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Mr. Tyler: The hon. Gentleman has almost made his speech, which may be a good way to get in on this debate. I do not want to encourage other hon. Members to make interventions of that length, but it may be the only way. I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman makes, but the Minister's statement referred to "all-postal pilots". That is the perception. The insistence on compulsory postal voting, the removal of choice and—as my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) reminded me—the extent to which it has undermined the secrecy of the ballot are important disadvantages that must be set against the advantage.
 
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If people think that no serious corruption took place, I draw the House's attention to the comments made by Sir Albert Bore, the Labour leader of Birmingham city council, who warned that the law was not specific enough to tackle postal vote fraud. Of course, Birmingham was not one of the pilot areas, but the Minister will acknowledge that making compulsory a faulty system, which at present applies only to the minority, will make things worse. Sir Albert said:

"At present, in relation to the handling of postal ballot papers, the law is so general that almost anything is legal."

The Birmingham Evening Mail reported, on 10 June:

"City Labour leader Sir Albert Bore today called for a national rethink on postal voting after a candidate was found with a bag of completed ballot papers in a late-night police swoop."

That followed a high profile incident when a number of Labour candidates and activists in Birmingham were witnessed taking voters' ballot papers out of the party office to a deserted cul-de-sac in an industrial estate near spaghetti junction to "sort them out". If that can happen when postal votes are a minority, imagine what could happen when they are compulsory and 100 per cent. of the votes cast.

Andrew Bennett: Will the hon. Gentleman remind us what happened when his party and the Conservatives voted on the extension of postal votes on demand? Did they vote against that?

Mr. Tyler: No, we did not. However, we have insisted over recent months that the intention to defraud should be more carefully pinned down. That is why the witness statement has been introduced. I know that the Electoral Commission has some misgivings about it and we must look at the evidence in due course to see how we may improve the integrity of the system.

A flood of complaints has come in about possible fraud and electoral malpractice from the four regions involved. Of course the Electoral Commission and the police should examine those. It is outrageous to attempt to prejudge their conclusions, as both previous contributors seemed to do, because we should wait and see the facts. However, it would be just as dangerous for the Minister to ignore those allegations as it would for him to accept that they are all likely to be true.

The Government do not seem to understand the reluctance of many electors to give up completely their right to vote in person, in secrecy and in the polling booth, with only the non-partisan presiding officer in attendance.

Mr. Betts: I return the hon. Gentleman to the criticisms he made of the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) for not accepting the recommendations of the Electoral Commission. Surely the hon. Gentleman is aware that the Electoral Commission said to the Select Committee that it had no more concerns about the security of voting in an all-postal ballot than it did about postal voting on demand. That is the opposite of what he said a few moments ago. Does he agree with the Electoral Commission on that issue or not?

Mr. Tyler: I have just said—the hon. Gentleman could not have been listening—that I am prepared to
 
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wait to hear what the Electoral Commission says in response to the pilot. The whole point of a pilot is to take advantage of the opportunity to learn the lessons from it. I am prepared to wait for that.

This is a timely debate, because the threats to the integrity of the electoral system do not solely occur in relation to all-postal ballots. There is also the interesting issue of the publication of opinion polls during the much longer period—in all-postal ballots—in which people are voting. It can be anything up to 15 days, instead of just one. In that time, greater emphasis can be given to the so-called evidence of the polls, and the way in which they are reported. Their value and validity is under scrutiny again, not least because they seem to have been more misleading or more influential than in recent elections.

In Business questions last week, I mentioned YouGov, but all the pollsters have a responsibility to consider how their results are reported. All the pollsters are undermined by the way in which the media present their findings at the moment. For example, one newspaper reported that YouGov's reputation for accuracy rested in part on its forecast of the outcome of last year's Conservative party leadership contest. Since none took place, I was not persuaded by that argument.

More seriously, the Evening Standard headlined the Livingstone-Norris contest as being "Neck-and-Neck", when the first round vote showed them to be on 35.7 per cent. and 28.2 per cent. respectively. That is hardly neck-and-neck. It may be that the prominence of that front-page report, from a uniquely well-read paper in London, caused more people to vote to keep the Conservative candidate out. It may well have squeezed the vote of the Liberal Democrat candidate, my hon. Friend the Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes). The evidence of that is that the party vote for the Assembly was rather higher than his vote. Either way, it would be ironic if Mr. Livingstone owed his margin of success to a Conservative newspaper. It was equally ironic that Conservative campaigners used the "Neck-and-Neck" headlines in leaflets, and that may have frightened voters to go the other way.

Similarly, the substantial haemorrhage of Conservative voters to UKIP could be the direct result of huge coverage of the alleged rise in support for the party, almost certainly over-emphasised by a rogue YouGov poll in—of all papers—The Daily Telegraph. By focusing almost exclusively on the "certain to vote" figures, it forecast on 24 May an 18 per cent. UKIP vote, and then on 29 May an increase to 20 per cent. The actual result, after those misleading boosts to its chances, was of course some 16.1 per cent. I suspect that that will not make The Daily Telegraph very popular with the Conservative leadership.

Nor will the Standard be top of the Tory pops. Its eve-of-poll report of the YouGov poll put UKIP equal with the Conservatives on 22 per cent. The UKIP press release read:

"UKIP level with the Tories in last minute poll".

That very day the Conservatives secured 26.7 per cent., more than 10 per cent. more than UKIP. They were not level at all. Even its exit poll seems to have been wrong.

In its defence, YouGov has said that the problem is how its reports are reported and that other polls are just as bad. Two wrongs do not make a right. The whole
 
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industry must now acknowledge that it is under the spotlight, especially from commercial clients. If YouGov's accuracy on political questions is at fault, commercial clients may also doubt its accuracy.

Mr. Jenkin: Am I really listening to a Liberal Democrat? The hon. Gentleman's party are the past masters at issuing false polls in the run-up to an election in every one I have ever seen them contest. The last-minute leaflet always has a graph showing the Liberal Democrat just about to catch up. Has he changed his mind? Does he agree with me that such leaflets can be unethical?

Mr. Tyler: All I am saying—[Laughter.] Well, it is a good crack. However, there is a difference between a so-called reputable public opinion poll and—[Hon. Members: "Hear, hear!"] Wait a minute for the punch line. There is a difference if such a poll is published in an allegedly reputable newspaper and that is then repeated in a leaflet, as happened in London. That is a legitimate way to provide information to the public. However, the pollsters have a responsibility for the reporting of their results.

I shall give another example. The Times is being investigated for having published an opinion poll, purporting to show how people had voted in the all-postal vote regions, before the polls closed. Apparently that is illegal. We must examine how such polls are presented, because they do have an impact. It is important that we consider that issue.

The pollsters are as much victims as villains in this situation. The main culprits are those in the media who often have their own agenda and choose how to interpret and report poll findings. I am sure that representatives of the Conservative party will have a quiet discussion with The Daily Telegraph on that issue, after the haemorrhage of its vote to UKIP. It is significant that the newspapers that gave most prominence to those misleading figures of support for UKIP were those with a bitterly anti-European, obsessive agenda.

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