House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER:

HOUSING, PLANNING, LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND THE REGIONS COMMITTEE

 

 

POSTAL VOTING

 

 

Wednesday 17 March 2004

CLLR SUZANNE FLETCHER MBE and CLLR ROSEMARY WYETH

MR GRANT THOMS, MR GEOFF FORSE and MR MARK CROUCHER

MR PETER WATT, MR GAVIN BARWELL and LORD GREAVES

RT HON N ICK RAYNSFORD MP and MR CHRISTOPHER LESLIE MP

Evidence heard in Public Questions 275 - 423

 

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

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4.	Prospective witnesses may receive this in preparation for any written or oral evidence they may in due course give to the Committee.

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister:

Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions Committee

on Wednesday 17 March 2004

Members present

Andrew Bennett, in the Chair

Mr David Clelland

Chris Mole

Christine Russell

Mr Adrian Sanders

________________

Memoranda submitted by Stockton on Tees Borough Council and Codford Parish Council

 

Examination of Witnesses

 

Witnesses: Ms Suzanne Fletcher MBE, Stockton on Tees Borough Council, and Ms Rosemary Wyeth, Chairman, Codford Parish Council, examined.

Q275 Chairman: Can I welcome you to the Committee this morning for the Committee's final evidence on postal voting. Do either of you want to say anything by way of introduction, or are you happy for us to go straight to questions?

Ms Fletcher: I would like to say that I am a long time active campaigner, and we had all-postal ballots in Stockton on Tees in 2003, and I have very deep concerns about this ‑ not about the result, which was about the same for all the parties where there was no other influence in the ward, but about the integrity and the secrecy of the ballot, about many other people filling in ballot papers for other members of the family and for other people. People are very worried and untrusting about what happened to the ballot after it had left their hands, and the problems there were with people getting the ballot papers, and being sure they were delivered safely back again.

Q276 Chris Mole: I think you have begun to tread on the ground of my first question which is really, where there have been all-postal pilots so far, do you think there has been sufficient concern at what appear to be isolated security, administration and postal glitches?

Ms Fletcher: I do not feel that those concerns have been picked up. We put a detailed submission into the Electoral Commission, and I was quite disappointed that none of that seemed to have been picked up on the Electoral Commission's report on the postal ballot.

Ms Wyeth: I do not think it has been picked up properly either. Lots of government consultations on all sorts of things turn out to be very cosmetic in that there is a plan to do something, the people are consulted and then, regardless of what people say, whatever the government wanted to happen happens but the consultation has been more cosmetic than anything else, and I feel this is the thing with postal ballots as well.

Q277 Chris Mole: Do you have any particular concerns about the proposals that were in the draft Bill to modify the declaration of identity to do away with the need for witness attestation?

Ms Fletcher: Yes. I have very serious concerns about that. There was no declaration of identity in the Stockton on Tees pilot and I feel that was a significant factor in people filling in other peoples' ballot papers, and I do feel there does need to be a witness declaration of identity. I also feel there needs to be a proper signed registration of electors on to the electoral roll as well as part of that to make the checks possible.

Ms Wyeth: I agree.

Q278 Chris Mole: The Electoral Commission propose that there should be staff delivery points for those unable or unwilling to vote by post. Are you in favour of that?

Ms Fletcher: I think that is a good idea in theory but it is going to be extremely difficult because it means that that staff delivery point has got to make sure that the ballots are kept secure for the whole of the time, whether it is 10 or 17 days, that the postal ballot is running, and the costs are going to be enormous but I am perhaps more concerned about the security of that.

Q279 Mr Clelland: It has been done before though, has it not, in pilots?

Ms Fletcher: I do not know. It has not been done in Stockton on Tees.

Q280 Mr Clelland: But the postal ballot pilots that have been held have had delivery points and I am not aware there has been any particular problem there.

Ms Fletcher: What would happen to the ballot papers overnight? That is the sort of issue electors would be concerned about.

Q281 Christine Russell: Can I ask you what concern you have about cost, because in your submission from the parish council you raise this as an issue. How do you feel the costs compare between a traditional ballot and an all-postal ballot?

Ms Wyeth: I think it is totally ludicrous. One of the things at the moment is, with us, when we have a parish council election it coincides with the district council elections, so if there is a dual election we are using all the same facilities and we share the costs of that particular election. In this instance it was just over a thousand pounds and Codford parish council paid half. Firstly, I am not sure how this would work if we are having all-postal elections, whether the parish would pay their bit, the district council their bit, or whether there would still be a 50/50 split. The other thing I was concerned about was the fact that considering a district and council election cost £1,022 and somehow or other the parish council picked up maybe about £ 600 of that. The actual estimate I believe was considerably higher than that and they were suggesting that an all-postal election could cost about £1280 and that was just for a parish, so saying it would be simpler and less expensive for the parish was totally ludicrous because obviously they were saying it would cost you more for a single election than for a joint election.

Q282 Christine Russell: So what price do you put on democracy? How much should you pay for it, and who should pay?

Ms Wyeth: I am not putting a price on democracy. In fact, I think the democratic process is far better served when people are able to access the ballot box and really think about what they are doing. Today we have access to postal voting in a way we did not have before because you do not have to prove you are sick or in hospital, you can say that you want a postal vote, but I am a small Wylye Valley parish council with 700 people and we precept something like £ 3,500 a year approximately, and we try to just pay for the things we have to and put aside a certain amount for other things. Our council taxes are absolutely enormous in the county and from the district, and basically the parish council try to work within a budget. We have all ranges of income, very poor people, rural people living on fixed incomes, and what we would say is obviously we do not want to bump the price up unnecessarily, and this is one of our big costs. If we have an election then obviously the election costs are significant. If you have only got £3,500 you precept that year then obviously, if you have to pay over £1200, you do appreciate our precept would have to go up considerably to afford that.

Q283 Chris Mole: You said in your submission you only had 10 per cent turnout in some of those elections.

Ms Wyeth: No. What we actually said was the village turnout was considerably higher than the 10‑17 per cent turnout which was reported. I am not sure; I think it is more like 50 or 60. Our people do turn out because we feel very strongly about this, and obviously when it is a district council and a parish council election they are talking about local representatives, but we do get high turnouts. My comment was they were saying that most turnouts are between 10 and 17 per cent, and what I was saying is this is ludicrous. We get a lot more than that in this particular rural area.

Q284 Christine Russell: Is not the increased cost partly due to the fact that the turnout is higher and, therefore, it is the cost of returning the ballot papers, so what I am saying to you is who should pick up the bill if you have all-postal ballots?

Ms Wyeth: I am saying I do not like all-postal ballots.

Q285 Christine Russell: So it is not really the cost; it is just you do not think there should be all-postal ballots?

Ms Wyeth: I do not like the idea that you have no option but to have a postal ballot, with the amount of junk mail that comes through people's doors today. For instance, think about the Census. How many people lose their forms? If you have something through the post and you have it for a little time and you have a period in which you have to return it, it is terribly easy to lose that bit of paper. It is also easy for other people to go to an elderly neighbour, tick off their boxes and send it back for them. So "one man one vote" is in danger if this happens.

Q286 Christine Russell: So do you have evidence of people who have postal votes at the moment who lose them? What is that belief of yours based on, because you are saying if the postal vote comes through the door people are going to treat it like junk mail and it will go in the bin, and too late they are going to realise it was an important piece of paper. What evidence have you?

Ms Wyeth: I am basing it on human nature. At the moment if you want a postal vote you ask for one, so if I ask for something I want it and use it. If it comes through the post and you have a period of time for it, it is very easy to think, "Oh, well, I have two weeks and I will put it aside", and to miss the deadline. Knowing the way people are and knowing the amount of junk mail that comes through I am basing it more on human nature observation than anything else.

Q287 Mr Sanders: Linked to that, you have a longer period of time in which to vote. When the ballot papers come through some people will fill them in on the day and send them back. Given this longer period, did you come across anybody who said a week or two later, "I wish I had not voted because this other issue has come up and I would have voted a different way"? Is there a danger in the length of time and do you have any anecdotal stories on that?

Ms Fletcher: Yes. We did come across a number of people who had not read all the literature but who had 17 days between the issue of the ballot paper and election day and we did have people who would have wanted to have changed their mind as things went on, because, of course, the national media campaign is still going on while these postal ballots are going in and obviously the whole purpose of that is to influence people's minds. So we did come across that, and also people who had mislaid their ballot papers.

Q288 Chairman: As far as parish councillors are concerned, how far is cost an influence in trying to limit the number of candidates to just the number of seats?

Ms Wyeth: I am sorry, I do not quite understand that question.

Q289 Chairman: It has been put to us that what happens in a parish is that people go round and try and encourage people not to stand so that you only have the right number of people for the seats and therefore you have no cost of an election.

Ms Wyeth: We frequently do not have the cost of an election, it is true, although we have done this time. We deliberately made an effort because for quite a few years we had the right amount of people for the right amount of seats. You are right, it is totally improper, but at one time there have been parish clerks saying, "Okay, there are ten people are standing for nine seats. If one person withdraws we will not have to have the cost of an election", but very often you have the same councillors or maybe new ones and you have a balance. I am not suggesting that happens very often but what I am suggesting, looking at the difference in price between the two issues, is that it was quite a considerable jump, and I was also wondering about the query of whether you were having a joint election, whether each election costs that much, or whether you would halve that cost.

Q290 Chairman: I understand the argument that parish councils would like the district council to pay for their elections, yes. Also, you are saying it is easy now to get postal votes and therefore the ideal would be to have a physical vote for most people but postal for others. If you got to a stage where almost half the electorate was asking for a postal vote, that would be more expensive because you would have the traditional expense of the traditional ballot and the expense of the postal vote. Do you not see there is a problem with that?

Ms Wyeth: I do and, if the majority of the population did decide that, that would be the way to go. What I am saying is that most people I talk to in the area I live, which is very rural in the Wylye Valley, like the chance to go along and make their vote on that particular day. It is really a bit like a pinprick in eternity: we have one day when all of the things come together, all of the media, whatever is happening, we have this one moment, and all of us are doing the same thing. The great thing now is that we do have easy access to postal voting, so there is no excuse for people not to have it if they want it but, if they prefer to use the ballot box than to go physically to vote, it is a statement of citizenship in a way and a lot of people where I live do want to do that.

Q291 Chris Mole: What are the practical difficulties of campaigning as candidates within the timetable for all-postal elections?

Ms Fletcher: We found it extremely difficult. We had to start so much earlier to make sure that campaigning was completed by the time the postal ballots came out, and there were several difficulties with that. The first was that we were canvassing before the clocks changed, so we could do less canvassing because you cannot canvass in the dark.

Q292 Chairman: You just have later elections, do you not?

Ms Fletcher: We did not have later elections, but that will be a problem and I have thought about this. A lot of our deliverers in particular, and party workers, go on holiday at the Spring Bank Holiday and start going on their full family holidays in June, and that is going to cause serious concerns across all the parties. The other issue that we have found with the postal ballot is that, because of the rolling registration, we had not got the names for the March and April people going on to the electoral roll filtered through into our system in time for those people to be called on, so quite a number of people did not get called on and we could not hit that point. They were fully registered and we had all the details by the time it was polling day but we had finished our canvassing by then.

Ms Wyeth: For parish council elections we do not canvass. Basically we do not stand; we are apolitical; we all stand on our own records; they know us and live with us; if they do not like us they tell us; and at the day end of the day they vote us out so we do not canvass. I do canvass for our district councillor at the moment but I do not have any experience of it making a problem because we have not dealt with it yet.

Ms Fletcher: On the difficulty in campaigning, if we wanted to do telephone campaigning, both the canvassing and reminding people to vote, as it were, under the legislation we have to be telephone preference service cleared 28 days at a time and, because of the very long period, starting canvassing early and going right through to polling day, we had to re‑register several times.

Q293 Chris Mole: Do you not campaign and keep in touch with your constituents all the year round these days?

Ms Fletcher: Indeed we do!

Q294 Chris Mole: So is three weeks really a problem?

Ms Fletcher: But we do not telephone canvass them all the year round; we deliver leaflets, knock on their doors and talk to them all the year round.

Q295 Chris Mole: But you would be happy with June as an alternative?

Ms Fletcher: I would find that very difficult because of the holidays.

Q296 Chris Mole: So do you think political campaign literature should be allowed to go out with the postal ballots, if we are going to have all-postal ballots?

Ms Fletcher: I think that is an interesting concept and could be helpful.

Q297 Mr Clelland: A lot more paper though.

Ms Fletcher: Yes.

Q298 Mr Clelland: Although you are really quite sceptical about the idea of all-postal ballots the fact is they are popular because turnout goes up quite considerably, or has done, in the pilots that have been held. However, they rarely reach the turnout that general elections see. Does that suggest to you that, when it comes to turnout, it is not so much the method of voting but the issues at stake and, perhaps, the perception of the quality of the candidates?

Ms Fletcher: I think the issues at stake are quite significant. Increasingly people are wondering why they bother voting for us at district level because we cannot do what they want in all sorts of fields ‑ planning, etc. We cannot deliver; we have not got the powers; and so there is a bit of, "I do not know why we are bothering". They save it up for what they call the "big" election. There is a lot more media and the media is a very significant influence on the turnout because it is constantly in people's minds, and of course, when you have the pilots we are quite out of sync and if we are going to have this with the European elections then the national media will be geared up to having a polling day on June 10 and the pilots will be having their election day virtually some time before then.

Ms Wyeth: Our district council elections did turn out a lot of people because we had an independent candidate who had worked for us for a considerable amount of time and a more traditional candidate who was a very nice guy, but why take over from somebody else? So basically people turned out in massive numbers to support the independent literally to give him a mandate. One of the things we are particularly concerned about where I live, however, is we have a problem with our postal service. Our central is in Trowbridge and so our district council paperwork, including planning details that the parish council have to be aware of, comes from Trowbridge, and at one time there was a postal office in Bath and when the actual sorting officer was in Bath we used to get our post just as normal people do but then they moved it to an all‑singing‑and‑dancing one in Bristol ‑‑

Q299 Chairman: I do not think we need all the detail. It is enough for us to know that you feel there is a problem with the Post Office.

Ms Wyeth: There is. It is taking three or four days for things to get to us.

Q300 Mr Clelland: Do you think all-postal ballots are particularly disadvantageous to independent candidates?

Ms Wyeth: The truth is I have no experience of that and I really would not know, but I do not like the thought of all-postal ballots. At the moment councillors can go along to the count and see our votes being counted and democracy is very evident and very open, and with all-postal ballots I am not happy about the thought of not being able to go along and see the votes and make sure that the process is working. I am not saying it is not working but it is nice to see it working.

Q301 Mr Clelland: Do you think that postal ballots favour one political party over another?

Ms Fletcher: No. I have done some research into the result in Stockton and I looked at wards where there had not been any other factors like a local issue, another type of candidate coming along, that type of thing, and I did a comparison between this year and last year and four years before that, and although obviously the turnout was higher the percentage of the vote was more or less the same, and of our wards, two Labour and two Conservative were active councillors with active campaigning going off and I thought that was quite interesting. I did wonder, before we went into it, if it would favour one party or another.

Q302 Mr Sanders: What influences more? Is it the parties campaigning or the access to the vote? You are saying you think it is the parties.

Ms Fletcher: In the wards which were not unfortunately any of our wards we cannot not campaign; in some of the other parties' wards there was a general drift downwards, but I think that was perhaps to do with lack of campaigning. I do not think it was particularly the postal ballot that did it.

Chairman: On that note can I thank you both very much for your evidence. Thank you.

Memoranda submitted by the Scottish National Party, the Green Party

and the UK Independence Party

 

Examination of Witnesses

 

Witnesses: Mr Grant Thoms, Head of Campaign Unit, Scottish National Party; Mr Geoff Forse, Elections Co-ordinator, Green Party of England and Wales; and Mr Mark Croucher, Policy Research Team and Press Officer, UK Independence Party, examined.

Chairman: Can I welcome you and can I just stress that, if you agree with each other, please do not repeat what one or the other has said and, if you disagree, please come in quickly.

Q303 Mr Sanders: The Electoral Commission was asked to rank regions in terms of their appropriateness for all‑postal voting at the June European Parliament elections. Two of the regions it did not positively recommend are being required to have all‑postal voting. What are your views on the government's proposal to include those two additional regions?

Mr Forse: We oppose it; we feel that it is too much of a risk. There have been a lot of problems with the postal votes that have already taken place. We believe it should be limited to the smaller regions so it is more contained.

Q304 Mr Clelland: What problems?

Mr Forse: In our submission with places like Hackney and Brighton there have been all sorts of problems regarding the secrecy issue. There was a case, for instance, in Hackney in our submission where it was threatened that the churches had a voting day where people took their votes to the church and voted collectively. The idea of course is still to have secret votes, and the whole postal vote system really makes that a lot more difficult. Obviously some people will vote in private but a lot of them are subject to family pressure, particularly if there is a dominant member of the family. Also we believe there is greater pressure from political parties. My constituency is Leicester West which is going to have an inquiry on this, including the MP, so we do have, in principle, problems with postal votes. But there is so much going on at the moment in legislation with the PPERA and everything that it is very difficult for small political parties to keep on top of all of it, and therefore we believe it is best to play safe on this. We would rather have it in a sense in no region and know more first but, if not, then let's do it in the smaller regions rather than the larger regions. There are, I understand, very small local elections in the those regions in the north east; I think there are a lot more in Yorkshire Humberside than in the north west.

Q305 Mr Sanders: You have introduced something I do not think we have heard about before about people going to a church to vote collectively. Can you tell us more about that?

Mr Forse: Yes. I did not give this submission; our election agent did. He submitted an overall paper and then he submitted reports from various places based on all‑postal votes as opposed to the postal votes in line with normal voting which was the case in Leicester West, so we had Hackney, and Brighton where there was a problem picked up by a letter that went out from the leader of the Labour Party there to say that they had ‑ not "proof", I forget the word exactly, but that in some wards it was very close ‑‑

Q306 Mr Sanders: I am interested about this allegation that people came together and were in a room where they all filled in their ballot papers, because that goes right against the whole concept of our electoral system.

Mr Forse: Absolutely.

Mr Sanders: If you have that, it needs to be on the record ‑ if it happened.

Q307 Chairman: It is in the evidence that we have.

Mr Forse: It is.

Q308 Mr Sanders: Do you have any concerns about the scale of the pilots in June, particularly given the slow progress of the European and Local Elections (Pilots) Bill?

Mr Croucher: Our feeling is that the postal voting pilots in these regions, particularly for the European nations, are unlikely to make the differences we have seen in previous elections where postal voting has increased the turnout. There is a general disenchantment amongst the voting public plus an almost complete disinterest in the issue of the European elections. Any turnout increase this time round will be rather less than we have seen in the past from postal voting

Mr Thoms: Going back to your original question about the additional two more regions and the Electoral Commission's recommendations, it does question why the government put the Electoral Commission to look at this in detail, analyse it and then make clear recommendations on which regions are capable and should be selected for electoral pilots, and then for the government to go over and above that without any further analysis that we are aware of. It does seem to question the process of people bothering to go to the Electoral Commission in the first place.

Q309 Mr Sanders: General elections still tend to have higher turnouts than local or European elections. Does that suggest that the issues that are at stake, the importance of the election and perhaps the quality of candidates or indeed the campaigning that is undertaken by the parties, deters the electorate rather than the voting system itself?

Mr Thoms: Research has shown that people feel more motivated to vote in an election depending on how powerfully they believe the legislature is going to affect their lives, and the reality is, because the powers of the United Kingdom Parliament are greater than any other devolved assembly or government, that it will always have a higher turnout.

Q310 Mr Sanders: Surely, from the UKIP point of view, in a European election the power is with Europe, is it not, not with Westminster, so why do more people not turn out in a European election?

Mr Croucher: Our feeling is that broadly people see the European Parliament as an expensive talking shop with limited powers. It is an assembly and not a parliament in the sense of the Parliament of which you are members. Also people do not see the relevance of the European Parliament to their daily lives ‑‑

Chairman: I understand those arguments. I want to keep us on postal votes, if I can.

Q311 Chris Mole: The Metropolitan Police say that concerns about security with postal voting are isolated. Anecdotal evidence can be produced but do any of you have accumulative statistical evidence of problems arising from security, administration, postal glitches and so on?

Mr Croucher: I would argue that is one of the problems with the postal voting system; that it is very difficult for these concerns to be proved. There have been in a number of constituencies and a number of elections issues raised over the fraudulent use of postal voting, but where you go to your local polling station you are likely to know or be known by at least some of the people there, and the chances of fraudulent use of a vote at a ballot box when you turn up in person is much lower than with a postal vote, because, if you made a decision in a postal election that you are not going to vote, how do you know whether your vote has been cast or not? You have no means of finding out. Purely anecdotally I suspect that in areas that have a very low turnout anyway ‑‑

Q312 Chris Mole: But you have no way of proving that the ballot box gets to the election count?

Mr Croucher: That is not strictly true. The ballot boxes are supervised by the police on the way to the election count.

Q313 Chris Mole: So the police are okay but the Post Office is not?

Mr Thoms: The ballot box is sealed, as I am sure you are well aware, when it leaves the polling station by the presiding officer, and then broken at the time of the count so I do not think that should be an issue.

Mr Croucher: Indeed, and at the polling station itself you might have anything up to nine or ten people all of whom are fairly local to the polling division where people are casting their ballots, so there are no opportunities for identity fraud and anyone who is proposing to do that is taking a fairly significant risk that somebody at the polling station will know they are not who they claim to be.

Mr Thoms: It goes wider than that. If you look at the review of elections, particularly in 1997‑2001, the police certainly in Scotland said at one point that no electoral offences had been committed in total, never mind for postal voting, and part of what came out of that process was that nobody understood how to report electoral offences. There were lots of stories going through all the parties about what had happened, but it was very difficult to make a very clear case and know who to report it to. A lot of people think the returning officers have the power to investigate and do not understand the police do, and out of that process for the 2003 elections in Scotland there was new guidance given to the police on how to record it, and we were then able to advise our activists, candidates and agents on how to record it, and for the first time we had formal complaints made over a number of issues to the police. Some of them are still being investigated so we cannot even tell you what the outcome is.

Mr Forse: I had a case in my own local election last year where, though it was not about postal votes, we did question the validity of one of the candidates standing but the cost of complaining was so expensive that we got frightened off, and that would apply to postal votes as well.

Q314 Chris Mole: The Electoral Commission has called for individual registration as a way of more clearly identifying who the electors are. Do you think that is a necessary precondition for a wider extension of all‑postal elections?

Mr Thoms: I think it would be very useful. In terms of the development of individuals taking responsibility for their part in the democratic process, one of your questions for the submissions was around voter participation and, if postal voting is just about increasing turnout, then you could take it further and say, "Why not have compulsory voting?" Making people vote and encouraging them to vote is what is so important, and I think it is more important for people to engage with the democratic process because they want to and of their own volition, and one of the ways is by individual registration.

Q315 Chris Mole: Can I ask then about the proposals to modify the declaration of identity and do away with witness attestation? EROs have told us that nobody ever checks them so what is the point of having them?

Mr Thoms: None whatsoever.

Q316 Christine Russell: Do you have any postal voting within your own party organisations, and have you had problems there?

Mr Forse: We have postal voting for certain positions on our National Executive.

Q317 Christine Russell: Any difficulties?

Mr Forse: To my mind, no, but we are talking about only 4‑5,000 voters as opposed to millions, so I think the comparison is not valid.

Q318 Christine Russell: So the Post Office has never let you down?

Mr Forse: I have not complained about the Post Office. I have complained about the Post Office on free postal units but that is a different issue. One of the submissions does say, and I think it was Hackney, that the envelopes need to state clearly that there is a ballot.

Q319 Christine Russell: I think there is another question coming on that. What about the SNP and UKIP?

Mr Thoms: In internal elections we use postal ballots for island communities and, again, we get more postal votes returned by fax which is permissible under the rules than to rely on returning it by the mail. If you live in the Western Isles or up near Shetland and rely on Royal Mail to get your vote anywhere ‑‑ !

Mr Croucher: Yes, similar to the Greens we use postal voting for internal elections, and when we had the change from people turning up and voting at party meetings we did see a temporary increase in the turnout but that has now dropped back, although we are a little larger than the Greens but the numbers we are talking about are relatively small.

Q320 Christine Russell: So what about the timetable? You may have heard the two earlier witnesses saying that there are problems with moving elections to June because of the Spring Break. It does not seem to be the same problem with Easter, but what do you feel about the election timetable?

Mr Forse: It is not so much a problem with June ‑ I have not heard anyone complaining about that. There is a problem with the general timetabling when you are running an election and in the European election, say, you have a lot of all‑postal voting and you have normal voting, we all only get one free postal vote ‑ when do you send it out, early or late; broadcast ‑ we only get one, when do you send it out; we get very loose media; we are virtually guaranteed to get our manifesto launch, and when do you do that? A lot of this may take place after people have voted.

Q321 Christine Russell: So you are not objecting to June?

Mr Forse: Not for me. June is not an issue.

Mr Thoms: I think it is more helpful to have elections held in the summer months when evenings are lighter and people can get out and engage with voters. I have no problem with that at all.

Mr Croucher: Similarly with June as a specific date we do not have a problem with the particular month. We have the same difficulties, which perhaps the Scottish Nationalists do not share, being in Scotland, as it were, where you have different election timetables across the country and it creates major problems for the small parties, as the Greens have already said. When do you launch? When do you do things?

Q322 Christine Russell: What about the issue of distributing election material with the postal votes?

Mr Croucher: If my memory serves me correctly that was done in the London mayoral elections I believe last time round and, broadly, we were quite in favour of it. It ensured every household received a copy and you did not have boycotts or material not being delivered by the Post Office, which we do have some evidence of in previous campaigns.

Mr Thoms: Having met with Royal Mail at the Westminster Parliamentary Panel on the Electoral Commission we hopefully will have reassurance this year that at least we understand when the people spoke out and when it will be delivered, so all parties are aware of that. It is entirely for the party to decide.

Q323 Christine Russell: What about the Green Party? Do you have any feelings about extremist material being sent out that you may deem to be offensive?

Mr Forse: We do, yes, but it is a balance between democracy and what in some cases could, of course, be an illegal act.

Q324 Christine Russell: But in general you would approve of material going out?

Mr Forse: For racist groups?

Q325 Christine Russell: With the ballot paper.

Mr Forse: We probably would be unhappy about it, and I know the party is very much against a particular certain party. We would be unhappy about it.

Q326 Chris Mole: Do you believe that having all‑postal voting favours one political party over any of the others? Conversely, do you believe not having it favours one party over any others?

Mr Thoms: No.

Mr Forse: It probably has an advantage for the larger parties over the smaller parties, but not individual parties.

Mr Croucher: I would concur with that entirely. We have found from experience that, when it comes to postal voting where at the moment people can elect to vote by post, in my own constituency in Dartford, in the local council elections in honesty they tend to weigh the Labour postal vote just because there is already such an in‑built - "majority" is the wrong word but I am sure you understand. Membership strength within that constituency, for example, for the Labour Party is very great, so it makes it much easier for existing and established parties to turn out people who are members of their parties and to encourage them to vote by post whereas, of course, for newer and smaller parties we do not have the history and 100 years of members and having our name spread. So, yes, we tend to feel that it is an advantage to the major established parties and a disadvantage to smaller.

Q327 Chris Mole: Coming back to the Metropolitan Police Special Branch, who gave evidence yesterday, they said that many of the allegations concerning electoral fraud turned out to be spurious or malicious, and that casting doubt on your opponent's campaigning tactics seems to be becoming a feature of the mainstream. Is that to be discouraged?

Mr Thoms: Possibly. For example, on Saturday I was canvassing for a local government bye election in Falkirk, and I knocked on the door of this elderly woman and sat talking to her disclosing various bits and pieces and she said to me, "Will I be getting my postal vote again?" When I said "What do you mean?", she said, "Last year it was sent to me. I did not ask for it; it was sent to me. Am I going to get it again this week?" Now, it is very difficult. If you do not know who has a postal vote until they have gone out because they refuse to release the postal vote list ahead of the start of an election, and if there is no marked register for postal votes for parties to assist in terms of security and detection fraud, how can we prove anything or get evidence?

Q328 Christine Russell: Following on from that, are you saying that you consider that a marked copy of the register should be available and, if it should be, when should it be available and who should it be available to?

Mr Thoms: It should be available in the same way as the register for people attending polling stations should be available. My understanding is that the Electoral Commission has not come to any formal position as yet, but the principle seems to be against the idea. Maybe the electoral administrator is against it because it is more paperwork for them, but it will be very helpful for the people who vote because it is a level playing field where voting by post or polling station is the same.

Mr Croucher: Really this goes back to the advantage of the larger parties with a big activist base over the smaller parties, because certainly all of the main parties where I live are actively out canvassing their members to find out who has applied for a postal vote within their membership. There is a world of difference between us with about 200 members in Dartford and the Conservatives who I know have something like 1700 members.

Q329 Christine Russell: Do you not think it cuts down the hassle that voters get if political parties have access to a marked register? They know, therefore, who has returned their postal vote and therefore they do not get the nightly knock on the door to inquire if they have returned it.

Mr Croucher: This is true, but people being upset with politicians is perhaps outside the scope of this inquiry!

Q330 Mr Clelland: There is a point that UKIP raised before about people not being sure whether the Post Office had sent their vote back or not. If there was a rolling register of who had voted people would know whether they voted or whether their vote had been returned or not and conversely, if they had not and if someone else had voted on their behalf.

Mr Croucher: Certainly that is true, and people who make a conscious decision to abstain and not to vote presumably take sufficient interest in a political process to make those checks, but in terms of finding out on a wider basis you do not remove the element of fraud from it. If people cannot be bothered to vote then they are unlikely to check to see whether they have or not.

Q331 Chris Mole: Mr Croucher, in the UK Independence Party's written submission you have said: "If some people must be persuaded to vote by means ... of a post box as compared to the ballot box, the fundamental question must be raised as to whether their views should be taken into account at all." Do you stand by that statement?

Mr Croucher: I knew I should have read our submission first. I did not actually write it. I must confess I am a last-minute replacement for Dr Whittaker. Broadly, yes, I would stand by that. Attempting to somewhat artificially inflate turn-out by using convenience as a means to twist people's arms into voting is perhaps the wrong approach to it. Perhaps making politics more relevant to the people that we are asking to vote would be the answer. We historically never had a problem.

Q332 Chris Mole: So you are telling postal voters that you do not think their votes are worth as much?

Mr Croucher: No, I would not say that. There are reasons why people require postal votes - if they are on holiday, if they are disabled - but that is not the same as a general postal voting exercise.

Chairman: On that note, can I thank you all very much for your evidence and can I have the next set of witnesses please.

Witnesses: Mr Peter Watt, Head of Constitutional and Legal Unit, Labour Party; Mr Gavin Barwell, Operations Director and Registered Treasurer, Conservative Party; and Lord Greaves, a Member of the House of Lords, Liberal Democrats, examined.

Q333 Chairman: Can I welcome the three of you to the Committee. Can I ask you to identify yourselves for the record.

Mr Barwell: My name is Gavin Barwell and I am the Operations Director of the Conservative Party.

Lord Greaves: My name is Tony Greaves, Lord Greaves, and I am a Liberal Democrat Member of the House of Lords.

Mr Watt: I am Peter Watt, I am the Head of Constitutional and Legal Unit of the Labour Party.

Chairman: We have offered people the chance if they want to say something by way of introduction to do so. If not, we will go straight into questions. Happy to go to questions? David Clelland?

Q334 Mr Clelland: The Electoral Commission were asked to rank regions in terms of their appropriateness for all‑postal ballots, as I am sure you are aware. However, two of the regions it did not positively recommend are being required to have all‑postal votes by the Government. Could you comment on that?

Mr Watt: The Electoral Commission said that there were two regions that it was going to recommend and there were a further four that it thought were potentially suitable and it was for the government to decide which of those other regions, if any, were suitable. The Government and subsequently the House of Commons on two occasions has said that four regions should be put forward and the two that the Government put were in addition to those which by the Commission's own analysis were potentially suitable. I think if you look at what the Electoral Commission actually said when it was trying to differentiate between the regions, there were margins between why one region was more suitable than another. Four regions seems to me an eminently sensible size for a postal pilot bearing in mind the postal pilots that have taken place over the last two years. It still means that just under 70 per cent of the population will be voting by traditional methods.

Q335 Mr Clelland: Anyone else?

Lord Greaves: Our view is very clear, that on this particular issue the Government should follow the recommendations of the Electoral Commission - and some of us are involved in the discussions going on about that at the moment, which are not yet resolved I have to say. I think our main concern about having all‑postal votes in Yorkshire and Humberside and in the North West at this stage is the opportunity that there is for quite substantial electoral fraud in some of the areas which have already ‑‑‑

Q336 Mr Clelland: That has got nothing to do with whether we have two regions or four regions.

Lord Greaves: I think it is.

Q337 Mr Clelland: Is it? Why?

Lord Greaves: Because the places where it is believed ‑ and this is certainly well‑known locally and believed by us ‑ there have been difficulties with postal voting fraud in recent years are some of the towns in those two regions. That is the problem. In Yorkshire it appears to be mainly concerned with Bradford. In the North West it is a whole range of towns where people have been taking advantage of the postal vote system to conduct elections in a way which does not comply with the law. I am not making any party political points here. I think across these towns, the allegations and what is well‑known locally to have been going on, go right across the parties.

Mr Barwell: From our point of view the Government guidance to the Electoral Commission said that the Government was looking for up to three regions. I think, like Lord Greaves, it is curious that the Government has not followed the advice it received from the Commission which was to specify two particular regions. They have not chosen as one of their two additional regions Scotland, and Scotland was the third region in order of suitability that the Electoral Commission recommended. To quote from a letter from Sam Young, the Chairman of the Commission, which is in the public domain, he said: "We were surprised to learn the Bill was to be amended to make four regions. In our view pilots that cover a third of the English electorate in June go further than we think necessary in order to address issues of scalability. There is also, in our view, an increased risk with combined elections and in some cases new boundaries in running on such a large scale. We are not persuaded the risk is outweighed by what we might learn from four regional pilots as opposed to two." The Conservative Party would entirely agree with those comments.

Q338 Mr Clelland: Given the problem that the legislation is having as it goes through Parliament and the scale of the proposed pilots, do you have any comments on problems that might arise?

Mr Barwell: We very much agree with the points that the Commission have made. We have had fairly extensive piloting of all‑postal ballots in local elections. I think there is an additional issue about scalability, about running a pilot on a wider area. I do not see why there is a need for more than two pilot regions in order to test that issue.

Mr Watt: In terms of fraud it is slightly spurious. When the Electoral Commission have looked into the postal pilots that have taken place and in its evidence in terms of recommending regions it saw no evidence of increased fraud in postal pilots. It said if there was any instance of it then it in itself was not enough to further extend the use of postal voting in elections. I just feel in a sense if we are saying it is okay for two regions, quite frankly, then why not for four regions, particularly when again the Electoral Commission was asked to recommend three but felt it could only recommend two because there were a further four that were potentially suitable and left it up to the Government to decide. The Electoral Commission was asked to give the Government advice. The Government has looked at the advice and has come back with four. As I say, it seems perfectly reasonable if you are trying to extend the amount of knowledge you have about postal voting and the impact it has to look at four regions, particularly when three of the regions within a matter of weeks or months will have to have a postal vote election themselves in terms of the regional referenda. So you are actually asking people in those regions, and more importantly the electoral registration officers to go from operating a system of elections in a traditional way to a postal vote in a matter of weeks. It seems absolute nonsense particularly, as I say, when the Commission could not particularly separate the regions at all.

Q339 Mr Clelland: Could I ask you about the principle of all of this. Is the reason for postal pilots because it is more popular and more people vote in postal voting pilots than they do normally at the ballot box, at local elections in particular? Although even at the levels at which they vote it rarely reaches the level of people voting in general elections. Does that suggest that it is not really the method of voting which matters to people but the issues at stake and perhaps their perception of the quality of the candidates?

Lord Greaves: It is quite clear in the pilots which have taken place that the number of ballot papers which have been returned has increased substantially in almost all cases, and there is no dispute about that obviously. There is some dispute about who has returned all those ballot papers. Just because a ballot paper has been returned does not mean that that voter has returned it.

Q340 Mr Clelland: You are suggesting in that comment that there is massive fraud if that is the case, surely? If we are getting a huge increase in turn-out and you are putting it down to the fact that we do not know who has returned the ballot paper, it is fraud, is it not?

Lord Greaves: We do not know. The problem is that the research that has taken place into the all‑postal pilots has consisted of asking people if they find it more convenient, touchy-feely questions, do you feel good about the system, and so on. Nobody has done any hard research, as far as we can tell, into who is sending back these extra ballot papers and whether they were sent back legitimately or not. It is easy enough research to do because we know who the people are who voted at the previous election, we know who the people are who voted in the pilots. There may then be ten per cent or 15 ten per cent of the electorate, or whatever it is who voted in the second and not the first and it is time that somebody did some research by going to those people and individually tracking down who they are. That is interesting in itself because a lot of anecdotal evidence, and to my knowledge it is anecdotal still, is that a lot of the extra people who vote are people in larger families who otherwise would not vote. So where perhaps two people in a household vote in a normal election and go to the polling station, what is happening in the pilot is the whole of that household, perhaps three, four or five people are voting. Are they legitimate votes or is it the two keen voters voting for everybody else? The fact is we do not know at the moment because nobody has done that research. It is that hard research on facts which are publicly available without in any way compromising the secrecy of the ballot which needs to be done.

Q341 Christine Russell: Lord Greaves, can I just continue this. Are you saying that the evaluation that was carried out by the Electoral Commission on the all‑postal pilots is just not worth the paper it is written on? Is that what you are telling us?

Lord Greaves: No, no, it is worth what it is. If you ask MORI to do opinion polls and ask people do they prefer this system or do they prefer the old system or do they feel good with this system or do they feel secure, those answers are valid within the terms of the questions which are being asked. What I am saying is we are not getting down to the real nitty‑gritty of what is happening in these pilots. Another example which is perhaps stretching this question a little bit is what is the electoral effect of the pilots? Does it change the results? Again, so far as we can tell, nobody knows because nobody has been doing the research.

Q342 Christine Russell: Perhaps that is a good argument for having lots of regions included. Do you not think the more regions that are included the better you can do the academic research?

Lord Greaves: No, you do not want that. You actually want the research to take place. I am not an expert on the academic field of ortology (?) but I consulted my good friend Michael Stead who you may know is a distinguished ortologist as well as being a distinguished member of our Party for many years, and he tells me that to his knowledge there is no serious research going on anywhere about the electoral effects of the pilots or about these other issues which we are talking about which really university politics departments ought to be getting involved in and finding interesting, I would have thought.

Q343 Christine Russell: Do you think that the elections would be more secure if there was individual registration? I am asking all three of you. Perhaps, Gavin, if you would like to start.

Mr Barwell: I think that we would favour a move to individual registration. Certainly we would have concerns about the extension of all‑postal voting without addressing some of the issues to do with security and confidentiality that we have concerns about at the moment so, yes, I think there would be greater security if you had individual registration. Could I just pick up on the previous question about what lies behind the different turn‑outs in the different elections. I think it is certainly the case that turn‑out is higher in a general election because voters believe that the result of that election has a greater impact on their lives than the elections for the European Parliament or local council elections. I think that points to something fairly profound underlying all this, which is if we are interested in increasing turn‑out in local elections, say, the primary way to deal with that should be to ensure that the decisions the local councils make have more impact on people's lives and the councils are given more freedom from central government control. Having said that ‑‑‑

Q344 Chairman: I am very keen this morning to keep us on the postal issue.

Mr Barwell: I think that is an important point to make. Having said that, the evidence of the pilots is quite clear that all‑postal ballots do in a set context increase turn‑out. I think it was something like 15 percentage points on average during the last pilot, and therefore if it is making it more convenient, certainly the issues Lord Greaves mentioned need investigating, and easier for people to vote that has got to be a good thing.

Q345 Christine Russell: Do you accept the Electoral Commission's view that there was no evidence of fraud?

Mr Barwell: There is a need for proper research into this.

Q346 Christine Russell: So you want research and you want the individual registration. What about the Liberals, do you want individual registration?

Lord Greaves: Yes we do and we are very keen if there is to be a major extension of postal voting that individual registration is something that has to come in first. We agree with the Electoral Commission on this. May I say this: it does not solve all the problems. There are two main problems with all‑postal voting. One is whether the person who returns the ballot paper and fills it in is the elector. Individual registration will help enormously, assuming that councils are provided with the necessary technical equipment to be able to check signatures as they come in, and I assume that there are electronic means of doing that nowadays, although I do not know that. The second problem is the question of whether the vote takes place in secret, free from intimidation, bribery or whatever, and individual registration does not tackle that second problem on its own.

Mr Watt: Again the Labour Party is in favour of individual registration. We have some concerns about how quickly it is brought in. If it is brought in too rapidly we will lose people off the register in the early stages which will be of concern. There are other issues as well in terms of the security of the ballot, things like impersonation away from the polling station. Whether there are two or four postal pilots this June, clearly a lot of useful evidence will come from that in terms of what other issues we need to address. On the whole we do not think that postal voting is any more or less secure or prone to fraud than traditional forms of voting which themselves have an element of postal voting in them.

Q347 Christine Russell: Do you support the proposal to do away with the declaration of identity?

Mr Watt: Yes, we do.

Q348 Christine Russell: What about the Liberals?

Lord Greaves: No, we do not.

Q349 Christine Russell: You want to retain it?

Lord Greaves: There are two reasons for keeping it and I have got some personal experience of this. The first reason for keeping it is that it is a disincentive to people who might be wanting to cast a fraudulent vote by picking up a vote belonging to somebody out of the waste paper basket, or whatever it is. If you have got to have somebody signing a form it does not stop the fraud if people are determined but you have got to involve somebody else in it and that is a clear disincentive.

Q350 Chairman: Why do you have to involve somebody else in it? All you have to do is change the biro you use, is it not?

Lord Greaves: Okay, but then you have to sign their name and put their address on this. This comes on to the second reason, that if you have suspicions that there has been funny business going on the declarations of identity are checkable, they are inspectable.

Q351 Chairman: In practice they are not checked, are they?

Lord Greaves: I spent two weeks the summer before last sat in the town hall checking declarations of identity for four wards where we believed there had been massive postal vote fraud taking place. I have no doubt that was taking place at that time. The reason that we were able to really identify and prove to ourselves (although the Police seemed unable to investigate this properly) was that we were able to check these declarations of identity and we were able then to follow them back to the voters to find out exactly what had happened. We discovered that the voters had indeed signed the form and had it witnessed but they had never seen the ballot papers, and in other cases we were able to identify situations where certain individuals had witnessed over 100 postal votes each and many of those the electors, when we went back to them, said they had never seen. You can go back and do the forensic work on these things and find out exactly what happened and it is a very, very useful thing to happen, obviously not in every case but when you think there is serious fraud taking place it is a very useful thing.

Q352 Chris Mole: In terms of the approach to campaigning what issues do you think there are about the timetable for all‑postal elections?

Mr Watt: I do not think there is a problem for political parties at all. If there is a local area that is having a postal vote election ‑ and there have been countless numbers of them over the last couple of years ‑ then local parties very quickly adapt to the fact. Effectively it is just a new timetable. The polling day instead of taking place on one day takes place over several days. It is just about a different mind‑set for local parties. We run training sessions at our conferences for local activists around the country and they are very positive about campaigning in postal vote elections. It is just a different timetable of campaigning and that is all.

Mr Barwell: If I may make one point. In terms of what is proposed for June there is an issue about a need for a quick decision on this because what is required ‑‑‑

Q353 Chairman: We understand that. Let's just stick to the campaigning. You do not disagree with what the Labour Party just said?

Mr Barwell: The point I was trying to make was that political parties require plenty of notice that there is going to be an all‑postal ballot election. If you have plenty of notice beforehand I do not disagree at all with what has just been said. Political parties require notice to prepare for the different timetable.

Lord Greaves: I agree with that. In local elections there is no problem but if you have something like a European election or if you have a general election where part of the area has all‑postal voting and part has not, then synchronising things like party political broadcasts and the whole media coverage of the election campaign, assuming there is going to be any for the European elections, means two things. It means that a lot of people are going to be voting before they have been subjected to this propaganda and there is something not quite right about that.

Q354 Chris Mole: Are the other two parties worried about that issue with PPBs?

Mr Watt: It is difficult to say at the moment. It is an issue because at the moment I think we are expecting to have four broadcasts in England during the campaign. That is the expectation. What we are not aware of at the moment is the dates. Working on the assumption we get roughly one a week then those voters in England who are voting by post will be subjected to only half the number of broadcasts. On the other hand, for June, as I said before, the majority of voters will still be voting by traditional methods. So minor concerns but no more.

Lord Greaves: Can I add one brief thing to that. There is concern that the party that has the broadcast the day after the postal votes have arrived will be put to some advantage.

Q355 Chairman: How many people listen to party political broadcasts?

Mr Watt: Someone is going to have the last broadcast before polling day as well.

Q356 Chris Mole: Can I ask you about the notion of candidates despatching campaign literature with ballot papers for postal voters. Is that something you support.

Lord Greaves: As far as the GLA were concerned I think it is something that was pioneered by our Director of Campaigning, who managed to persuade the Government and the House of Lords that this was a good idea. In principle we are in favour of this, if the election is of sufficient scale to make it sensible. It would not be a sensible thing to happen in every ward and every local election. The practicalities would mean it was quite extraordinary and there is the expense of having all the extra things done. Where it is larger-scale elections like the GLA or parliamentary elections or the European elections, we are in favour of that, yes.

Q357 Chris Mole: Do you support that?

Mr Barwell: No opposition.

Mr Watt: Our preference would be that the material is actually despatched separately from the ballot papers because I think there is a danger the ballot paper will get lost with the election material. One of the things we need to learn from the postal pilots this June is really the ability of the deliveries to be able to make sure that the free post is delivered in advance of the ballot papers. That is one of the lessons we will have to learn and review it after that.

Q358 Chairman: What about the Madrid effect? If you put in your ballot paper and post it back as soon as you get it, it could be a fortnight before the final results. It is suggested that in Spain if there had been widespread postal voting an awful lot of people would have voted before that last weekend. Is that something that should be taken into account or not?

Lord Greaves: If postal voting is comprehensive it does not make very much difference. Something might happen during the period when people can send their postal votes back but something could happen on polling day, could it not? It could happen at twelve o'clock on polling day and affect the votes of people who vote after that. I think in principle that is not a problem. People are saying what has happened in Spain? Has the result been changed by the bombing that took place? One thing that we will find out in the all‑postal pilots by having partial pilots is if that dreadful thing happened in this country ---

Chairman: If it is alright we will move on to Adrian Sanders.

Q359 Mr Sanders: We seem to have established that postal ballots increase turn-out but do they favour any one particular political party above any other?

Mr Barwell: We have done some internal analysis on that and in aggregate there does not seem to be any advantage to any political party. Looking at it theoretically at least, I would probably disagree with the evidence you heard previously from myself and my two colleagues here and say that it would probably favour smaller parties. It seems to me that when you have a lower turn-out that favours the party with the best organisation because you are more dependent on party organisation to get people out to vote. If you increase the turn‑out out, at least in the theoretical sense, I would expect that to favour parties that have less robust organisations in the area concerned.

Q360 Mr Sanders: Is the important thing to you to increase the turn-out or should it be the integrity of the ballot?

Mr Barwell: The Conservative Party would believe that it is in the interests of democracy in this country that we encourage as many electors as possible to vote. It is only reasonable to have a system that makes it easy and convenient for people to cast their vote.

Mr Watt: In reality what you are aiming to have is high turn out with a higher level of integrity in terms of the vote. Again the Electoral Commission would accept to some extent there are compromises to be made at the margins.

Q361 Mr Sanders: So we sacrifice the integrity to increase the turn-out?

Mr Watt: The Electoral Commission themselves would say at the margins there is a theoretical risk that ballot integrity would be threatened. Again, it is really at the margins. That is the decision or the compromise we will maybe have to make to increase turn-out.

Lord Greaves: I do not think it is at the margins. I think that the level of what I would call benign fraud, not political parties or candidates rigging the election but people voting for other members of their family because they think it is a good thing to do, which is clearly against the law and wrong, is probably a lot higher than people imagine. I come back to what I said before, we do not know and we need the research on that. As far as the results are concerned, it is our view as far as our party is concerned that all-postal voting has little or no effect on our electoral performance and, as I said before, we do not appear to have any academic research into it overall. There is a general view around, certainly in the North West that all‑postal voting will help the Labour Party in inner cities because there are supposed to be voters there who cannot be bothered to go and vote and who will vote if they get the ballot paper. My personal view is that that is over‑stated and if it helps anybody it might not help the Labour Party. There is a second view that having all‑postal voting and an increase in turn-out will help defeat the BNP and the BNP will then do worse. These are views which are overtly expressed by some people campaigning for postal voting. We have no evidence apart from some interesting evidence here, which is not all postal voting but it is comparing turn-outs in the only place where the BNP won a significant number of seats in one place and that was Burnley last May. Last May in Burnley out of 15 wards the BNP stood in 13. They won in seven of them and did not win in six. In the seven wards where the BNP won, the average turn-out was 44. 02 per cent and in the wards they did not win it was 39.09. In other words, the wards in which the BNP won had a higher turn-out on average than others. It was only five per cent and you can look at the wards and say there were reasons for that anyhow so I am not arguing that high turn-out helps the BNP. I am saying in the only place where we have really got comparisons over wards they won and wards they did not win in one place the evidence is at best is inconclusive.

Q362 Mr Sanders: The Metropolitan Police told us that they have to deal with a lot of allegations to do with electoral fraud. They have said a lot of that is to do with casting doubt as to opponents' campaigning practices and they have put that down to a tactic adopted by most, if not all, of the mainstream registered parties over the years. Have you come across such allegations and how can such practices be discouraged?

Lord Greaves: Are you asking me?

Q363 Chairman: We are asking all three of you. We are getting pretty tight for time now so if you could just have short answers if you think it is relevant.

Mr Watt: I have never come across any spurious allegations. I have certainly heard what was said yesterday and I have heard people say there have been spurious allegations. I do not think there is widespread fraud and I think these spurious allegations are about casting doubt on the integrity of people involved in the elections.

Lord Greaves: My experiences in Lancashire and in the North West where there have been lots of allegations have mainly been to do with campaigns involving large Asian communities and the police found it very difficult to investigate for three reasons. The first is that Lancashire Police do not seem so understand elections.

Q364 Chairman: We had a lot of evidence on that yesterday about those problems.

Lord Greaves: Can I just say the second problem is the language and cultural problem getting through to people and the third is that ‑ and this is important ‑ they are only prepared to go forward with complaints if the individual elector whose vote has been stolen allegedly makes an individual complaint and they will not do it on the allegation of third parties such as political parties, and I think that is a serious difficulty.

Mr Barwell: I think there are two issues. One is what is the proven level of fraud that has taken place. The second is perception because it is important that there is public confidence in the electoral system and perception is an important part of that.

Q365 Chairman: Do you want roll‑out for the General Election?

Lord Greaves: No.

Mr Barwell: Not yet.

Q366 Chris Mole: Should a "marked copy" of the electoral register be made available? If so, when? We are really after this issue of access to a daily marked register?

Mr Watt: We are very happy with the legislation as it is currently drafted in the Pilots Bill with the polling progress information. We think it strikes a sensible balance in terms of frequency which is not more than once a day and a minimum of twice a week. I think that is very sensible and it also useful for the political parties in terms of issues of fraud, and that sort of thing. It will be political parties who will notice if there is widespread fraud. It will also be political parties who will notice by using that information if there are delivery problems. If the Royal Mail or another deliverer has a particular problem in delivering postal votes in a particular area it will be political parties doing their normal activity who will notice that first. We think it is a very welcome move.

Mr Barwell: We would support it both on the grounds of fraud and on the grounds of driving up turnout. If you take the concerns expressed by the Electoral Commission, if you look at it from a voter point of view those people who have cast their ballot papers the effect will be that they will not be bothered by political parties so I would have thought they are very unlikely to complain about that.

Lord Greaves: We agree with that. It is very important there is a marked register after the election, at the moment on postal votes there is not and you have to go and count them.

Q367 Chris Mole: Do you want a right for election candidates to be able to appoint a representative to observe the process of counting postal votes?

Mr Watt: Yes.

Lord Greaves: Not political parties, candidates.

Q368 Chris Mole: Mr Watt, you touched on the Royal Mail, are you confident that they are going to be able to find a sufficient and audited service? Do you think the electorate will trust the postal system with its votes?

Mr Watt: The Royal Mail is confident they can deliver the freepost notifications and ballot papers all in the correct order and they have contingency plans. One of the critical things we need to discover with the pilots is whether or not postal voting on that scale is practical, we will know a lot more after 10 June.

Lord Greaves: We have grave concerns, we will just have to see how it works.

Mr Barwell: We are broadly confident, we have some concerns. We suggested in our written evidence there should be one or two delivery points within a local authority area so that if people do have concerns about the post office service in their area they have an alternative.

Chairman: On that note can I thank you very much for your evidence. We will have the next set of witnesses, please.

 

 

Witnesses: Rt Hon. Nick Raynsford, a Member of the House, Minister of State, Local and Regional Government, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and Mr Christopher Leslie, a Member of the House, Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs, examined.

Q369 Chairman: Can I welcome you to the Committee and ask you identify yourselves for the record?

Mr Raynsford: Nick Raynsford, Minister of State, Local and Regional Government, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

Mr Leslie: Chris Leslie, Parliamentary Under‑Secretary for Court and Constitutional Reform, the Department of Constitutional Affairs.

Q370 Chairman: Do you want to say anything by way of introduction?

Mr Raynsford: I am happy to go straight to questions.

Q371 Mr Clelland: Can you tell the Committee why you have ignored the advice of the Electoral Commission and added two regions to the proposed pilots which were not recommended particularly highly?

Mr Leslie: As the Minister for taking the European Parliamentary and Local Elections Pilots Bill through the House of Commons perhaps if I can explain the rationale behind the choice of regions as they came through that might help the Committee. I would not accept the contention that we have gone against the advice of the Electoral Commission although I will explain why we do have a disagreement with the Electoral Commission about the definition of the scale of a pilot. My understanding of the advice that we have been receiving is that our choice is broadly consistent with the advice received from the Electoral Commission about specific regions we have chosen. Last year when we asked the Electoral Commission to give us advice on which regions might be suitable for all‑postal pilots for June's combined local and European elections we asked for them to advise on up to three regions and also one which could potentially undertake an e‑voting pilot. They reported us to in I think December with the conclusion that they did not feel an e‑voting pilot should go ahead and they also rather than simply name three regions had different categories for the regions that were eligible. They had a category where they made positive recommendation and those were for the North East and the East Midlands. Then there was a further category where it was felt that a certain number of regions were potentially suitable but not positively recommended. My understanding of that was that the Electoral Commission were saying these were suitable regions where we could proceed and they were ranked in order by the Electoral Commission, Scotland first, then Yorkshire, then the North West and then the West Midlands. The other remaining regions were then in a separate category defined by the Electoral Commission as not suitable. We then faced a decision in the light of the ranking that came through. We then faced a decision about if we wanted more than the two that were positively recommended where we should look. We approached Scotland. We took on board the Electoral Commission's suggestion that we should enter into greater dialogue with the returning officers there. The electoral administrators in Scotland were very concerned that they might not be able to capably administer all of the postal piloting in Scotland, so being cognisant of that advice we did not feel we should go ahead with that even though it was top of the Electoral Commission's potentially suitable category. The next two regions down in ranking are Yorkshire and the North West. Given that we agreed with the Electoral Commission that the e‑voting pilot was not a runner and that the resource envelope, which was effectively the main constraint on how many pilots we could undertake, was therefore a bit more flexible if we were not doing an e‑voting pilot that enabled us to look at taking on board both Yorkshire and the North West. The other factor which plays into this, and it would be foolish and rather perverse to ignore it, is the fact that the three northern regions, North East, North West and Yorkshire will and were at the time signalled to be by all‑postal voting in the referendum for elected regional government, something that the Electoral Commission themselves had recommended. It was on that basis that we have therefore sought to ensure that we see all‑postal voting in those four regions: East Midlands, North East, North West and Yorkshire.

Mr Raynsford: Could I add one other consideration which I think is very important, as Chris Leslie has pointed out we are intending to hold all‑postal voting pilots in the referendums in the three northern regions in October 2004. We made that view known in October, we consulted on it and the Electoral Commission responded to our consultation on 17 February this year. In that response they said "The Commission welcomes the intention to hold the regional and the local referendums by all‑postal ballots". They then went on to say, and I think this is very important, indeed I shall quote the whole of paragraph 19 of this response of 17 February. They say, "We also note that all‑postal voting will be used at four regional electoral pilot schemes at the European Parliamentary and local elections in June 2004. We urge ODPM and the DCA to ensure that the all‑postal arrangements for the electoral pilot schemes in June 2004 and the referendums in autumn 2004 are as closely as possible the same, particularly as the three referendum regions are also electoral pilot regions. Any unnecessary inconsistency is likely to cause confusion for electors and for administrators alike". It seems to me that is a very persuasive argument for not having different arrangements in June to the ones that will apply in October because that is likely to cause confusion to administrators and electors, and I wholeheartedly agree with that view of the Electoral Commission. I have to say it is not entirely consistent with the view the Electoral Commission have been expressing about the June pilots.

Q372 Mr Clelland: Relations between your department and the Electoral Commission have not been bruised by this?

Mr Raynsford: Relations between the ODPM and the Electoral Commission have always been very good and cordial. Frankly we think they have made a mistake on this. We think they are right in stressing the importance of consistency. They have always supported the measures to improve and extend all‑postal pilots. We have had, as you will know, a series of programmes running since the year 2000 which have scaled up, from very modest ones, just a handful of local authorities in 2000 to a very extensive one involving over six million people voting in pilots last May. It was always our intention to continue to pilot as part of a programme to test ways of increasing participation in voting and the Electoral Commission has been very, very supportive of that, we have worked very closely with them and we have a very good relationship.

Q373 Chairman: They have been suggesting that probably postal voting is a good idea but there are a series of safeguards which are needed. Would it not have been better to try and get those safeguards into place for the June elections rather than to have another lot of pilots without those safeguards in place?

Mr Raynsford: Chris will be able to explain the safeguards that are going to be in place for June. The one area where the Electoral Commission recognises that we cannot act, we would like to, but we cannot act without new legislation is to move towards a system of individual registration. That is something that we have been considering but the Commission recognise that requires primary legislation and there was no way that could be done in time for June.

Mr Leslie: In any case of course postal vote on demand as it is known in the conventional sense is moving forward apace and in terms of the number of people taking up the opportunity to vote by post it is almost becoming de facto majority all‑postal voting. This is something that many people welcome, including the Electoral Commission. We, of course, want to make progress where we can on responding to the recommendations of the Electoral Commission for wider reform of the electoral system but often many of these things do require primary legislation and the Committee will be aware that there is always pressure on parliamentary time for slots in the legislative timetable. We have made progress where we can but there are other protections in for June where together with the Electoral Commission, and not just in their formal responses to our request for advice, but also in their informal involvement as advisers to the Programme Board that manages and oversees electoral policy and their involvement in the Pilots Project Board on a very detailed operation level we have been consulting and working with them so that for example the extension of the offence on personation can be put into the Pilots Bill that we have to address some of the concerns we have about fraud, and so forth. I think we have been working quite closely with them.

Q374 Chris Mole: We have taken evidence from EROs, RROs and some of the organisations which might be providing balloting services, do you have any concerns about their capacity to prepare in time for the June elections given the relatively slow progress of the European and Local Elections Pilots Bill?

Mr Leslie: I wrote to all of the regional returning officers in the four regions which we were recommending more recently. Indeed I read into the record some of their responses, and I can provide those responses to the Committee. I asked them about their preparedness, the views of local returning officers ‑ not just the regional returning officers and in particular Yorkshire and the North West, where most of the focus has been ‑ about whether they were enthusiastic, and so forth, and they came back with very upbeat responses. Paul Rogerson, the Chief Executive of Leeds City Council, who is the regional returning officer for Yorkshire, was positive in reporting that the returning officers in the region were now very keen to proceed with all‑postal voting, they felt it would be a backward step to fall back to conventional elections, it would create problems for them to be forced to do that if the legislation did not got ahead. The Chief Executive of Manchester City Council, who is the regional returning officer for the North West, has also reported great enthusiasm by the local returning officers. In that region 42 of the 43 local returning officers were all very keen and signed up to making sure they could deliver it. Yes, we are working with them on any capacity issues that come up but we have not encountered any of overriding significance to suggest that there is a problem.

Q375 Chris Mole: Do you think there is a deadline cut‑off for the Bill to receive royal assent after which it will be too late?

Mr Leslie: Yes. If the elections take place on 10 June and the election period commences and we do not have legal cover, as it were, with an enacted piece of legislation clearly that would be a problem. That is why we have been very strong in advising the House of Commons to rebut the suggestions from the other place not to insert Yorkshire and the North West. We feel there is now a greater pressing urgency to see resolution to this. The returning officers want a decision now.

Q376 Chairman: Wait a minute, they wanted a decision last week. It is getting pretty urgent, can you give us any time scale for it going back to the Lords and back to the Commons?

Mr Leslie: In some ways your guess is as good as mine about the Lords timetabling arrangements, you will know they are not necessarily as formal as we are in the House of Commons about when certain business comes up. My understanding is that the Lords may well consider it again in a day or two. We will then have to make our own judgments depending on what they do.

Q377 Chairman: It must be very clear to them now that they are causing very considerable inconvenience to those returning officers who do not know what they are doing?

Mr Leslie: That is my view, to put mildly. I hope I was fairly explicit about this in the debate last night where I do not believe that any new substantive arguments were raised in the Lords and their debate on this point. We in the Commons took our decision in full view of the fact and in full awareness and basically I suspect there are coming into this now some bigger constitutional issues about the House of Commons being able to make a decision. The revising chamber should certainly do its job in revising and making suggestions but if they come back to us with those suggestions and we say, "Thank you, we disagree and will continue to disagree" then ultimately the House of Commons should be able to have its business.

Mr Raynsford: There is something particularly poignant in relation to this debate given that this is about extending opportunities to vote and to increase turnout. For an elected chamber to be opposed by an unelected chamber on measures designed to make it easier for people to exercise the franchise I think does raise quite important constitutional issues.

Q378 Chris Mole: Are you ready to go with detailed regulations that the EROs are going to need to know what shape and size the ballot papers are, the envelopes, and where the perforations should be, all that sort of stuff?

Mr Leslie: We recognise that after royal assent there is a pilots order needed through a statutory instrument whereby we fill out the nuts and bolt details of how the actual system will work in those all‑postal regions. We have already published a policy paper which is effectively the plain English guide to what would be the content of those regulations.

Q379 Chris Mole: The guidance notes essentially.

Mr Leslie: It is called a policy paper rather than a guidance note. We drafted it in consultation with the returning officers at the Project Board for the pilots and so they are quite au fait with the content there and that will be the basis upon which the legal jargon of the regulations will come out. We want to make progress as soon as we get royal assent.

Q380 Chairman: Why can we not see and why can the public not see a draft of those regulations now?

Mr Leslie: My understanding is that we do effectively have the draft of the detailed regulations in the policy paper, it is all there in the policy paper, there are not extraneous matters which will be in the regulations that are not in the policy paper. Effectively the content but happily in a more plain English form is there for the returning officer and others to work with. My understanding is that is in the public domain.

Q381 Chairman: Actually putting that policy into regulation can sometimes be a fairly thwart process, can it not? If somebody had a draft and parliamentary council could see it the joint committee between Commons and Lords who look at statutory instruments would be able to look at it next Tuesday, would they not?

Mr Leslie: Given that it is a non‑parliamentary process for this pilot order there is not the same time requirement for that level of scrutiny if it were an affirmative order. We are committed to making sure that we get the pilots order very swiftly in place after royal assent. I give the Committee my assurance that we have the content of what will be included in the policy paper, that is available and shared, indeed authored in part by returning officers who have been party to the drawing up of it.

Q382 Chris Mole: What help will you give to any council or region that comes to you and says they are struggling to get arrangements in place in time?

Mr Leslie: All the help that is necessary. We have not had that level of contact from the returning officers, quite the opposite. They are very enthusiastic, very keen to press ahead, they do not want to fall back to the conventional arrangements, that is the message we have been getting from them. If we hear from them that they need any help we will make sure we deliver it. I am exceptionally motivated to make sure we do not see problems in this June's all‑postal voting.

Q383 Mr Sanders: What if they need more time?

Mr Leslie: If time is an issue then I would have thought the returning officers would not be saying they want to do it. As in Scotland where they thought about it, they looked at their capabilities and they advised "do not do it in Scotland" and we accepted that.

Q384 Mr Sanders: That was before the ping‑pong with the House of Lords?

Mr Leslie: Indeed it was. The returning officers are still saying ‑ they are the experts, they are the ones on the ground we have to listen to ‑ they want it to be done by all‑postal.

Q385 Chairman: If they are the experts they are also pressing us that they want to see those regulations in their final legal form rather than your draft. I just hope that you can give us assurances that those are going to be available to them early next week assuming royal assent is given?

Mr Leslie: We will make sure we get that as soon as absolutely possible. There is not a dearth of information, it is not that they do not know what is going to be in those regulations, the policy paper covers it. I will certainly make sure we get that regulation out.

Q386 Chairman: I hope somebody has done the drafting of those regulations?

Mr Leslie: It is in hand.

Q387 Christine Russell: Last week we were told by the Regional Returning Officer for the East Midlands that he had concerns over securing insurance against the risk of a re‑run, what can you say to allay his worries?

Mr Leslie: My understanding about the insurance is that returning officers working with the Department have been looking at legal liability questions and there is insurance about to be undertaken for that aspect. If there are other areas where indemnity needs to be provided in a case, extreme though it may be, where you may have to have certain areas having re‑runs and so forth ‑ that is not foreseen in any way, although obviously all possible circumstances need to be thought through ‑ the Government would indemnify against those and we would provide that level of assurance to the returning officers, there is that measure of protection for them.

Q388 Chairman: If there has to be a re‑run the Government will pay for it, is that right?

Mr Leslie: Yes.

Q389 Christine Russell: Would that include all returning officers?

Mr Leslie: If we are talking about all‑postal voting it was not just the East Midlands Returning Officer who was raising this point with you, it would be for the four regions that we are recommending. We do not see any reason to think there will be a need to have such expenditure, we are confident it will work smoothly.

Q390 Christine Russell: Can I ask you about the third party suppliers, what discussions have you had with them because they were also raising the concern about re‑runs?

Mr Leslie: We have obviously been talking not just with those companies involved in contracting, printing, and so forth, but also organisations like the Royal Mail involved in the delivery side of things. Certainly on the part of the Royal Mail we had very positive feedback, they are exceptionally keen to do this, they want to undertake this and they think it is big business for them and they want to make sure that it goes ahead successfully to prove that this is one way forward. I think that is to be welcomed. As far as other suppliers go we do understand that while some of those suppliers may be, as the returning officers will be, concerned if the House of Lords continues to thwart the resolution of this issue, then obviously we will all be very keen to see that quite quickly. My understanding is that returning officers do have a wide range of contractors well in place able to act quickly. Do not forget returning officers are used to being able to act quickly and flexibly in sometimes challenging circumstances. General elections take place, often with barely over three and a half, four weeks notice and they are able to turn those round exceptionally quickly. Even with all that has being taking place in terms of royal assent, and I realise that is a different kettle of fish because it is all‑postal, there is still quite a lot of skill and capability with the returning officers and the contractors to make sure they can make it work

Q391 Chairman: The indemnities for the European ones, if a local election which is held on the same day, on the same system was challenged in the courts and had to be re‑run you would also meet the cost of that, would you?

Mr Leslie: That is my understanding, unless there is a particular local failure. I will go back and look at the relative split of responsibility. Clearly Government is paying for the all‑postal pilot on the basis that these are European constituencies and need to take place on that regional level. There is also obviously a continuing contribution from a local government level because they would have to run local elections anyway. I would want to make sure that each part of government was paying its fair share towards any possible consequences down the line. Perhaps if I drop a note to the Committee on the financial split between local and national government that might be more helpful for you.

Chairman: Fairly quickly because the implications are worrying some of these returning officers.

Q392 Chris Mole: Turning back to the principle again, why all‑postal voting only? Would you not get higher turnouts, which is the target, if you give people more choice?

Mr Raynsford: We did, as you know, put to the Electoral Commission the possibility of an e‑voting pilot as well as the all‑postal pilots and that would have allowed a range of different channels, a range of options as we offered in some of the local government pilots in May last year. The Commission's judgment, and we wholly concur with it and agree with it, was that this would be too risky in the context of the European elections because we would have to apply the e‑pilot across all of the constituencies involved in a European region whereas up to now in local government pilots it has only been the case that committed authorities, and some have been very committed to exploring e‑voting, have been conducting such pilots. The complexities and indeed the cost is significantly more. There is, in my view, a real difference between allowing local authorities that are keen to do that to do so as against imposing it as an obligation across the entire region, which would be necessary to ensure consistency throughout the whole European constituency. For that reason the Electoral Commission found against holding an electronic pilot, we concurred with that but we are committed to continuing with our programme of e‑voting pilots, which have been taken forward both last year and will be resumed again in future at local elections.

Q393 Chris Mole: We received evidence from SCOPE who told us the more channels you make available the better the options for disabled people, the example they gave us was a disabled person who said that the electronic voting was the first time they had independently been able to vote. Your commitment would be to future elections?

Mr Raynsford: We fully understand that, we support that and we wish to resume the programme of e‑voting pilots as soon as possible.

Q394 Chris Mole: They and several other witnesses have supported the Electoral Commission's proposal for staff delivery points for those unable or unwilling to return their vote by post. It could be argued they are mini polling stations, do they defeat the object of an all‑postal vote or do you think this is a good solution for a few people who have concerns?

Mr Leslie: I was quite keen to see the use of staff delivery points, even though these are all‑postal elections because there are some people, I suspect, a very small minority who for whatever reason want to cast their vote in a secret environment or want to physically hand over their ballot paper. Although that is a very small minority who would not be prepared to use the postal arrangements I felt it was important to give that opportunity. I think we have provided that each local authority area should have at least one staffed delivery point effectively with a secure, safe ballot area where the vote can be marked and cast and deposited in a ballot box in what would in other circumstances seem to be normal conventional arrangements. That is something that I think gives us a level of protection if for some unforeseen reason people do not feel they would like to cast their vote like that.

Q395 Chris Mole: Open for the full three weeks?

Mr Leslie: Open on the day of the election.

Q396 Christine Russell: What SCOPE told us was that while postal voting is welcomed by people particularly with physical disabilities there are one or two groups, especially people with visual impairments and perhaps people with learning difficulties that do encounter real problems with postal papers, have you had any discussions or have your officials had discussions with disability groups particularly that represent those people?

Mr Leslie: Yes, we have. We have tried our best to make sure that we provide for better provision for people with disabilities, and so forth, and visual impairment in circumstances for all‑postal voting. What I would like to see, and I think we are able to provide for, is for returning officers to have a hot‑line contact number where they can come out and visit electors ‑ those who have been sent their all‑postal ballot ‑ with tactile voting devices so that they can help ensure that that voter even in their own home can cast that ballot in a secure way so there is a more proactive level of assistance from retuning officers. They are supplementing the supported delivery point arrangements where there will also be electoral officials able to assist.

Q397 Mr Clelland: Having been an election agent myself when local and general elections have been held on the same day and when local government boundary changes have taken place I always have a great deal of respect for electors because they know exactly what they are doing when they go down to vote, and that has generally been the people who have taken the bother to get out of the armchair and go down to the polling stations and they are generally thinking about what they are doing. In the postal vote situation a lot of people are going to be voting who may not have voted before ‑ by implication that is why the poll goes up. This year we are going to face a situation in these four regions where we have the all‑postal votes; in the metropolitan areas there are going to be all‑out elections because of boundary changes, so voters are going to be asked to vote for up to three candidates on a ballot paper which might have as many to 15 to 21 names on it; at the same time they are going to be voting in new wards, which sometimes have new names, which could itself add to some difficulty; they are also going to be asked to vote in European elections, which is on a proportional representational system; and then when it comes to referenda in three of those regions in the autumn, again an all‑postal vote, and in the Shire areas they are going to have multiple choices to make about the local government structure if they vote for a regional government. Is this likely to lead to any confusion in the minds' of the electorate?

Mr Raynsford: Can I answer that and say you started off rightly by saying you had great respect for the electorate and their ability to make their own mind up and reach a decision. I have similar respect for the electorate and provided the issues are presented clearly ‑ and there is a real issue there about ensuring that the options available in the respective elections are well presented and clearly presented, and we are very keen to ensure that happens ‑ then I do not feel anxiety about this. I do notice, and you will be very well aware of this, that Gateshead has been one of the pioneers in all‑postal voting. It was in 2000, the very first year, and it had a spectacular increase in that year, I think to 54% in the participation rates compared with an average of half of that in previous traditional elections and has subsequently followed up in 2002 and 2003 and has sustained that high level of participation of over 50% of the electorate. That seems to me to be pretty clear testimony to the fact that people in your area and indeed in many others have found the option of all‑postal voting very helpful and valuable.

Q398 Mr Clelland: I have no problem with that, it is just there are multiple choices that people are going to have to make because of all of these circumstances coming together. For instance might it not have been better to put the local government boundary changes off until next year or the year after rather than bring everything in on top of everyone at once?

Mr Raynsford: The counter argument is that when people come to take their decision on whether they want to vote for an elected regional assembly they should be aware about the implications if they live in a two‑tier local government area of local government reorganisation.

Q399 Mr Clelland: I was not referring to those local government boundary changes, I am talking about the ones in the metropolitan areas which are going to take place in June, they could have been put off, two years' time would not have made much difference, would it?

Why do we have to pile all of this on top of the electors at once?

Mr Leslie: As far as the elector is concerned they will always be in a ward regardless of changes.

Q400 Mr Clelland: Normally they vote for one candidate and this year they will be asked to vote for three.

Mr Leslie: You will be delighted to know we have made decisions about the colour coding of different ballot papers, the European ballot paper will be white, the local government principal authorities will be of a grey scale, which means a slight shade of grey, and if there are any parish council elections they will be lilac.

Q401 Chairman: How do blind people tell the difference?

Mr Leslie: I hope they will be able to get in touch with the returning officers and get somebody to come and assist with a tactile voting device.

Q402 Mr Clelland: Will the local government ballot papers be grouped by political party or in alphabetical order? Would it not make it easier for people to have them grouped?

Mr Raynsford: It is traditional for the grouping to by alphabetical order. I am conscious there have been some concerns about advantages to those people whose names begin with the letter "A", and as somebody whose name begins towards the end of the alphabet, certainly lower than my colleagues, I can see merit in testing alternatives. It has been put to me there might be merit in grouping by political parties.

Q403 Mr Clelland: Coming back to postal voting again, when are we likely to see postal voting in a General Election or a pilot in a General Election?

Mr Leslie: We have thought about moving from the local pilot experience now to the regional to look at increasing the level of the scale in which all‑postal voting is sustainable and can work properly. We have said that we would not envisage a General Election, certainly before 2006, having what is known as the multi‑channel option approach of either electronic voting or all‑postal voting, not least because General Elections have a very short notification period and there would not be the long preparation periods that we have had for these local elections and European elections for this June. We have said that we do not envisage any multi‑channel General Election until after 2006.

Q404 Mr Clelland: The Electoral Commission recommended the removal of the declaration of identity but we have had concern expressed by some groups about the possibility of fraud, how do you balance these two?

Mr Leslie: Last night in the debate after the House of Lords insisted on retaining the declaration of identity, in other words where a witnessed signature has to verify the identity of the person casting their vote, the government decided that we need to concede on that particular point and we conceded amendments that were approved in the House of Commons last night. The June local and European elections will now have that witnessed signature declaration of identity within them. We did that reluctantly because of course that was against the advice of the Electoral Commission, which is quite interesting given that this was a matter that the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives in the House of Lords were adamant was absolutely necessary, you must have the declaration of identity, of course flying in the face of advice from the Electoral Commission. Nevertheless advice is advice and Parliament and government decides. We do not feel that having that declaration of identity brings overriding harm to the general principle of all‑postal voting so we felt that was a concession we could put in. We will have to look at it again for future elections because the advice from the Electoral Commission is that if an individual is likely to fraudulently sign their own ballot paper then it does not take a massive step for them to also sign the counter‑signature as well. It may even be an inhibition to the fairest possible voting system in that it forces an individual to disclose to a third party that they intend to cast their vote. They have to share with another person the fact that they are intending to return a ballot paper by having a requirement for a counter‑signature. If an individual can cast their vote on their own without sharing that with somebody else then the Electoral Commission advise that would be a better arrangement. For the time being we will continue with that declaration of identity which is the current practice in the normal postal voting on demand arrangements.

Q405 Chris Mole: Was not the evidence from the Newcastle pilot that a significant number of the invalid votes were invalidated because the declaration of identity was not properly completed?

Mr Leslie: Indeed, it was. It was our intention to move away from that to the single signature arrangement. Constant defeats in the House of Lords forced us I think to make that particular concession, as I say, without causing overriding harm to the better and bigger gain to be brought from all‑postal voting, which is why we are insistent on four regions.

Q406 Chairman: In one of the pilots when the local authority got the ballot papers back and found that there was not the signatured witness statement they send them back giving people the chance to correct that error. Is that going to happen for the European ones?

Mr Leslie: That is my understanding. The policy paper gives a description of the ability for returning officers to go to reasonable steps to give electors the opportunity to properly complete their declaration of identity or their security statement if it is incorrect. There is only a certain length those returning officers can go to given the other tasks that they have to do. Ultimately it is the responsibility of the elector to get it right first. If it is not right those votes will be held as impartially rejected until such point as either the security statement or the declaration of identity is properly completed. If it is not then they will be rejected.

Q407 Chairman: I approve of that but there is a problem, is there not, that those people who vote early, as soon as they get their postal vote, will be able to send it into the council, the council will verify that the documentation is not there and they may have anything up to 14 days to get back to the elector and try and get the proper verification in place. If I was to vote either the day before or on polling day itself by taking the ballot paper then there is a possibility that I will not be given that chance. Do you not see that as discrimination between electors?

Mr Leslie: No. I think that all electors will have an equal opportunity to return their ballot papers quickly and the vote early mantra comes into play to a certain extent to -----

Q408 Chairman: So vote early if you are going to make a mistake?

Mr Leslie: I doubt many people will be thinking in the manner that your brain, if I may respectfully say, Mr Chairman, is working today.

Chairman: I am just concerned about the possibility of challenges because I think it is very important that if you are going for - and you have now conceded you are - a complicated way for people to complete the ballot paper then it would be helpful if they are in a position to correct it, but I do see the problem I have just addressed.

Q409 Mr Sanders: Should a marked copy of the electoral register be made available and, if so, to whom and at what point during the election?

Mr Leslie: In the passage of the bill at the committee stage in the Commons we did introduce an amendment to allow for what is known as polling progress information to be made available to candidates and agents and, of course, also to the electoral administrators themselves so that they can tell effectively who has returned an envelope containing a ballot paper. This is effectively mirroring the arrangements in conventional elections where parties and their agents can sit outside polling stations and see who turns up to vote and that enables campaigning so that candidates in the normal way can then see if they need to chase up persons who they feel need to be aware that there is an election. This is effectively a mirroring of the marked register arrangement into all postal arrangements and this was something that was requested during debate by opposition parties. The Conservative Party suggested that it was necessary, and the Liberal Democrats, even the Scottish National Party, were urging it on the government and in response to the debate that came through in committee stage at report we made that amendment to enable polling progress information to be made available.

Q410 Mr Sanders: What form will it take? Will it be a register that is open to inspection by whom? The public, agents, people involved with the election?

Mr Leslie: My understanding is, and obviously if I have got this wrong I will let the committee know, that it will be for candidates and agents and electoral administrators only to have the data of those people who have had envelopes returned to the returning officer with no more frequency than one list per day of polling numbers and names and no less frequency than twice a week, and we hope that parties and the returning officers will negotiate between them what is the most efficient -----

Q411 Mr Sanders: Will that be a manual list?

Mr Leslie: I suspect it will need to be manual. It may well be that we can deal with it electronically if the technology is available, the software is in place. In many areas it may need to be manual as a way of ensuring that it can work effectively.

Q412 Mr Sanders: And that will be done on a constituency by electoral officer basis?

Mr Leslie: It will be done by local authority area.

Q413 Chris Mole: What about the system of prevention of fraud if the list was available to electors as well so that they could see if someone had voted on their behalf or even verified themselves that their vote had been registered?

Mr Leslie: Of course, the electoral officers themselves will have access to this polling progress information and that is part of the reason why we wanted to put it in, because they will be able to use it as a tool to check against any malpractice. For example, if an elector comes with an inquiry, as you are suggesting, "Has my vote been returned improperly?", they can report to the electoral administrator and the electoral administrator will then be able to tell whether an envelope has been returned purporting to contain their ballot paper, so it is an extra safeguard in that respect as well.

Q414 Chris Mole: People are worried that inaccuracy in the register increases the risk that ballot papers may be inappropriately used with an extension of postal voting. Do you think there should be a national electoral register cleansing exercise before you go on from the pilots to more extensive use?

Mr Leslie: I think on the register issue, and of course these are administered locally and so my colleague my want to make his own comments on this, we do not need to have a special national cleansing exercise for the June local and European elections. We have the best electoral registers that we have ever had in this country - more accurate, more up to date than ever before. They do reflect up to date population changes. Electoral registration officers have had powers to canvass not just by post but in person and have made sure that they are as accurate as possible, so I do not think there is any sense that the register is a particular issue. In any case, I think that this is not something that particularly bites on whether it is an all-postal or a conventional arrangement.

Q415 Christine Russell: Can I ask you two questions, slightly different ones? What are your views on this issue about whether or not political material should be sent out from the parties with the ballot papers? The second on is on the police's ability to investigate any possible fraud. We had evidence yesterday, for instance, from the Met that few forces really do prioritise electoral fraud and I just wondered if you had any views on whether we should have a national election fraud squad or something. What discussions have you had with the police?

Mr Leslie: On the first point I think it would be wrong to have party political material despatched with the ballot papers. I do not think that would be the right approach.

Q416 Christine Russell: It was used in the GLA elections, was it not?

Mr Leslie: There is a difference between the booklet of description that goes out for Greater London Authority elections, as I understand it, and the party political literature that some parties in some elections, including European parliamentary elections, have a free post entitlement to. I asked officials to compare the volume of post between an all-postal election and the Christmas post and, although we are talking about potentially 83 million items of electoral mail in the weeks of the election period, in the Christmas period over a couple of billion items of mail are handled by the Royal Mail. In fact, I think they handle 82 million items per day in the Christmas period, so this is well within the scope of the Royal Mail to cope with that. On the question about the police and dealing with fraud, I believe that the increased scale upon which we are looking at all postal piloting has brought in a greater sense of priority within all criminal justice organisations - the police and the Crown Prosecution Service and elsewhere - who will have at that regional level the ability to have a dialogue on a wider level.

Q417 Christine Russell: Who is going to investigate because the fraud could cross police boundaries? Have you thought that one through?

Mr Leslie: Because the boundaries will be regional there will be fewer boundaries. They will all be covered by the pilot and so there is a very close dialogue between the regional returning officers and the chief constables and the police.

Q418 Christine Russell: So who is going to take the lead?

Mr Leslie: All criminal prosecutions are obviously undertaken by the Crown Prosecution Service on the advice of the police and returning officers will report any malpractice that they find.

Q419 Christine Russell: So it is where the malpractice occurs and not the constabulary that serves the area where the regional returning officer is?

Mr Leslie: Yes, it would be where the malpractice occurred.

Q420 Mr Clelland: Can I ask what research you have done on the costs of all-postal elections as opposed to conventional elections? Would you not agree with the Electoral Commission that there ought to be a government funded central pot to pay for elections, particularly as this can be fairly burdensome on local councils like parish and town councils?

Mr Leslie: Our estimate is that of course all-postal voting is more expensive and we think it is worth it because it gets greater turnout. My colleague is helpfully pointing out that at the 2003 local elections the cost per voter in an all-postal scheme ranged from £1.42 to £5.00 per elector compared to just over £1.00 for a traditional election, so we do have an estimate of that and we have put aside a certain amount of resource. As I said at the outset, that helped provide an envelope determining how many regions we could pilot in and we feel we can afford four regions.

Mr Raynsford: I think it is true to say that Jeremy Beecham, in giving evidence to you a short while ago, emphasised that although there was a greater cost involved in all-postal, the gap between the cost of all-postal and traditional elections was reducing and there is the very obvious point about the benefit to democracy of ensuring a significantly higher level of turnout.

Q421 Mr Clelland: Oh, absolutely, I would accept that point, but we have had evidence from the National Association of Local Councils that it is a particular problem for first tier councils. Is that something you have looked at?

Mr Raynsford: It is in the light of the additional costs that we have agreed to make available the funding, the £13 million or so that we made available jointly between DCA, ODPM and the Treasury to ensure that all-postal voting could be conducted, or pilots could be conducted, in June this year without imposing new burdens on local authorities.

Q422 Chris Mole: The big worry I think a lot of people have in the back of their mind is the question of the number of ballot papers that may be available in houses in multiple occupation or student accommodation or something like that. Are there any steps that you are thinking about taking to help address that particular situation?

Mr Leslie: In some of the pilots that have already taken place we have learned quite a few lessons. That is one of the benefits of piloting. In Brighton and Hove the returning officers there had a particular team that went around to large establishments, student accommodation, houses in multiple occupation and so forth, hand delivering, making sure that they identified the particular voter if they were available and so forth, and that was a much more proactive measure of getting the ballot paper to the person in houses in multiple occupation. We have suggested that regional returning officers look at that best practice and take that up and that is something that we have put in the policy paper circulated to the returning officers so that there is good practice there that can be followed and built upon.

Q423 Chairman: Is there a tricky question we should have asked you?

Mr Leslie: You could always ask the question, "What can we do to persuade the House of Lords to recognise and wake up to the fact that four regions really is an excellent idea?", and I might be able to think of an answer to that, but perhaps that is a partisan point to our own colleagues.

Chairman: On that note can I thank you very much for your evidence.