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Mr. Raynsford: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will recognise that the Electoral Commission has recommended that. Does he agree with the Electoral Commission's proposal?

Mr. Duncan: I do not agree with the abolition of the witness statement, because there would then be far too much scope for increased malpractice.

Mr. Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale, West) (Con): It is important that my hon. Friend should recognise that the Electoral Commission, in accepting that the witness statement could go, also made it clear that the postal ballot should not have been extended as widely as it was without individual voter registration. If Ministers are going to pray in aid the Electoral Commission, they should be honest and straightforward and promise that individual registration will be in place before we ever have another such experiment.

Mr. Duncan: My hon. Friend is right, and that is exactly the point that I want to come to. Another ingredient that severely contaminates the dubious process of all-postal ballots is the composition of the electoral roll on which it is based. My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Dame Marion Roe) has become the commander, if I may say so, of that issue. As she pointed out in her debate on 5 May, there are thousands upon thousands of names on the electoral roll of people who are not entitled to vote. In Portsmouth, where the registration process was cleaned up, more than 11,000 ineligible names had to be removed—a whopping 15 per cent. of those on the list. Should my hon. Friend catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, she will be able to elaborate on that. It has severe implications not just for voting but for the setting of constituency boundaries and hence the very composition of this House.

With all-postal voting, we start with a highly questionable list, especially for those student flats and homes of multiple occupancy in which the risk of malpractice is at its worst, and we compound that situation by bombarding all those electors—and, it would seem, non-electors—with ballot papers. Unless all that is addressed, perhaps by the individual registration for which my hon. Friend the Member for
 
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Altrincham and Sale, West (Mr. Brady) called, and unless that happens quickly, people will feel that the entire process has become rotten.

The Government's reckless fiddling with the electoral system has raised widespread public concern about the integrity of the country's electoral process. The electoral practices of the 18th and early 19th centuries, such as intimidation and fraud, risk becoming the hallmarks of the 21st. The system that we have allowed to emerge needs tightening up, not loosening up.

We will lead a cross-party campaign in both Houses to challenge the Government's plans to hold the forthcoming regional assembly referendums by a compulsory all-postal ballot system. We will also resist plans to use such ballots in any European referendum or across all local elections. This Government have a clear agenda to throw away the ballot box and force all-postal voting on the British public, irrespective of their wishes. We will protect people's right to vote in person and in secret. They should be able to choose the ballot box over the letter box. We are the defenders of democracy; this Government most clearly are not.

2.23 pm

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs (Mr. Christopher Leslie): I beg to move, leave out from "House" to end and add

"recognises that the all-postal pilots in June 2004 were part of a process of testing alternative voting mechanisms for the benefit of making voting easier and more convenient for electors; further recognises that turnout in European elections had fallen to its lowest ever level in 1999 and that all-postal pilots assisted in making the 2004 European election turnout the UK's highest ever; welcomes the fact that voter participation for the European elections in the pilot regions more than doubled in 2004 compared with 1999; believes that allegations of fraud have been reported disproportionately and that there is currently no evidence to show that all-postal ballots are more susceptible to fraud than traditional elections; recognises that further reforms will be necessary to widen participation and engagement in the electoral system; and further believes that the integrity of elections and referendums, including the proposed referendums on elected regional assemblies, is adversely affected by declining turnout which puts in jeopardy the democratic mandate."

What a pity that the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) took such a completely over-the-top attitude. How sad the official Opposition have become that they now resort to this. In its desperation to attack the Government, the Conservative party will try to seize on any story or rumour and, by extrapolating from those anecdotes, spin a yarn that the totality of our institutions and the world is crumbling and being brought to its knees, and that everything is a failure—that everything is wrong and a disaster. That is the myth that they are trying to peddle.

Both the Tories and, to a certain extent, the Liberal Democrats have systematically and persistently tried to undermine the elections and their outcomes throughout the process. They throw dust in the air to cloud the true picture, and they want to focus on the negative at the expense of anything positive. They deliberately seek to present matters out of perspective.

Thankfully, the reality is quite different from the Opposition's myths. We have every reason to be proud of our system of governance in this country. Our institutions are strong and improving, and are being reformed. Despite difficulties that occur from time to
 
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time, we have a democracy that is successful and leads the world. That is the reality, whatever the Opposition say to undermine it. Yes, there are real issues that need to be addressed, but our electoral administrators and returning officers have done a fantastic job in seeing through a challenging combined European and local election, with new systems in some areas designed to make voting easier and more convenient. That is why we put them in place.

The European Parliamentary and Local Elections (Pilots) Act 2004 was passed with the explicit intention of testing out whether different forms of voting could engage a larger number of electors who had not voted in previous elections. It did that. More people took part this time than last time, especially where all-postal voting was tried out.

Mr. Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con): The hon. Gentleman says that the system engaged more electors than before. The question that people are concerned about, however, is whether the people who cast the votes were indeed the electors to whom the voting papers were addressed.

Mr. Leslie: If the hon. Gentleman has any evidence that those who cast the votes were not those people, he should deal with that and pass the information to the relevant authorities. If he is seriously suggesting that the increase in turnout of millions more people was somehow fraudulently arrived at, he is living in a different world and does not have anything to substantiate the comment that he has dreamed up.

David Hamilton (Midlothian) (Lab): Is the Minister as puzzled as I by the Conservative party's conversion to opposing the present system? Was it not that party that made the proposals for trade union ballots to take place by postal voting systems? I come from a union that had 80 to 90 per cent. of members voting through the ballot box but now has 60 per cent. voting through the postal voting system, with no checks being done. Is that not a U-turn?

Mr. Leslie: Absolutely. The fact is that the Conservative party itself has encouraged people to vote by post, for example on its website, which has various literature about encouraging people to vote. Interestingly, the Association of Electoral Administrators was quite critical of the Conservative party process for garnering postal votes, because it said that they were not returned in time to returning officers. However, we should look at that on another occasion.

We have been trying to make it easier and more convenient for people to vote—that is the sin of which the Opposition accuse us. Millions more people found postal voting more convenient. Millions who would not go to conventional polling stations preferred to cast their vote by post. That is the truth about the recent elections.

Mr. Tim Boswell (Daventry) (Con): On the specific point that the Minister has just raised, my village is approximately 18 miles from the assistance and delivery point—the only one in my local registration district. If there were a blind person in the village who had difficulty using or accessing a template at home, would
 
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they have to go to the local delivery point to receive assistance, and could that be seen in any possible way as more convenient than the system that has been replaced?

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