud measure of witness statements as the cause—some Labour Members even want to abolish it. Yet this fall is a continuation of a long-term trend. As the Electoral Commission reported last year, in its review of 2003 pilots, examining areas that also had all-postal voting in 2002, the novelty value had worn off, and turnout was beginning to decline again. That pattern has continued, it would appear, in the elections that we have just had.

Let us just imagine the scope that there would be for even greater fraud were there no requirement for some sort of witness statement. Is that really what Ministers would now like to see? Do they wish to abolish the witness statement? I offer them the chance to say so now, at the beginning of the debate.

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