UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 640-ii

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

 

 

ELECTORAL ADMINISTRATION

 

 

Tuesday 15 November 2005

MALCOLM DUMPER and DAVID MONKS

Evidence heard in Public Questions 74 - 152

 

 

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Constitutional Affairs Committee

on Tuesday 15 November 2005

Members present

Mr Alan Beith, in the Chair

James Brokenshire

David Howarth

Julie Morgan

Mr Andrew Tyrie

Keith Vaz

Dr Alan Whitehead

Jeremy Wright

________________

 

Witnesses: Malcolm Dumper, Policy and External Affairs Director, Association of Electoral Administrators (AEA), and David Monks, Chief Executive of Huntingdonshire District Council and Chairman of Electoral Matters Panel, Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers (SOLACE), examined.

Q74 Chairman: Mr Dumper, Mr Monks, I think is welcome back for both of you?

David Monks: It is.

Q75 Chairman: You came to the inquiry that this Committee and the ODPM Committee did on natural registration, which is a somewhat topical report in current circumstances. Normally I ask members to declare interests, but I do not think we have any interests other than the interest we all have in seeing that elections are properly and fairly conducted; so that is not a problem. You have provided us with written evidence and so, if you are happy, we will launch straight into the issues that we want to explore today. It is our hope that by getting our evidence published quite quickly those members of the Committee who are sitting on the Bill, and particularly those who look at this Bill at report stage, will have the benefit of the comments you have made, and, whereas you cannot give evidence to a standing committee I think the evidence you give to us will be very helpful as we come to consider the Bill itself at a later stage. Even though some of our evidence goes wider than the Bill, a lot of it is very relevant to the Bill itself. On a more general question to start with, how satisfactory is your relationship with the Electoral Commission? How far do you feel you are able to feed into its deliberations and see an outcome from that effort?

Malcolm Dumper: The Association of Electoral Administrators meets very regularly with the Commission now. I think we have a very healthy relationship with the Electoral Commission. We feed in a fair amount of information from grass roots level. You will be aware that the association is split into 13 branches across the country. We have a situation where the Electoral Commission staff attend all of those meetings four or five times, each branch, every year and facilitate discussions on things such as the Electoral Administration Bill. Clearly administrators would not always be totally in support of some of the Electoral Commission's recommendations, but I think it is fair to say that the way that the Commission now work and the fact that they are taking information from people who are delivering electoral services has been very healthy, and I think the greater awareness that there has been in practical issues on elections and registration since they reformed can only be better for all of us.

David Monks: SOLACE has a good relationship with the Commission. It is helped by a number of factors, not least the fact that there are two former chief executives who are commissioners; so there is a link there and knowledge of local government. However, like all things, the relationship could be improved. I would say we have a robust relationship with them. Remember we come from a different point of view. We are practitioners, we are working in local government, we as chief executives are working with elected members every day and we have a slightly different take on some of the issues they put forward. Remember, elections are a very important part of our work, and I am sure to the gathering I am addressing today an equally important part of your work on certain days and certain nights of the year, but there is a lot else goes on in local government, as many of you know, so we have to fit that in as well. I have a good personal relationship with Sam Younger, whom I like and talk to very much. We need, I think, with the Commission to perhaps get them to understand the culture of local government a little more, the fact that resources are precious, the fact that we are under pressure to deliver a whole range of objectives, and some of those are issues like electoral registration, turn-out at elections, getting the staff out. Those are on our radar, but there are a lot of other issues on our radar, and, of course, the Electoral Commission is primarily interested in elections. I think we have probably got a bit of work to do to explain to the Commission exactly what goes on, but at this stage I am encouraged and I think we have got a good basis to work from.

Q76 Chairman: What about the Department (the DCA), because in many cases they are making policy somewhat independently of the Electoral Commission and need the same kind of input from you?

David Monks: Indeed. I will comment generally on the relationship between local government officers and civil servants in which, I think, you have to see that relationship. The context there, let us be frank, is often strained, and I think there is a communication issue there and I think there is an understanding issue there. I think there is a great improvement that we now have one government department dealing with elections. If I may be bold enough, I think it is a particularly stupid idea to have more than one government department dealing with that, whether they are local elections, national elections, European. We need concentrated areas of expertise in Whitehall understanding elections and so I think it is a step forward, the DCA doing it. If I may give one example, and I hope I am not breaching too many confidences here, Chairman. In the run up to elections this year there was obviously quite a lot of controversy about postal voting, fraud and irregular activity. This was well documented by the media, and I have to say, and I have been a returning officer for over 20 odd years now, it was the first time ever I was asked by a permanent under secretary to come to a meeting, which I think was meant to be confidential so do not press me on it too much, in the run up to an election to discuss issues like that. Whatever the content of the meeting and whatever was said, I think the fact that a permanent under secretary chaired that meeting, took the issue seriously, sought to speak to people like me and representatives of the AEA is a healthy sign. I commend them for that. I have criticised government departments in the past, but I commend them for that and I felt that was a bit of a break through. For example, it led to the insertion of advertisements in our national newspapers giving advice on how to deal with postal votes. You may think that was a good idea, you may think that was a stupid idea, but at least we did it, at least we got together talk about it and at least I felt we were doing something together. That is a good sign. Long may it continue.

Malcolm Dumper: I agree. I think David's last point is very pertinent, the relationship we have with the Commission. I think that sort of relationship is also developing with civil servants in the DCA now, where again we meet very regularly with them. They were completely aware of the chief concerns of practitioners in parts of the delivery of electoral services, which I think have been reflected in the Bill that is now before us, and I think that is extremely healthy. There is a developing relationship and I think there is a greater understanding now of grass-root issues and how electoral administrators, returning officers in particular, have the problems they have in delivering the services both at electoral registration time and in conducting elections.

Q77 Chairman: How good do you think communication is the other way in disseminating best practice to a large number of local authorities?

David Monks: It could be improved. This is from the DCA, you mean?

Q78 Chairman: From either the DCA or the Electoral Commission. It is a three-legged stool we have got here. We have got the DCA, we have got the Electoral Commission and we have got local authorities, and you are trying to keep up communication between these three elements. Does it work in the other direction effectively?

David Monks: I think we could do better. Again having one government department helps. They dish out regular news letters. There is a working group which probably benefits from not having me a member of it, which is working on preparations for the local elections - that is quite unusual - and getting people together in the same room sharing problems, not necessarily coming up with solutions, is a step forward. I think what you have to understand with the DCA is that it is still early days. Give it a year or two. If you know anything about local government, there have always been tensions between local government officers, particularly at my level, and the civil servants, and I do not want to talk about that in great depth, but let us say we all bring a bit of baggage to that party and we need to grow up and we need to talk each other a bit more and work for a common goal. I think we can do better, but give us some time please.

Malcolm Dumper: I would certainly say over the last five years we have made strides in the right direction and clearly since 2000 and the legislation that was passed in 2000, there was a need to re-educate administrators and the work of the then Electoral Commission, more latterly the DCA, has seen the publication of many good practice papers on particular issues related to the delivery of services. I think this is the important element here, that our association and David's SOLACE as well, is really looking to raise standards and ensure that we deliver a consistent electoral process in every constituency up and down the country. At the moment that does not happen. The publication of good practice papers to a degree starts to address that in as much as the staff who are delivering the service need to know exactly what they should be doing, but we do not currently have the expertise within local government to deliver those services at the correct level, mainly because we do not have the resources to apply to it to ensure that we get the correct staff at the correct level to actually do the job.

Q79 Julie Morgan: We talked about the relationship with Electoral Commission. How do you view it as a body? Do you think it is effective? How effective do you think it is?

Malcolm Dumper: I think it is very effective, but, of course, my comments about the Electoral Commission and my relationship with the Electoral Commission is purely on electoral matters, nothing else to do with local government, and to my mind that is exactly what their remit is. Going back to the Chairman's first question, I think there is a greater understanding of electoral matters within the Commission now. When they were first established, in fairness to them, there were not many staff who had any experience in the delivery of electoral services. Now a lot of them actually hold the qualification that the AEA has put out to all the staff in 1998, which is a major step forward. The very fact that they engage more closely, they come and work in electoral offices to understand what happens at the coal face, as it were, can only be good for the delivery of the service. I think we are very much in the right direction. I think that the fact there are now formal meetings at branch level and at the level with our association and Sam and his commissioners - we hold bilateral meetings with them on a three-monthly basis - is very helpful.

Q80 Julie Morgan: So they are becoming more effective as time goes on and they are more knowledgeable of the subject?

Malcolm Dumper: It really boils down to experience. I think, if you went back five years, they did not really understand what was happening back in local government offices with regard to how elections were conducted. Now there is a greater understanding.

David Monks: I take a slightly different and perhaps more controversial view, and it is this. The Commission has been in existence a number of years now and I think we have to address, in the form of a debate with them, and obviously people in this place as well, what their role is going to be in the future. Let us start thinking about that. Are they going to take more active role in the actual running of elections rather than simply produce advice and guidance and try to back us up? One of the things I want to say and to make very clear on behalf of SOLACE this afternoon is that many of my colleagues, particularly younger colleagues, and that is probably most of them, as you can probably guess from my age here, are somewhat reluctant to take on the role of returning officer and electoral registration officer, not because they are fearful of hard work or challenges, simply because this area of law is immensely technical, but I say that as a lawyer - it is a hangover from Victorian England - and many of the newer, younger chief executives have not come up through the traditional legal and administrative route in local government so they are rather nervous about taking it on, particularly as folks like me at some of the training seminars we run point out, "It is your personal responsibility." It is not the council. When you became the council's chief executive, as a sort of bonus, you got this wonderful personal responsibility to run elections. It is very important, and I think the running of it should stand outwith the electoral process. It lends integrity to the process, it gives people confidence in it, but I have got a number of colleagues now who say to me, "Look, David, we are not happy with the way this is going. We have seen the challenges. We have all read the Birmingham case, even worse, we have all read the media reports about the Birmingham case. We are very nervous about that. Should not the Commission be getting in involved, as it is in other countries, and taking responsibility for the running of elections? For example, even if it did not want to become directly involved, could returning officers become agents of the Commission so the line of responsibility would run up to the Commission? I am not saying that is exactly what we should do. What I am saying is I think we should now be thinking about engaging in some serious thought and discussion on those lines. Indeed, that is perhaps something you can take evidence on and look at what happens in other countries and let us give it at least an airing to see if we can get progress on that.

Chairman: I will let Mr Howarth come in on this very point, if I may, and then you can come back to the other questions.

Q81 David Howarth: When you put this point to the Commission they said, "No", they did not fancy the idea of taking on the kind of Canadian or Australian role which we are talking about, but they did not seem keen on any other national body taking them on either. Can I put to you what they appear to say to us. Firstly, there is a lot of local knowledge involved which they prefer to draw upon through local authorities. Secondly, that there was an issue of staffing, that local authorities can bring staff for particular electoral purposes, and that in general this should be seen as a kind of local government service. You and I know the chief executives who think in the way that you have mentioned, but does the Commission have a point here? Is this essentially a local service?

David Monks: Yes, but even if you follow the model I am talking about, you could still retain the benefit of that local knowledge, you could still use the staff in local government, but the responsibility, the liability, if I may use the lawyer's word, could run back up to the Electoral Commission, and surely if they were taking the responsibility, that would put them in a better position to say to returning officers, people like me, "Look, the standards we expect you to attain in the registration process, in the running of elections are this, this and this, and the Bill and the work on benchmarking is starting", and so I think there is a parallel debate to be had there. Whether we exactly copy what is going on in these other countries or not I do not know; all I am saying is that I would like to make the general point to you this afternoon. Let us then engage in some thought and some discussion on it. I do not think it is something we should rush into, but, as I say, a number of my colleagues feel quite strongly that there is probably scope for the Commission to take more responsibility in the active running of elections rather than simply issue advice and guidance.

Q82 Julie Morgan: I was going to say, is it because of the shortage of people to do it that makes you think this?

David Monks: No.

Q83 Julie Morgan: You actually think it.

Malcolm Dumper: The shortage of people at the Electoral Commission?

Q84 Julie Morgan: No, Mr Monks said he thought chief executives were not wanting to take on this role, and I was wondering how far that was determining thinking or whether you thought this was the way to go for the Commission to play a bigger role?

Malcolm Dumper: If I could come back to the previous question, which I hope will answer that question, and I will share some of David's views on that, and I am not sure about the nervousness of the Electoral Commission in sort of centralising electoral services and becoming the Governors of it. I feel they have a position to facilitate proper delivery of electoral services in the country, but I think we would need to be looking at the expertise that currently exists up and down the country and the possibility of setting up some form of regional centres of excellence whereby those people that are heavily involved at the moment in electoral services can set themselves up and advise other parliamentary constituencies who have less experienced officers; and, as David would probably say in answer to another question later on which I am sure we are anticipating, the very fact that lots of new people are coming to electoral services is a real concern. As has been mentioned, the rules, the regulations, are complex. The fact that we do not have a consolidated elections bill, I think, is a worry to us all, because there are different interpretations placed on different aspects of electoral law at the moment, which is a concern. The Electoral Commission is probably aware of the fact that resources are stretched at local level and for that reason would be in their right minds to say, "Yes, we will pick it up and run with it and take charge. However, if they could bear upon the good experience that does exist in certain parts of the country and organise some centres of excellence, I am sure that would be a way forward.

Q85 David Howarth: We should say, to be fair to the Electoral Commission, they were happy with the idea of regional centres and regionalisation of it?

Malcolm Dumper: Yes.

David Monks: If I could say on that, Chairman, I do not know what they have said to you, but they are working informally with one or two regional returning officers with a view to establishing a centre of excellence (and I have got to declare my own interest), I think they are about to talk to me about it and a couple of other regions. The idea would be to pilot something and see how we get on. To go back to the earlier question, there are authorities that could benefit from some help and advice, capacity to do simple things, you know, like having a team across a number of authorities sending out postal votes. The number of postal votes has rocketed over the last few years. A lot of smaller authorities simply do not have sufficient staff to sit on Tuesday mornings, and to have a really miserable morning up until lunch-time, sending out postal votes. Why do we not establish, not a totally regional team but a semi-regional team where you get some expertise from an authority that is pretty good at it and some go out Tuesday morning, some have a go Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning and stuff like that. We are not talking rocket science here - that is not too tough for us to organise - and we are not going to come at you with the usual excuse, "We have not got the resources. We cannot do that." That is just a bit of determination, a bit of clear thinking and giving it a go, and that, I think, in many authorities will give it a bit of a lift. My earlier points were perhaps a bit more contentious or philosophical, the idea of some sort of responsibility back up to the Commission.

Q86 Julie Morgan: In your written evidence you did raise the question of funding for elections. Can you expand on how you wish the relationship between the Electoral Commission, the DCA and the electoral returning officers to change so that the management would be improved?

David Monks: Sure. Let me talk about elections first. I am sure you have seen election fees and charges orders, Parliamentary fees and charges orders. Again, they are very much a product of the nineteenth century, fun for lawyers, quite interesting to interpret, but frankly, as part of the twenty-first century, completely out of date now. One of the better points of the Bill, as I understand it, is that they are talking about much greater flexibility in payments to us in running elections, and so that would reflect, for example, local variations. Most of us struggle to get staff to go out on election day to be both presiding officers - and we need very reliable, trustworthy, experienced people to do that - as well as poll clerks, and again, let us be crude, one of the great incentives in doing this sort of work is cash. You have got to pay people. I think the labourer is worthy of his hire, so we should address that. We are looking for greater flexibility there. On the more general stuff, particularly with regard to registration, which I am sure we will talk about later on, local registration budgets differ from authority to authority. I work for five authorities and the way they are accounted for, the way they are presented, are different, and also, as I think both the AEA and my own society would say, the amount of attention and effort put into registration varies from authority to authority. Frankly, in some authorities - I would not defend what goes on - it is very poor and it has to improve. Other authorities are very good if you look at their results. What we need is, I think, in my view, much clearer funding of that. It has been discussed, and I think I have seen some stuff in Hansard, some members have suggested that funding should be ring-fenced and paid directly to the electoral registration officer, as election money is, rather than to the authority. Now we are getting into bigger and trickier political local government issues, because certainly I do not know if you take evidence from the LGA, you probably do not, but if you take evidence from the LGA or listen to their views on local government finance, it is that as much decision-making should be made at local level on the allocation of finance as possible, which is a perfectly respectable view and perfectly legitimate. However, if, like me, chief executives are sitting before their cabinets and their members and they say, "Please give me some more money for electoral registration because I need more staff to go and knock doors, and send forms out and chase up people", there are clearly shrewd members, as well you know, and they will say, "What is the percentage of your register now?" And it is about 95%, 96%. We are going to have a pretty difficult discussion then about how much resource do you need to get another half per cent on that. Why are we not putting more money into housing, planning, roads, all the things that people talk to us about on the door step? I do not want to put words in politician's mouths, but I get this quoted back at me quite a lot. I am not sure if many of you canvass on the doorstep.

Q87 Chairman: This is fairly familiar territory to us.

David Monks: Yes. I think you know what I am getting at. I am sure not many canvassers on the doorstep saying, "Vote for me. I will get the electoral registration up from 95-96%" - I am not sure if that is a really great vote winner, but it is not for me to advise politicians on their particular viewpoints. It is quite difficult, and it is no good saying, "Well, the Government will give you a bit more money in your annual grant settlement", because that is millions and billions nationally, and we have been told that for service after service after service which has been given to local government, whether it is dogs, or licensing, or disabled facility grants, it is very difficult to find that money and very difficult to persuade elected members to stick it into the electoral registration budget. I think, on balance, if it were paid to electoral registration officers and you did not use the words "ring-fencing", politically I would like to think local authorities would tolerate that, particularly if there were benchmark standards to back it up to and we said, "Look, we are going to have to hit this target for registration. Look we are going to have to hit this target because it is set nationally." Again, it is not easy but I think we could have a go at it.

Malcolm Dumper: I just want to add to that, Chairman. I agree. Very much depending on what budget you have, it is going to depend on what sort of level of service you are going to provide and what your registration levels are going to be. One of the big concerns I have in the provisions of the new Bill is the fact that more onus is going to be placed on registration officers to increase registration levels by delivering more forms and more personal calls, and that is fine in principle, and that is going to have a cost, but that is also going to have some very practical implications. Conducting the annual canvass is not easy. You could send people round to a doorstep and several times people just will not answer the door. It is difficult to get people to answer these days very often, and we are sending people out at a ridiculous time of the year. We are sending people out in the second week in October, when there is precious little daylight left, into some fairly unsavoury areas, dare I say, to knock on people's doors, they are not known so people are not going to answer the door and those that do are usually abusive, so it is not a job that people could take on lightly.

Q88 Chairman: We do it for nothing!

Malcolm Dumper: Consequently, a lot of people would not do it. The fact that the budgets are not particularly good in local government, we cannot offer any greater incentives than a normal standard rate for doing the job, but I think we need to apply some thought to when the annual canvas, or the annual audit as it is now called, is actually conducted. It would be far better to be conducted, I think, earlier in the autumn than it currently is so that people have a better chance of getting onto doorsteps and getting people to answer doors. People are reluctant, as I say, to answer them in the dark and they are even reluctant to answer them at weekends now.

Q89 Julie Morgan: Why is it carried the in the autumn?

David Monks: Why do we have elections on a Thursday? It is the same thing.

Malcolm Dumper: It has changed marginally in the last few years, from the tenth to the fifteenth, days - why I do not know - but an earlier September date would get far more success.

Q90 Chairman: The October registration date does not stop local authorities sending out forms in advance?

Malcolm Dumper: No, it does not, but there is a risk of going too early, of course, because there is so much movement in so many areas. I would imagine that one of the key issues is that if you go fairly early in the year you are going to miss a lot of students who are in transit, but, of course, students could be picked up by rolling registration later in the month.

Chairman: Can we go to the Bill now. Mr Howarth.

Q91 David Howarth: Before we ask you about your general views on the Bill can we carry on the previous conversation for one more question? Specifically looking at the Bill, do you have any estimates of the increased costs that will be imposed on local government as a result of the measures proposed in the Bill?

Malcolm Dumper: I did conduct a very ball-park assessment of what I thought it would cost in the Southampton constituencies, and it would be over £50,000.

Q92 Chairman: In how many constituencies?

Malcolm Dumper: Just two, but that is very ball-park. It is very difficult to be scientific on this. I was asked by the LGA to provide a quick assessment of what additional costs would be with regard to the postal vote security issues, the extension of polling hours, the standardisation of polling hours from 7.00 until 10.00 in local as well as national elections, which would not only increase staffing costs but premises costs also, and, looking at the electorate that we have, that was the best figure I could come up with based on the information I had to evaluate it from.

Q93 David Howarth: Is that revenue costs or does that involve other elements of capital?

Malcolm Dumper: Revenue costs.

Q94 David Howarth: That is very high, is it not, because that is about the cost of an election now?

Malcolm Dumper: No, it is not. An election in Southampton would cost probably 120,000, and did, probably a little bit higher actually, but I have not submitted my accounts yet.

Q95 David Howarth: But it is still a high figure?

Malcolm Dumper: It is, but I think there is also a concern at the moment, and I think to a degree local authority budgets tend to prop up Parliamentary elections also because a lot of the staff costs that are given over to.... Very often once a Parliamentary election is called, and this is the problem with electoral offices, you may have one person in the electoral office delivering the service day in day out. When a Parliamentary election is called and you have got 10,000 constituents ringing up for a postal application form, resources have to come in from many, many sections of the council, but those costs are very rarely apportioned and sent on to the accounts branch for payment. It is done because the authority realises it has a duty to provide that service, but the hard costs of polling station hire, staff costs, equipment costs, will only rise according to increased hours and the postal votes. Postal votes have driven a coach and horses through finances with regard to electoral registration.

Q96 Chairman: As you have said, there is a very large hidden cost which would need to be extracted. For example, if we handed you over to a new body or if you build for every item of cost, elections would show up a lot more than they currently do?

David Monks: Absolutely. I have done some work with other members of the AEA and we are talking, in ball-park figures, something like a 30% subsidy from local authorities to central government on running their costs. Remember that we do not cost for the running of our town halls - heating, lighting, caretaking, all that sort of stuff. If you know anything about local government accounting, those are all the costs that we charge out to our services all the time. Those costs are hidden. This is in the public purse, but somebody somewhere should pay for them. Of course, remember, the other thing that rather masks it - and I will be careful what I say now - there is certainly in vogue the idea of combined polls these days, and so we are splitting costs, but I think you have to remember that if we had them separate those costs would rack up if we were running one type of election. To combine polls tends to mask the costs, but, yes, I would say there is definitely say there is an invisible subsidy from central government to local government.

Q97 David Howarth: From local government to central government?

David Monks: I beg your pardon, yes, from local to central.

Q98 David Howarth: What about the 50,000 figure that Mr Dumper referred to?

David Monks: Yes, I have not done any detailed work on it to be honest with you, but apart from that the figure I was quoting, that percentage figure, I would say was about right. All I would say though about Malcolm's constituencies is that they are pretty urban, are they not? If you think of my area, Huntingdonshire, it is predominantly rural. We are a former county. We have a couple of constituencies, or one and a half. Our travel costs are high. When I run local elections I try and do devolved accounts and all that sort of stuff, so the situation with me is different and I would have bigger travel costs, and so those costs, in my view, are pretty accurate and certainly are definitely in the game.

Malcolm Dumper: Could I clarify one point to Mr Howarth, Chairman, about the cost of £50,000? That was not just to conduct the elections; that was the registration process. The new provisions within the Bill for registration will increase costs by reason of the additional forms and the additional personal calls.

Q99 Dr Whitehead: Could I just take the question of the apparent subsidy further?

Malcolm Dumper: Yes.

Q100 Dr Whitehead: According to local government finance principles, everything should have a cost centre and should be charged from one cost centre to another cost centre, and so it is reasonably transparent. Are you suggesting, which I think you probably are, that on the occasion of a general election that principle rather goes out of the window and that, therefore, as it were, there are effectively in the local authority all hands to the pumps, that various people do things for electoral registration and the management of election purposes which not only are hidden but are actually undiscoverable in as much as they simply go and do them and then go back to their own department? I assume that would be how that would work.

David Monks: Yes. I will try not to make suggestions here. I want to make some statements. What I am making a statement on is that when we get paid from DCA for rolling general elections, if you look down the fees and charges order it does not say things like the on costs that we always rack up for all the other services that we run - leisure, housing, planning and all the rest of it. We do not get that money back, and some of that is staffing - the caretakers, the people who shunt ballot boxes around and that sort of stuff - but some of it is the heating, lighting and capital costs of buildings. You have got to pay for all that. That is what features in our accounts, and that is what is at 30%. We do not get that back. The point I am making is that it is coming out of a different part of the public purse. What is not fair is for authorities like mine to pay for that - the local council tax payer - and, because of the way the government works, and I apologise if you think this is a political point, we get capped. You cannot have it both ways.

Q101 Dr Whitehead: Would that also apply to local elections, although it could be said that local elections are a little more predictable? Would there be planning for that service?

Malcolm Dumper: That is exactly the point. The very fact that you know when election day is going to be, you have got greater opportunity to plan ahead and apply the proper resources to it. When you have only got 21 days to organise a Parliamentary election - we probably knew when it was going to be in May last year - however, the announcement came when it did and we have effectively got four weeks to conduct the election. You will not cope with the resources when you have got an election on. Luckily I have probably got more than some in other city offices, but when you are faced with moving, as we did locally, from 1800 postal votes in 2000 to just under 26,000 in 2005, the enormous pressure that brings in just people getting the application forms out to electors, getting them back, and it is not just a question of taking a telephone call, it is a question of organising a mail-out, receiving the application form, acknowledging the application form, processing the postal vote, three and a half people are not going to deal with that.

Q102 Dr Whitehead: That also applies to local elections, does it not?

Malcolm Dumper: It does, yes, but you get a spin-off in local elections, as I say, because you conduct postal voting throughout the course of the year.

Q103 Dr Whitehead: There is also difference between local authorities which have elections every year and local authorities which have elections only in the....

Malcolm Dumper: Yes, there is.

David Monks: May I come back to Dr Whitehead's questions and give a specific example, which I think may illustrate the point? We run county council elections because, remember, we are in a two-tier area, and, of course, we send a bill for that to the county council. Interestingly, this time when we ran county council elections we were under a lot of pressure to make Gershon savings - it is not shorthand, I think you know what I am talking about there - but, to pick up your point, if you want and with the consent of the county chief executive, we could email one of your clerks with this budget, but I would have to ask his consent to give the exact breakdown, broadly speaking, we are sending them a bill for about, I think, £110-120,000 to run the county election in Huntingdonshire and of that about £30,000 odd is what I would call on-cost managerial, clerical and administrative costs. That is the order of the magnitude of what we are talking about. If you would like more details I would have to ask the county chief executive - it is not a secret budget but as a matter of courtesy I would - but I would be happy to email that to you.

Q104 David Howarth: Can we move on to the content of the Bill now in substantive terms? Would it be fair to say that both organisations in their written submissions have expressed the view that the Bill does not go far enough in consolidating existing electoral law?

David Monks: I would describe the Bill as taking the Darwinian approach in the sense that we are evolving and moving down the path rather slowly. That is no disrespect towards Darwin, except there are a couple of problems. I think (1) is it awfully slow and (2) it seems to deny Darwinism the divine force, the controlling mind behind all of this. I am sorry if I am getting a bit theological about it, Chairman, but I think you know what I mean.

Q105 David Howarth: There is a lack of intelligent design?

David Monks: I should be careful about using those words! Really of all the philosophical principles to apply to electoral reform, I am not sure if Darwin is regarded as being the top quartile, if I may use an Audit Commission metaphor, but I do not think it would. I do think we need now perhaps to be a little bolder with some of this stuff and not appear just to react to, say, the problems of postal voting and fraud. We have asked for many years when this work came out, "Could we not have new look at this? Could we not have a new Act of Parliament" - preferably not called 'the Representation of the People Act', call it the 'Elections Act' or something like that - "which reflects what we do in the twenty-first century?" We have had a variety of replies: "There is not Parliamentary time. It would be too difficult. It would be awfully hard to draft" - all the regular stuff - and that is fine, you do not want to keep bashing your head against a brick wall, and I think chief executives learn that after a while. I think there is an element of disappointment about it. I also think it is disappointing we are not taking the opportunity to consolidate existing legislation, because we have got all sorts of different rules governing all sorts of elections, which, I have to say as a practitioner, sometimes are frighteningly similar, but you always get to that point at 11.30 at night where you think, "Oh, that will be the same", and if you look at it, it is not, it is slightly different, something ends at noon instead of 4.00 o'clock, and election timetables and election law is desperately unforgiving. There is no point standing in the High Court saying, "It was quite a good guess at the time, and I thought I was awfully near." You are wrong, you are dead and you have had it, so I think that is disappointing. Having said that, half a loaf is better than none, and so I think we are pragmatic, we are positive people. It is a step down the road; it is just a pity it is not a bigger step.

Malcolm Dumper: I would share that view. It is difficult at times in the heat of the battle to actually look at some of the legislation and make sense of it, particularly when you are combining polls, depending on the combination of polls, where you are referring to several different pieces of legislation to answer a particular query, or, indeed, let us take the nomination of candidates at local elections, for example. You are looking at four or five different pieces of legislation to validate a nomination. We would hope that all practitioners and returning officers who are doing that are fully aware of what each part of that particular legislation is and what it means, but there are those that are less experienced who may well have difficulty.

Q106 David Howarth: Looking at the Bill as a whole, are there any very significant omissions, problems, that need tackling immediately that have not been tackled?

David Monks: Yes, I would like to refer to one that I put in the SOLACE evidence and that is this point about the return of postal votes and them being handled by - I am sorry to say it - some of the people that work on behalf of the political parties. We think that should be tackled. That was a problem this year. People generally going out canvassing - I do not have a problem with that - saying, "Come on, come out and vote", and they walk into someone's house and say, "Aha. Is that a postal vote I see on your mantle piece?" "Yes." "Well, I will take it back to the town hall for you", or, "Yes, I know how to drop that in", or if it is on the day, "We can drop it in at the polling station." We are very nervous, very jumpy, about that, and we think that should be tackled. I think there is sufficient there to make it a specific criminal offence. Having said that, I have to say that often with politicians, yes, I get that sort of reaction; it does not receive an effusive welcome. That is fine. I am well used to that in my career. What I would say is: is it not possible for the political parties and agents, many of whom I know, very, very good men and women, to say, "We are not going to have people doing that", and the political parties to exercise control and discipline to stop that. We get a lot of complaints about that, and many of my colleagues in the northern cities and cities in the Midlands had a lot of trouble in certain areas with people sort of "hoovering" these postal ballot papers up and bringing them in, so much so, and I am not telling you where, but one of my colleagues said the best the piece of equipment he had in the last general election was the CCTV camera in the town hall reception because he could see people bringing in carrier bags full of postal votes. I am extremely nervous with that.

Q107 Chairman: I think we are going to come back to postal vote fraud later, but do the comments you have just made apply to the postal vote application process? I raise that because people around this table knock on doors in elections, find people who are clearly not going to be able to vote and who did not realise that the closing date for postal votes is noon tomorrow; so candidates play a very significant part in canvasses, ensuring that people get registered. Does that worry you as much as handling the completed postal vote?

David Monks: No, I apologise if that was not clear. I am trying to confine those remarks to the actual ballot paper that we have sent out and the fact that I wish party political workers, candidates, agents, the whole panoply of people, would not to handle those. Please encourage people to put them in the post box, bring them down to our town halls and offices personally, but please do not give them to party workers. There are lots of allegations made about those votes being tampered with, not being returned to the proper address, not being returned on time or returned in an irregular way. Some of those allegations, without doubt, have resulted in prosecutions, some are perhaps false, but they do give us a lot of problems. I am confining my remarks to postal ballot return not registration documents.

Malcolm Dumper: I would agree with that. I think in the application process one totally accepts that political party campaigners, candidates, have a very important role to play in that, and if we are going to disenfranchise somebody because we say you are not allowed to handle that application, that would be quite ridiculous. I think the issue, certainly in the light of Birmingham, is the handling of the actual votes once they have been issued by the returning officer and are in the elector's hands to be delivered to the civic offices or wherever the returning officers might be.

Q108 David Howarth: In terms of the way you would like to see this happen, obviously what is going to happen is that the canvassers are going to come round to houses where people have postal ballots already, and so when the elector says to the councillor, "Can you take this to the town hall for me?", what do you expect the canvasser then to say and what resource implications might this have for local government?

Malcolm Dumper: We set up a local code of conduct with our agents last year, which I am sure others did as well. When that situation did develop, and, of course, it cannot work in every situation, I appreciate, particularly at five to ten at night on polling day, but we had a helpline set up whereby the returning officer's staff would facilitate the collection of that ballot paper. One would argue: has the returning officer got the right to do that, because they will say that the elector shell goes with the return of that particular postal vote to the returning officer's office; but it is a far safer option in the light of Birmingham, I think, in overcoming any suspicions that other people were handling the document who should not have done that all and political parties signed up to that local code of conduct and we did not have a problem. Indeed, I think we did go out about 12 times on election day and collect postal votes from individuals who were unable to vote.

Q109 David Howarth: It does, of course, add to the cost to the authority round this system?

Malcolm Dumper: It does, but it always comes back to the issue of let us pick electoral services up or process up, let us shake it out and see exactly where resources need to be applied. It is a question of raising standards. Raising standards means that the returning officer ensures that everybody who has a right to vote can do so and that the proper mechanisms and, of course, proper funding to do that are put in place to enable the returning office to deploy whatever resources are necessary to ensure that everybody who wants to vote has voted and it is complete at the count by 10 o'clock at the close of the poll.

Q110 Chairman: For the record, the memorandum which SOLACE put into us in Mr Bennett's name did actually go a bit further than you did by saying that "party workers should not issue either electoral registration forms or postal vote applications".

David Monks: We are a broad society, Chairman, and even chief executives have disagreements. Perhaps it is not too wise to air them in front of select committees, so you have made a good point there.

Q111 David Howarth: We had not quite finished. Moving on to the Bill, one other question, more about what is in the Bill rather than what is not in the Bill, is there anything in the Bill that you would seriously disagree with? For example, are there any proposals which you would take to be unworkable or unaffordable or which are unacceptable for any other reason?

Malcolm Dumper: I do not think so, again - and I do not want to labour the point - as long as the returning officer has sufficient resources to be able to undertake the new provisions. I did not get an opportunity to say in answer to your first question, my biggest concern is the fact that it does not include individual registration. That might be a different topic you might want to talk about, but clearly I think this would underpin and provide the mechanisms for the returning officer to undertake many of the security checks that are being mentioned but not really giving him the opportunity to undertake the checks to the proper degree because the original information is not going to be provided, and that is the principal concern of our association.

David Monks: I think the general resources point we have laboured quite a lot. Some of the detailed stuff I am a bit concerned about. We seem to be going backwards on the description of candidates and the idea that, yes, you are either in a political party or an independent or a blank and that is it. You seem to be moving away back to the old system, which is that you can be a "stop the by-pass candidate" or a "save the hospital candidate", and generally that is okay, but there are a number of situations. I think when I have given evidence to you before I have talked about the experience of having the Prime Minister as your local member of parliament, because when you have that you do attract some of the more colourful members of our society who are perhaps motivated from slightly different reasons than seeking high public office and their knowledge of electoral procedures and election law is distinctly limited, and we really do not have time to teach them, and they are more interested in publicity and, I have to say, being somewhat difficult to people like me and my staff, and then, of course, you are going to get the media in and then the whole thing kind of escalates. There are always people out there, who I think are motivated by an element of mischief, who will either try to get some description which is awfully near the mark just to test you, and some of this is quite tricky, and there are always some folks out there who want to change their name. You probably heard of the legendary Mr Huggett who was the "literal democrat" candidate and then he had a crack in one of the Winchester by-elections - do you remember this - and he changed his name to Maclone because the sitting MP, I think, was Malone. I just hope there are not too many more of those people out there, and I hope they are not sitting reading this Bill. If they do put themselves forward for office, perhaps they would keep out Huntingdon and Southampton, please. Something like that makes me a bit nervous, particularly in the context of what I was saying in answer to an earlier question, that many of my colleague chief executives are not desperately experienced in this area and you have to make quite a tough decision in a very short period of time. Sometimes these local colourful candidates perhaps have a backing from some of the members of your council who you are going to have to work with on the 360 odd days of this year and sometimes members of your council have a little difficulty in distinguish you, the chief executive, from you, the returning officer, and you, the electoral registration officer, and that gets a bit blurred, and some of those decisions can be quite career limiting at times.

Q112 Chairman: Can you be a little more precise about what it is in the Bill in relation to candidate description? It would be easier for you if it was not there.

David Monks: It would be easier if we stuck to the original rule, frankly, but I do know there is quite a bit of pressure to allow people to stand with these other sobriquets. I would be quite happy to stick to the rules as we have got them now rather than change.

Q113 James Brokenshire: I think we will pick up on one point that Mr Dumper just made which is about individual registration. Clearly there has been a lot of debate and discussion outside of the Bill. Why is it such a key issue, do you think, for electoral administrators?

Malcolm Dumper: I think the very fact that only one person in a household confirms the information to the electoral registration officer on an annual basis has lots of down sides. If I could start with 18-25 year olds, this is the category, as you know, that are least likely to vote. I think there can be lots of reasons for that. It could be that they never put their name on a registration form; either mum or dad or the guardian does it for them. They are almost immediately disengaged. Probably half of them do not even know they have been registered, have no understanding of what happens next, the fact that they are going to get a poll card, even though that comes through, but probably at that very early stage do not feel part the process, and if I could even take it back a stage further, and I know this goes a little way away from the question, it is a question of what is happening in schools at the moment with the citizenship programme. I think there is a very ad hoc, very programmed citizenship in schools at the moment despite a lot of local authorities, ours in particular, doing a lot of work in schools to promote democracy and how important it is and how important it is to think about voting and representation. We organised school elections and elections in the Youth MP Parliament, but the very fact there is an ad hoc programme, I think they do not fully understand the importance of getting registered when they are old enough to be registered, but of course, then there is this two-year vacuum whereby they leave at 16 and they do not vote until they are 18. In some cases there might be a six-year vacuum, of course. If the local elections are by four-yearly turn-outs, it could be that they have just missed the first election and a Parliamentary election has gone by, so there could be a six-year period of disengagement at the outset. Going on from that, in the 18-25 year category there is so much more movement in households these days, particularly in areas where there are houses in multiple occupation where it is evident that a householder is not going to know the full details of everybody who is resident in that address, so we do not know whether we get an accurate picture when a household form comes in, and, let us be perfectly honest, if somebody wants to defraud the process, this is the golden opportunity to do it. Very infrequently would we (and I am sure David is the same) check an electoral registration form when it comes in, and sometimes you will have a form coming from a household that contains six or seven names. We conduct no checks on the validity of that information. Immediately that person, if he seeks to defraud the process, is going to obtain seven votes. He has got the information, he can apply for those postal votes, he can get the ballot papers, he can sign for those ballot papers on a different signature on the declaration of identity, return them, seven votes cast. No way could we detect that. An offence has been committed, but no way do we detect it unless somebody actually comes forward with the evidence. If we go forward with a process of individual registration, stage one the person is engaged, secondly the returning officer has the proper personal identifiable information to compare when applications are submitted and eventually the postal vote is conducted; so I think the varied process itself has lots of advantages that outweigh the disadvantages in possible under-registration.

David Monks: I would characterise and summarise SOLACE's view from our evidence in one sentence. Registration is the building-block upon which all else rests. If we can get that right at the start we are in with a chance of running a much better election if we have an accurate register that has integrity and we have got confidence in. I think a lot of the problems that have come up in some of our urban areas in this year's elections would have been tackled if we had had a better register to work off some of those examples Malcolm was just giving, and I totally agree with them. Having said that, I have to say on behalf of SOLACE, and as you have seen from the evidence, we do take a slightly more pragmatic view. I do not want the Committee or anyone in this place to think if we had individual registration then all our worries are over and we are all going to live happily ever after. It is simply not like that. As Malcolm rightly says, there are always people out there who are determined to defraud the system and would always try and obtain something by deception (i.e. a vote), but the bulk of SOLACE members accept that individual registration would certainly tackle some of the problems. Certainly talking to colleagues again in those Northern cities and Midland cities, if that system had been in this year, I think their lives would have been a bit easier. I am not saying we would not have had the Birmingham case, I am not saying we would not have had those prosecutions, but I think steps like that are preventative and much easier to take to tackle the problem rather than prosecutions at the end of the day; but there are problems and again you might want to ask us questions about the resourcing needed to do this and how we would tackle individual registration.

Q114 James Brokenshire: You set out a very compelling case for individual registration, it being the building-block, the foundation, all of the issues about engagement. Why do you think it is not in the Bill on that basis?

David Monks: Can I start us off on that? Clearly the experience in this country of this type of process comes from Northern Ireland, and what happened over there was immediately a drop in the number of electors on the register. I cannot remember the exact figures, but it was quite significant. I forget what they are now - around 80 odd or 92% percent, something like that. We know Dennis Stanley very well, we talk to him quite a bit, and I think there would be fears in this place and throughout this country that if we went to this system there would be a big drop off: people would not get their names on the register if we went for that system.

Q115 James Brokenshire: I know AEA said it was a very positive experience?

David Monks: Okay. As I say, we are slightly different. I think we would rather dull this session if we agreed on everything, so I will try and say something different from him. We think we understand the concerns in numbers dropping off. Also for us, we have talked about the problems of getting canvassers out there to do this work, to get one form back from the household. Let us say we are sending someone out on a night now and they have got to get four forms back and one of those four is a young person who has gone off to university and will not be back until Christmas, or half-term, or the weekend when it is the sister's birthday, or something like that? That has a big resource implication for us. We are going to have to change our culture, change our systems to get that form back, unless the rules say, "Well, that is tough, David. Do not put that name on the register." That is another name off. Also, to give it a really good push, without doubt. However you slice it, we need more resources. We need more money to put into this. At the moment in Huntingdonshire we have an electorate of 120,000. I employ 54 canvassers. I think the most any of them get paid is £1,100, £1,200 gross for doing some of the things that Malcolm is talking about - going out on a Sunday night knocking doors and getting that in. For us to move to a system where we have got to get all those forms back would need a lot of money. I think the advantage of piloting - and I put this in the evidence - is that it is going to throw up in an accurate way, to answer the questions that Dr Whitehead put to me, what these costs are rather than folks like us just having a bit of a guess at it and saying it is that ball-park figure, six or seven really good pilots, different sort of areas, different sorts of regions, we get a very, very focused answer.

Q116 James Brokenshire: We will come on to piloting separately?

Malcolm Dumper: You cannot deny the fact it would be a challenge to take individual registration, an enormous challenge and, David is right, resource is the big issue. However, if I could just draw a comparison with the bicennial census, the census obviously provides the stats that we compare our electoral registration data against. The success of the bicennial census is very high. I understand they seek to obtain a success rate of 97%, and that is what we pretty much measure our electoral registration data against. That is very well organised, very well funded, trained people going up there conducting this process every ten years, but it can be done and it has been delivered successfully and there is no reason why we could not pick up on that, address those concerns, put in the proper mechanisms with the proper funding to undertake the registration process properly each year. I would also say, though, that rolling registration to my mind, which is individual registration.... We have been piloting individual registration through rolling registration since 2001 and it has been successful. More people now come onto the register through the course of the year. Year on year our registration levels have increased because of that. We have got the mechanism there, people are aware that they are required to fill out the form on their own and that is how they get on the register, but it will come down to a huge education exercise, proper funding and performance standards that would need to be introduced so that there is a consistent approach to registration in every constituency or local authority.

Q117 James Brokenshire: We touched very briefly in Mr Monks' comments about the experience since Northern Ireland, and I know your organisation said that it was a positive experience, although I note that Mr Monks takes a slightly different view on that. I wonder if you could comment about the particular lessons that you would draw from the experience.

Malcolm Dumper: It probably comes back to the fact that I think you have to make a start. I know the comparison on the electoral success in Southampton is based on how many electoral forms we get back. It does not really say how accurate that information is. The BBP is based purely on how many returns have you had from the households in your city. If I get 95% I am extremely lucky. I get nowhere near David, I know, but I cannot vouch for the accuracy of that data. In Northern Ireland they sought to address the issues of individual registration and the collection of personal identifiers, knowing full well there was going to be a huge drop off. There is bound to be. We have a current situation of carrying forward names. We carry forward names for a period of time. Automatically the register is inaccurate. We have duplicate registrations because we are chasing people in our authority who probably now live in Scunthorpe, but we carry them forward on the electoral register, so the statistics are distorted, turn-out is distorted. It really comes down to taking a decision to tackle it from stage one so that over a period of time we will get the process right and get people registered. You will not do it overnight. It will not be a sea-change in one canvassing period to another. It will be an incremental stage in encouraging registration by better awareness. If we move to a 16 year old registration rather than 18 year old, we could access other records (education records) to help validate the information and, again, better engage with those people who would see it as an important stage in their lives to ensure they are registered and consequently, hopefully, vote.

Q118 James Brokenshire: I am sure you will correct me if I am wrong, but the impression I have gained from both of you is that you seem to be suggesting that individual registration is not really being taken forward fully at the moment due to resource. What do you think will be the consequences of its omission?

David Monks: The consequences of its omission? I think we will get more allegations à la Birmingham, à la the prosecution in Blackburn and problems in particular urban areas. I think if we went forward for piloting, I cannot speak for my personal colleagues as individuals, but I would like to hope we can do some pilots in some of those cities to try and tackle that issue. I think we would get more allegations of fraud from agents, and I am sorry to say these seem to occur when the result is close and people seem to think that things have gone wrong and all that sort of stuff, and that is fine. We need to be thinking of prevention rather than prosecutions and cure.

Malcolm Dumper: I think we are still providing the opportunity for people to defraud the process. Any household form, any person in the household can put any information on that form that they wish without any other third party or anybody validating that information, and, more importantly, the returning officer being required to check certain information with regard to postal applications and postal votes is not going to have the proper data to check that against without individual registration and personal identifiers.

Q119 James Brokenshire: Given the strength of feeling on this issue that I think has been quite clear from this session, and we have touched upon the pilot schemes that are currently proposed in the legislation, do you think that piloting will delay any changes necessary before the next general election by virtue of having to go through the pilots and then having at least one election to test the results of the pilots?

David Monks: Malcolm and I have been talking about this. Assuming the next election is 2009, which is what we are working on, we think we could just about do it. It will be tight at the end, but we think we could just about do it. If we got going on it next year and had perhaps two years piloting, we could just about get it in, but it would be tight at the end. The other thing I would like you to reflect on is this. As Malcolm says, if there is someone out there determined to be a fraudster, determined to have go at beating the system, there is not, frankly, that much we can do to stop them. We can get unpleasant, we can talk to the police and all the rest of it, but it is quite difficult with the rules we have got, unless we wanted to move to something much tougher, and I think then you would have issues of turn-out and issues of people who would be put off going on the register, but I think we could just about do it by 2009. What I would also like to suggest is that we do have a bit of a culture of piloting now, but local authorities are asked to volunteer. Perhaps there is a role for the Commission and our societies in thinking about some sort of programme, "persuading" people to volunteer so we get a good spectrum of activity, we get all sorts of different types of piloting authorities coming forward. Perhaps there are links to the regional sectors of excellence as well, but that is something we should talk about.

Malcolm Dumper: I think it would be tight. It very much would depend. I think you would need two elections to run the pilot. I do not think you could do it in one and get a meaningful evaluation, and it is the period of time then you have between what would be May 2008, evaluating the second pilot and getting the legislation through in readiness for what probably would be a May 2009 election; and bear in mind that could be an horrendous set of elections for us, because we will be looking possibly at a combination of local parliamentary and possibly European elections all on the same day maybe. I think if there are going to be pilots they should be wide enough to consider all possible options, which should be household and proper individual registration, so that we can test each process against the other rather than a prescribed type of pilot process.

Q120 James Brokenshire: The Electoral Commission have come up with a different type of proposal. They do not seem so sold on this idea of pilots and are advocating more of a universal transitional scheme with the possibility of people having the option to provide signatures, date of birth and being required to do so if they seek to go for postal votes. What are your impressions of that proposal and are there any other alternatives that you might recommend?

Malcolm Dumper: I have not studied that in detail, but I am aware of it. I think it addresses some of the concerns I have, particularly with regard to providing proper individual information from the elector concerned so that the postal vote application and the vote itself could be tested against rather than that being provided by a third party, but I would need to look at it in a bit more detail before I make further comment on that.

David Monks: I have seen stuff from Mr Younger on that. I think it is certainly a proposal worthy of piloting, which seems to argue for a pilot, does it not? I am not sure if we are coming round in a circle - I am not sure whether the Commission have worked that out - but if you are going to put that forward, the best way to test that is piloting it, is it not? It is probably worth piloting and having a go, so it is arguing in favour of pilots, and so Sam Younger, I do not think, is going to be very pleased with me tomorrow! The second point, yes, there are other systems. There is quite an interesting suggestion from my colleagues in London, which I do not want to spend a lot of time talking to you about. Again I can email it to one of your clerks. The idea there would be to use bar codes and send a letter out saying, "You have got a postal vote", bar-coded, and then when the poll cards go out say, "Yes, here is your poll card. We note you have got a postal vote", and when the ballot paper goes out to you with the same bar code number you return the ballot paper with either the poll card or the original letter with the bar code on. I am not explaining that very well, because it was only given to me today, but I can see an immediate weakness of that, that someone can still put a false address down and get three bits of paper, and if you get two bits of paper back it does not mean to say it is any better than the one bit of paper. I need to look at it a bit more carefully, but, again, to answer your question, it is another idea, another scheme. Let us give it a run. Let us see if it works in London rather than in Southampton, Kilmarnock or wherever, and it is an argument in favour of piloting. Again, I am happy to email that to one of your clerks.

Q121 James Brokenshire: Before we leave the concept of pilots of whatever nature, do you have any views on where the pilots should take place or the breadth and scope in terms of the whole piloting arrangements?

Malcolm Dumper: I think you need a fairly broad scope for pilots. Areas are different without a doubt - that is shown in the evaluation of the pilots that were conducted from 2000 - so I think you would need a fairly good spread, and probably David can answer this question better than I, but there is possibly some nervousness amongst returning officers and piloting at the moment - anything to do with postal voting would be considered as being not wise to do - but I certainly think it is no good relying on, let us say, the north-east region, who are pilot mad these days. They will take it on because they are very much up for it, but I think you would need a good spread with many constituencies involved.

David Monks: I agree with that. You need urban regional, suburban areas, remote areas. Small authorities: small authorities tend not to put themselves up for piloting because they have not got the resources to do it. Perhaps the scope then for someone from a regional centre of excellence to help a small authority be encouraged to pilot. We need more numerically than we have had in the past, and there needs to be more thought about the structure of the pilot. In other words, do not stick to urban authorities who just do exactly the same thing. It is hopeless. That just proves they are pretty good at it. Try and be bold. This is very hard for people like me to say, "Yes, we are going to do a pilot", and we will probably have more negatives than positives on this because at the end of the day we get jumped all over by people who think they should have been elected and are not. The agents have a lot of difficulty with this as well. I think there is a bit of a learning communication exercise before the next pilots, but I think we need as broad a scope as possible, and larger numbers as well. Do not do a whole region. I do not think that is a good idea. We need them scattered throughout the country, urban and rural areas.

Q122 James Brokenshire: One specific proposal that comes out of the Bill itself is that there is one part that says that voters should have to sign for ballot papers in polling stations. What do you think the practical implications of that are going to be?

Malcolm Dumper: Probably not the practical implications, because I think that would not be too much of a difficulty for software programmes to devise a register that signatures could be applied to. I think the big issue there is the impact it will have on electors and their suspicions as to why they are providing that signature and the fact that it is another mechanism possibly for people to detect how they voted.

David Monks: Absolutely. Remember the demographics of who votes. Most people who vote are of pensionable age. It is their civic duty. They have always gone down to the polling station. They have never signed in their lives for a ballot paper. There needs to be a lot of education and a lot of awareness before we do that. I can see the letters flooding in to me now; I can see emails; I can see the Huntingdon Post's letters column, and I get the blame for all that. That is fine.

Q123 Chairman: It was an issue in the all postal elections in the north east?

David Monks: It was.

Q124 Chairman: The electors thought it compromised the secrecy of the ballot.

David Monks: Indeed.

Q125 Chairman: Incorrectly, but there was a perception there that it did?

David Monks: And think it through. Someone signs their name. I sign my name in different ways occasionally, depending on time pressures and how tired or interested I am. Are we then expected to start having a look at these signatures? "Yes", say the agents. "Oh, no, this chap here, he should never have voted. Look at his signature. It is nothing like his signature. Goodness me, this is clearly a forgery." I can hear that discussion now at half past one in the morning when they are arguing about some very, very close votes - we have them now - so I think it needs a bit of thinking about.

Q126 James Brokenshire: I suppose when I was talking about the practical side of things I was hinting at the impact that it would have on your staff and the arrangements and the pressures that are put on them. Would you make any comment on that?

Malcolm Dumper: It would hold up the poll. We do not have that many queues these days. You get rushes at particular parts of the day. Clearly if people are required to sign, let us be honest, in year one more people are going to ask why they are doing it. I can see us being engaged in a conversation with every elector as to what the background to this is and why they are going to be asked to be doing it. Yes, it would be a problem and so there is a practical implication there. It does give me a plug for individual registration though. If you are looking at it as an audit trail, of course, you have got it, but as David rightly says, people have never had to give any identification in the polling station for all the years that I care to remember and before that I am sure, so why the requirement now, and what is the purpose of it? Why is it required? That is what we need to ask ourselves.

Q127 Julie Morgan: Have you given any thought to people who are not literate?

Malcolm Dumper: I feel that the current arrangements of the polling stations and, indeed, postal votes is archaic. We have prescribed forms in polling stations that really do not help anybody be they of ethnic minority groups or people who do not understand our language even though they are qualified to vote, and particularly the visually impaired. I think the select advice which was introduced in 2000 was a step in the right direction, but we are extremely poor and it almost comes back to standards again. I do know that lot of returning officers now provide information in large print. Access to polling stations is a key issue. We work very closely with Scope. Most returning officers now ensure that all polling stations can be accessed by all, but we are not good at it, I do not think. We do not apply the proper thought and resources to it.

Q128 Julie Morgan: I was thinking of people who cannot read and write and who cannot sign.

David Monks: Exactly. I agree with Malcolm, and compared to some of the other public services, think of how we tackle benefits now? We have had a sea-change in the way we tackle benefits in my authority. Instead of asking people to come in and be interviewed through some sort of bullet-proof screen and to produce bank accounts, birth certificates and all these other wretched things, we send people out to see them in their own home with a laptop, a tablet. It is dealt with very quickly. If people are embarrassed about their literacy, which clearly some people are, as servants of the public we should not be seeking to embarrass them even more. It comes back to the earlier questions: are we then going to hold up the queue and someone at the front is going to struggle and put a couple of crosses on. That is not about encouraging democratic engagement; that is about putting people off and embarrassing them. Compared to some of the other services we are administering, you are absolutely right, this is Victorian, this is out of date.

Malcolm Dumper: I think there are two separate issues there, one is getting them to the polling station. Under the current arrangements, of course, the presiding officer can, with completion of proper documentation, assist them in casting their vote, but it is getting these people to the polling station, encouraging them to come, and, as David rightly says, show them that it is not difficult to do, that we do have processes within the polling station where we can assist them to cast their vote.

Q129 Julie Morgan: Would you see the signature as another barrier?

David Monks: Indeed. I have no doubt.

Q130 David Howarth: Can I ask you to comment briefly on another possible response to the problem about individual registration, which is that the Bill contains a couple of anti-fraud measures itself and there is a new offence of falsely applying for a postal vote, and there is the marked register of postal votes received, which is a major innovation. Do you have any comments on those particular measures? Do you think they will work? Are there any problems with them? Do you think they will engage local authorities, the police and the CPS in enforcing them?

Malcolm Dumper: On the fraud prosecution side, of course I suppose you can only test how successful it will be after it is implemented and whether cases are proven, but I think there are a couple of issues with regard to allegations of fraud, and what has happened up to now is the fact that very few prosecutions are made. That could be for one of two reasons: (1) that nobody has done anything wrong or, (2) how difficult it is to prove it, and I think that is the more difficult thing, and it comes back to what information has the person had to supply to the returning officer that the prosecutor can look at and say, "Yes, you have committed a crime"? It is very difficult. I think we would need a period of time to assess what the provisions are, but I think we would welcome any new offences to prevent electoral fraud.

David Monks: I go along with that but come back to my original point. What would be good - this is directed towards some of those people sitting over there - is if the media did not have reporters who have pseudonyms or bogus votes, if they did not do that sort of stuff. Frankly - I am sorry to say it - I think the BBC, was it this year or last year, had a chap down in the south-west who applied for all sorts of postal votes. He went round a graveyard I think - was it Channel Four - and he got lots of names. I am sorry, people like that deserve to be prosecuted, frankly. If that is what we are paying our licence fee for, for people to go and do that, I find that very distasteful. The burden of proof in criminal cases is quite difficult to discharge. However, I would say one of the interesting features - all of life is never as bad or as good as it seems - to come out of the cases like Birmingham, the prosecution at Blackburn, I have talked to their chief executives, is the attitude of the police. Five years ago if you had talked to them about this they would have taken the original Birmingham line. Remember what they called their operation? Operation Gripe. In other words, what on earth are we doing this for? This is not our scene. When I spoke to the police maybe five, ten years ago and said, "There is an allegation here of some criminal offence. I am sending someone down to the police station" I would often be met with either silence or what on earth are you talking about. I thought you ran elections." There has been a sea-change in their thoughts. We have met people from ACPO. They have, I think, a chap in Manchester who is a specialist in this area. That is good, that is commendable, but it is still difficult to get all the evidence together to get that prosecution home. Frankly, many years ago when I used to do this work, if you have not got good, solid evidence, people are prepared to come along and be good witness, there is not much point in starting, frankly, so I think we welcome it but prevention is always better than cure. The marked register on postal votes: yes, that is another happy burden being put on us as we send out our 8,000 postal votes. That is three or four other members of staff, but we will do our best and we will certainly produce that for you. I have been approached by one or two agents who say that there is some confusion about when that marked register is going to be released to us. I am not totally sure of the answer, but if it is a marked register like the polling station marked register, it will be released after the close of poll, would it not, not before?

Malcolm Dumper: Yes, as it stands at the moment. Clearly it is a very valuable document.

David Howarth: Absolutely.

Q131 Jeremy Wright: I want to return to the subject of registration, or, more specifically, non registration. I accept what you have already said that registration may not be top of the political priority list, but it is still very important and you have also said that it is the basic foundation for everything else that you do. From your perspective, can you tell us why you think people do not register, why we have a problem with non registration, and what you think we might be able to do about it?

David Monks: Sure. I apologise for using one or two slang words here, but certainly I have been in places like this and I have given evidence to committees like this after people who have been running campaigns like the Black Vogue campaign and that sort of stuff. It is not sexy and it is not cool to be on the electoral register, and a lot of young people think that. I have met people who have said, "The only reason we want to go on the register is because we want a mobile phone, because we want to borrow money to get a car, we want to open a bank account." Some people in authority will say, "If you do not on this register you have not got much chance of getting a loan or getting the bank account opened." So there are those sorts of aspects to it. I think it is about publicity, I think it is about education in schools, I think it is about citizenship and all those sorts of issues that we can link up with our education agendas. Having said that, I believe going round preaching to people saying, "You have got to do this. It is part of your duty. It is part of deference culture", that has had it. In the twenty-first century that is absolutely old hat. My authority have tried things like people going to sixth-forms and talking to them, and I think that has varying levels of success. People like me turning up with suits and speaking like this, I would think, is a big turn-off if you are 17 years of age frankly. I was going to say some of our members have gone along, but perhaps I will just leave it at that. MPs do it as well and I definitely will not say anything about that. So you can do that sort of stuff. How do we improve it? I think education as well. I think as well in certain areas, in certainly some of our urban areas, particularly in London, I think the registration figures are pretty low - 70%, 60% comes to mind. Malcolm probably knows the figures better than me. I think we in local government have to try and think of a slightly different way. We tend to think about electoral registration as a bit of a lump, a bit of a whole service. For example, I go back to benefits. The people who are on my counters processing benefit forms and going out and talking to people who make benefit applications are not the same people who are chasing people up for benefit fraud. We probably need some sort of special squad, some sort of special group of people who could probably work across a number of authorities, who would totally be charged with getting names on the register and trying to increase numbers. However, in conclusion, Chairman, I would say I am so old I can remember the community charge and poll tax, and, whatever happened, that taught us a lot of lessons that it is very difficult to hide yourself and if you are determined not to go on the register, however diligent we are, however much legislation we pass in this place, however clever these benchmarks are, we can knock on your door 15 times, you are not going on the register and there is a fair bet you are not going to vote even if I have got your name on the register, even if good people like you went out and canvassed. I am sorry if that sounds a bit pessimistic, but we have to try a bit harder and perhaps think a bit cleverer about the people who are going out and doing their work.

Malcolm Dumper: There is not a lot I can add to that. There is huge disengagement issue here. I would imagine that probably nine times out of ten the canvasser on the doorstep will get the response, "Why should I register?" The two clearly are linked. You see declining turn-out figures, and I think as a consequence there has been a decline in registration response as well. We have mentioned the course of answering a number of questions here today, I think, the things that we could do to try and address the problem, and I really feel, and again in answer to a colleagues question if, it is not an issue we will solve over night, but we have to be looking at what we can do longer term, and I really think the answer is to start in schools with a proper citizenship programme with the importance of democracy, possibly lowering the registration and voting age, dare I say, to 16 whereby people who were voting in school elections and being engaged in democracy issues in school are not going to have this period of time before they get out and vote properly at one of the local national elections.

Q132 Jeremy Wright: Of course the Bill itself talks about giving extra powers to those who are in your position who are both returning officers and registration officers to assist in the process you are describing. Clearly the authorities that you both represent have a selection of ideas as to the way in which you can do it. Is your sense that there is an equality across all of the different authorities about the ways in which people do promote from a local authority stand-point registration and voting generally and, because the Act talks about giving you the power to do it, should it talk about giving you the obligation to do it as an authority?

David Monks: The first part of your question is quite easy to answer. There is no equal standard across all authorities on, for example, publicity. What we have done in Huntingdonshire is fairly traditional stuff, advertisements, and we have tried in the last few years to put stuff on the side of buses running around. We do not have that many buses, but we have a few, but putting ads on the side of buses, saying, "Are you registered", because if we are not totally stupid we can work out there are some elections coming up. That was successful. Like all things in local government, we have got to get value for money. We cannot just think we will just chuck a bit of money at advertising and that will be good. We have to think very carefully how we spend that money. That was quite good. But there is certainly not equality across all local authorities and how publicity is carried out. My understanding from talking to the DCA is that we are going to get about £30,000 each to encourage, get the publicity. I would think something clever on the local radio, perhaps local TV, there are lots of satellite channels now. Definitely not for me but something in night clubs, or something like that. You have got to engage people who are out and about drinking on a Friday and Saturday night in our towns, preferably in the early part of the evening rather than the later part, but I have no skills in that sort of area. We need to get people who are skilled communicators, who know how to target a group. Do not just go for scatter-gunning the whole of the population. One thing that is in the Bill is reducing the age of candidacy to eighteen. Perhaps that would help. There is more identification and engagement with younger politicians - that would appear to be helpful as well - but we do need some new ideas and we do need to think - sorry to use a trendy expression - out of the box and do something on the streets outside some night clubs or something like that. What you find certainly with a lot of young people, they might say, "I am not interested in politics", but in my area they are very interested in the environment or there is a big company in my area called Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) which do experiments on animals, very controversial stuff, a lot of young people have views on that, and I have talked to a number of protesters on that. They would never think of voting. They would never think of expressing their views through the ballot box. They want to march up and down the street and shout at people like me and shout at the shareholders, but they are engaging in those issues; and I think there is a message here for people in this place and people who are my local members. How do you engage with people who are interested in those issues because that is what politics is all about?

Chairman: There are a couple more areas we want to cover, so unless there is a lot more to be said on that topic.

Q133 Dr Whitehead: There is in the Bill a provision for the establishment of CORE (Coordinated Online Record of Electors). Do you think if CORE in a number of areas is set up that the councils, which you have already mentioned this afternoon have quite different ways of doing things, would be able to submit their data in a reasonably uniform manner?

Malcolm Dumper: I think the benefits of CORE as I see it is that it would give us an opportunity to cleanse registers. They would be able to transfer information, we would be able to identify where people are double registered and where information is incorrect, but, as I understand it - of course I am not entirely sure what the next stage of the project is even though I have been pushing it forward - my concerns are that we have probably out there at the moment about 12 or 15 different software programmes that deal with electoral registration and that they are able to speak to the hub. I am sure the technical guys have sorted that out. I think the wider issues for local authorities is whether it is seen as an opportunity for others to access the information, by-pass the traditional purchase arrangements of electoral registers, convert them into whatever data they want and make vast sums of money out of it. My own authority is concerned in so much that income levels might go down because of the possibilities of commercial companies accessing the information directly from CORE rather than from the local authority concerned. I think it has got to be of benefit with regard to the actual register itself in cleansing it and enabling the process of transfer of information from a registration level a lot quicker, but other than that we will see the next elements of the project.

Q134 Dr Whitehead: You mentioned, for example, that the different software packages need to be adapted or are being adapted?

Malcolm Dumper: I am pretty sure the first part of the project has ensured that they are all compatible and they can feed into the hub.

Q135 Dr Whitehead: This is going money?

Malcolm Dumper: Yes.

David Monks: I think the answer specifically to your question is eventually. My understanding is that there was a stage in this process - I am not on the board like Malcolm - where the idea was that all software systems would be not necessarily of a compatible standard but of a standard that would talk to one another. I do not there are as many as 15; I thought it was down to six or seven. From what I understand, yes, you can by magic boxes to convert gobbledegook into somebody else's gobbledegook, which is fine, but some of the systems, particularly those developed by some of the larger authorities in house, were just so incompatible it is best to just chuck them out and start again. That is not ten minutes; that is probably about year's work, but, again, as I understand it, there are people in the DCA and the Electoral Commission who are doing this. The idea is, yes, you are quite right, we must have the same standards.

Q136 Dr Whitehead: Who would then fund it? Is the assumption that this would come out of existing budgets or is there going to be a core funding, shall we say?

David Monks: Yes, central government.

Q137 Dr Whitehead: This is your assumption or your wish?

Malcolm Dumper: Both.

David Monks: It is where we starting from, put it that way. I do not see why the council tax payer of Huntingdonshire or Southampton should have to pay for this. It is beyond me. Central government must fund this. I think there is some central government funding. I heard about 12 million being talked about, but that has been around for some time. We are going back to the old days.

Q138 Dr Whitehead: Mr Dumper, you mentioned the issue of local authorities not being able to sell the data?

Malcolm Dumper: Not being able to sell it. If there are six software companies out there, the data that they provide to one of the credit reference agencies, for example, is going to be different, so they are going to have to do some conversion and pay for conversion to get it into a format that they can then go on and do their marketing, or whatever reference use they have for it, but, of course, if they could go to the hub and get it in one particular format, they are going to do that. I do not know what the access rights are or, indeed, what the purchase costs will be, but although local authority income is not significant on the sale of electoral registers, it does go some way to help towards the budgets that they incur, and, dare I say, this is an opportunity anyhow to look at what we do charge for the electoral register. It is a ridiculously low amount of money that we charge - dare I say that there is a colleague from behind me - she was last time - but they will pay something like £400 for a copy of the Southampton electoral register, and you know how much it costs....

Q139 Dr Whitehead: Exclusively to ring me up and offer me things?

Malcolm Dumper: It is to validate your credit references, as I understand it, which then costs you £2.85. How many people do that during the course of the day is probably enormous just in the Southampton local authority area. I am getting a little over £300 for that. It goes no way towards offsetting any of the costs we are undertaking in running that register.

Q140 Dr Whitehead: In theory CORE could actually, as it were, require local authorities to spend more money in order to get less income?

Malcolm Dumper: Potentially, yes.

Q141 Dr Whitehead: If CORE did go ahead in the way that is envisaged, it would have project keeper, which one assumes might be the actual commissioner?

Malcolm Dumper: That is quite a natural suggestion, I think. I was quite concerned in reading that there may be several different keepers, different areas to set up CORE. I think there needs to be one controller of the project based on consistency throughout the regions if they are going to be split down to areas.

Q142 Dr Whitehead: The keeper of the CORE does sound rather like the Lord of the Rings, I have to say! Let us say the Electoral Commission were the keeper of the CORE and you had personal identifiers of the kind that you favour, would it then be a logical step perhaps that the responsibility for the whole register might move to the Electoral Commission in the way that we have, say, in Australia and Canada?

Malcolm Dumper: It comes back almost to the first question we were asked today by Mr Howarth about the Commission's role, and, in fact, would they want to take on that governor role within the electoral services? I doubt it very much. I think there needs to be retention of local knowledge and the local ability to conduct electoral registration. I do not think the Commission can in any way conduct the exercise of registration and the custody of all electoral information from one area. I think it would need to be regionalised, but whether or not that is something that the Commission will take on in the future is not for me to speculate on.

David Monks: I think they could be the keeper of the CORE, and, as I was saying to David Howarth earlier on, I think they could use us as their local agents. There is no way they should go out and employ armies and armies of people to do something we have been doing, but the line of responsibility à la elections, à la what I was talking about before, the line of responsibility on the electoral registration should be back up to the Commission and not our personal responsibility. Let them set the standards, let them take the responsibility; perhaps they could fund us as well. It all makes sense when you pull all those lines together. I certainly do not think it should be a government department. I think it should be the Commission and it should be independent from government or whatever particular administration.

Q143 Dr Whitehead: If you had that scenario developing, then also indeed, I think, from the responses you put in your evidence, you would have the possibility of sharing data in various other ways in order to externally validate, as it were, what was happening as far as the register was concerned. What sort of level of data would you think it would be reasonable or appropriate to share, and, if you did have that level of sharing, would that affect, do you think, in any way how the canvas that we have already discussed might be carried out, in as much as you could say, "All these people we know are still here because they are pensioners or drivers or whatever, and therefore we can do certain things as far as the canvass is concerned"?

David Monks: Exactly. I think, to pick up that last point first, then you would perhaps do a canvas - I have heard it suggested once in the life of every Parliament, I think that would be a real risk if you have had say two or three elections a year, but you could put a time limit on it once every three or four years. Remember that a lot of the people who come back on our register do not move. People in Huntingdonshire say, "Why do you keep sending me this form? Okay, my 16 year old will become an 18 year old", or something like that, that is fine, but these people do not move house. What we need to do - is it the Australian system - is to concentrate on the people who are moving house and if, to pick up the last part of your question, we could get access to other records, DVLA, DWP, some of these other government departments, at worst it would be a cross-check and at best we could pick up people who we have not got already; so the accurateness of the register goes up for, frankly, not a huge amount of effort, just a modest amount of effort, and, again, if I was a civil servant arguing back against me - which is one of the ways we think when we produce all this stuff - they could say, "Well, we can probably do with either very, very minimal extra resource or outwith existing resources." You know, the exchange of the odd few emails, or something like that. Can we check these addresses? Can we check these names? There are probably data protection issues there now, but again that is something we could look into. As we have said in our evidence, we think we should be having a looking at things like DVLA and looking at their records.

Q144 Chairman: Have you discussed that with the department? What is the state of your discussion? If I remember rightly, data sharing will be dealt with by secondary legislation if the Bill goes through in its present form, will it not. Is not that the gateway?

Malcolm Dumper: I think that is right.

Q145 Chairman: Are you in discussion with the department about what kinds of data....

Malcolm Dumper: I think the next phase for the CORE project, I believe, is to unfold fairly soon, and one presumes that that debate will then be had, but I am not sure whether it is going to be by secondary legislation or not.

Q146 Chairman: I am more interested in whether they are talking to you about this?

Malcolm Dumper: Certainly we will do. Indeed, in discussions we have with DCA that will certainly come out. I would just like to return to Dr Whitehead's question though. I think there needs to be a careful balance struck here about the elector providing information which will in time, I presume, include some form of personal identifiers. Whatever that will be, the concerns that there might then be that this is going into a national database and what access rights are there - who is actually going to access this information, and so on - I think needs to be very carefully thought through to ensure that there is some protection to the individual with the information they have been providing.

Q147 Chairman: One last topic I want to touch on, which is service registration. There was an appalling fall of 118,000 service voters in the three years after the new system was introduced. Would you have any problems if you went back to the old system?

Malcolm Dumper: I certainly think they appear to have been hard done by since the new arrangements in 2000 when the ability to register at home and the declaration of local connection in some cases for those who did not have a permanent address seemed to satisfy the problems that the MoD were having with their service units. We used to be very critical of the service industries, as I think they were called - the Army, Navy and RAF - that they were re-enacted, but I would like to see them set up again, because I think they had an important role to play.

Q148 Chairman: You would like to see them?

Malcolm Dumper: Set up again, that the MoD in the particular service areas have particular units that are responsible for ensuring that people are completing the registration documentation for their local authority areas.

Q149 Chairman: The other essential feature of the old system was that, whilst you were registered, you remained registered for the whole of your service.

David Monks: I remember this. We have that issue in Huntingdonshire where we have quite a lot of RAF personnel, and that was the criticism of the old system, because these people are shunted not only around the world but around the country as well, so they lose contact with their area. I think to answer your question directly, the answer is, yes, we could introduce a system. I am not sure if reintroducing, resurrecting the old system and grafting it on to what we have got is the best way forward. If you are going to say to us that we have got to do better, yes, given the time, the resources, the training and all the other stuff that we always go on about, we would do our best to get these people on because they are entitled to vote as is anybody else and so we must do better and get them on the register.

Q150 Chairman: The other system was simple.

Malcolm Dumper: Yes. I do not think it was resourced properly.

Q151 Chairman: There was a risk of greater overhang, but it did not require a great deal of training and activity as long as the units put the names in?

Malcolm Dumper: Yes.

Q152 Chairman: Thank you very much for your time today. It is much appreciated. The show will run, as these proceedings go on and on, but we will try to bring to bear your advice on those of the members who are taking part. Thank you very much.

Malcolm Dumper: Thank you.