Memorandum by Roger Morris, Regional Returning
Officer, East Midlands Region (PVF 01)
Thank you for your letter of the 14 June 2004.
I am about to go on leave until the 28 June 2004, and some of
the information that you are requesting by the 25 June 2004 is
not yet available. It is, however, being collected for the formal
evaluation by the Electoral Commission, but at this stage I do
not have many of the statistics which you are seeking on a regional
basis, since the Commission will be collecting them from each
Local Returning Officer in each local counting area (ie local
authority).
Please accept this as a provisional response:
although I retire on 11 July 2004, I shall be pleased to follow
this up or offer further evidence to the Committee if it would
be helpful for me later to do so.
I have numbered the points which follow in accordance
with your questions:
1. This was undoubtedly a major source of
difficulty in finalising the detailed planning necessary, and
the point was made repetitively by the Regional Returning Officers
to Government from as early as last July when our preparatory
meetings began. In particular, it was difficult to let contracts
for the millions of ballot packs required when the specification
could not be finalised and the detailed wording of the document
was the subject of frequent change before the Pilot Order was
eventually made by the Minister on 27 April 2004, just three days
before the Notice of Election had to be published.
2. Timescales should have been adequate
but tight. In the East Midlands, where 39 of the 40 authorities
used a contract base which I had established for EU Journal procurement,
problems meant that ballot packs in some cases did not reach the
Royal Mail for up to six days after the date planned. Nevertheless
the statutory requirements were still met, and the performance
of Royal Mail in reconfiguring their operational requirements
to deal with the situation as it developed was both constructive
and outstanding in its willingness to help overcome the problems.
3. I experienced no difficulties in this
context. The East Midlands expected to be a pilot very well before
Christmas, and before that I had organised a consultative meeting
in the region from which support for taking part in the pilot
was generally expressed with a broad consensus.
4. As Local Returning Officer for the Northampton
area I received none. There were a few around the rest of the
region, and those which were believed to have any substance to
them were referred by prior arrangement to the appropriate Police
Force and the Crown Prosecution Service. My perception of this
at the present is that the number of allegations was minimal set
against an electorate of 3.2 million, but this of course is not
to say that any individual instance is not serious and potentially
damaging far beyond its immediate scope.
5. Yes, but as I made clear when I gave
evidence to the Committee previously, some potential contractors
declined to bid because of the uncertainties and what they considered
to be too greater risk.
6. In this region relatively few reprints
were required in small numbers occasioned by printing and data
errors. More details will be available later, but against an overall
background of 3.2 million this was an issue which was troublesome
at the time but has to be kept in overall proportion.
7. Royal Mail's management made clear from
the outset their determination to succeed, and after some initial
uncertainties they were outstanding in responding to the situation
which developed in the days running up to the statutory deadline
of the 1 June 2004. No exercise involving over 14 million individual
deliveries is going to happen flawlessly, but it is important
to distinguish the performance of Royal Mail overall, for which
I have made clear my personal gratitude and respect, and individual
local difficulties on a delivery round-by-round basis where public
attitudes were sometimes formed as a result of experiences not
connected with the special arrangements made for election deliveries.
8. In Northampton we used the Royal Mail
for all our deliveries, and that was usual in the East Midlands,
with relatively few authorities intending hand delivery and some
of those changing to Royal Mail when the timetable was delayed.
I do not have regional statistics on use of Assistance and Delivery
Points, but in Northampton we had five, and received there some
6,402 votes during the nine days (about 11% of the total we received
back).
9. (a) None so far as I am aware.
(c)
I believe that all ballot packs had been delivered
to voters by Saturday 5 June 2004 in the Northampton area. My
understanding is that these circumstances were essentially the
same across the region, although there will naturally have been
a few cases where people did not receive ballot packs for reasons
other than postal issues (such as not providing us with correct
details etc).
10. (a) The Assistance and Delivery Points were
designed to help voters who asked for it, but the Electoral Commission
evaluation will provide detailed statistics on these sorts of
issues. We did return unsigned witness declarations where there
was time to do so, and in Northampton almost 98% of voters had
voted validly in the sense of returning papers back to us by the
appropriate process and in the appropriate manner by 10.00 pm
on 10 June 2004. At the actual count itself a tiny number of papers
relatively was spoilt—less than ½ of 1%.
(c)
The instructions are too complex and elaborate and
I have also made the point, like many others, to the Department
for Constitutional Affairs that they need re-writing. It can be
countered that, as 10(a) above reveals, most voters managed to
vote successfully, but the number who were deferred from doing
so by the apparent complexity can never be known.
11. (a) The numbers are small, and are still
being received. We can see from their postmarks etc. that many
have come from far afield, or have been put in the post after
the 10 June 2004.
(b)
See answers to 10 above.
12. Turn-out in the East Midlands went from
22.6% in the 1999 European Elections to 44.59% in 2004, ie almost
doubling. The percentage in Northampton itself was about double
as well, but because the region was divided into parliamentary
constituencies in 1999 and into local authority areas in 2004
exact local comparisons cannot be made.
13. We had not previously piloted in Northampton,
and only about six authorities of the 40 in the East Midlands
had previous piloting experience.
14. (a) Yes, for both the regional overview
work and for the local handling of received ballot papers etc.
For the latter we were usually using a team of 40 people.
(b) Yes: this is a feature of every
election. The costs remain to be finalised, but in round figures
staffing, accommodation and equipment costs for the nine days
of receiving scanning and opening ballot paper envelopes in Northampton
alone was about £30,000.
15. This is not yet complete. I imagine
you want a regional answer, but the cost of the election can only
be computed by individually adding up the costs of the agreements
that the 40 LROs individually make. As an indicative figure, I
expect that the combined cost of my overview work as RRO plus
Northampton work as LRO will probably be about £275,000,
but I emphasise that it is too soon to have the finalised figures,
which at the moment I am basing largely on our pre-planning and
the agreed fee scales.
16. The costs were very much greater, but
for the reasons mentioned in 15 it is too soon to quantify this.
In verbal evidence to the Committee I believe I expressed the
1999 European election costs as about 73p per voter in Northampton—but
I also made the point, reflected in the Committee's report, that
most of the costs were overheads that did not vary proportionately
according to the turnout. It followed that 73p based on turnout
of about 20% would have been nearly halved by a turnout of more
than 40% without the same actual spending being greatly different.
In 2004 in Northampton we had a turnout just under that level
of 40%, and I expect that the local element of the total I referred
to under question 15 will probably be about £250k. I hesitate
to offer these figures at what is really too early a stage, but
it will be clear that if figures at this level prove anywhere
near correct the cost per vote cost in Northampton (on 56,868
votes) will be nearer £4 than £1. The main elements
of this were in the printing, posting back and forth, opening
and of course counting costs, but ancillary expenditure in areas
like handling customer enquiries, dealing with extensive media
coverage, and of course security should not be underestimated.
I hope that the foregoing points are helpful
despite my repeated warnings about the prematurity of much of
the detailed evaluation information.
Roger Morris
Regional Returning Officer
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