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Lord Filkin: My Lords, I shall do my best but I suspect that I shall need to take advantage of the latter suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart. I thank both Front Benches for acknowledging that we have worked with disability groups representing the interests of the disabled.
Clearly, ensuring that an all-postal ballot is accessible to those with disabilities is of real importance to the Government and to the House. There is reasonable evidence that many if not all disabled people find postal balloting advantageous. I shall not discuss that point at length but the Polls Apart survey showed that 96 per cent thought that postal balloting was either convenient or very convenient—however, the survey covered a relatively small number of people—that some 91 per cent thought that it was either easy or very easy to use, that 75 per cent thought that it was a better system and that 82 per cent, given a choice, would prefer to vote by that method in the future.
However, the fact that postal balloting appeals to many disabled people does not detract from the fact that one must work hard to make it as right as one can. The information has to be in a simple format. We spoke about that at some length in Committee. The pilots are concerned with making voting easier and therefore the information must be comprehensible to disabled people. Where we differ concerns the degree to which we specify exactly how to fulfil that objective. We believe that we must look to returning officers to follow good principles and good advice on how they do that. The Electoral Commission recently produced guidance on that issue entitled Equal access to electoral procedures. We believe that electoral administrators will utilise that guidance and we shall re-emphasise the importance of their doing so.
As has been signalled, we distributed our policy paper, if not universally, which referred to disability issues. I wish to read into the record some of the relevant points in the policy paper which set out our position. Supported delivery points must be accessible for the disabled. It would be a nonsense for a building with the traditional 15 flights of town hall steps to be used as a supported delivery point. That would clearly discriminate against disabled people. Therefore, I want to put it beyond doubt that such buildings must meet adequately and fully the requirements of legislation on access for the disabled, or they should not be used.
Electors will be able to request assistance with voting at an agreed place. For example, if a disabled person wants assistance, he or she can set up an appointment for that. Electoral administrators will make arrangements to deliver a tactile voting device to a blind or partially sighted elector to enable them to vote in private. Electoral administrators may, if requested, provide assistance, including marking ballot papers, for a disabled person at a supported delivery point. I shall consider whether the word "may" should be slightly stronger as it seems to me that it should be possible to assist disabled people in that way at an SDP. However, I make no commitment in that regard without reflecting on the matter. SDPs must have a large-scale version of the ballot paper available for voters to refer to.
We are working hard to try to ensure that these measures are accessible for disabled people. We met representatives of SCOPE and the RNIB last week and we are certainly happy to continue an active discussion with disability groups. I shall write to the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, on the points that I have not covered.
Amendment No. 32 would require the Electoral Commission to report on the extent to which pilots facilitated voting for those with disabilities. I totally agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, that that should be done. However, both we and the Electoral Commission believe that that is already captured by Clause 4(6)(a) of the Bill which requires the commission to report on the extent to which the pilots facilitated voting at elections. The Electoral Commission has made it clear that it interprets that provision as it should do; namely, that it includes reporting on accessibility and convenience for those with disabilities, and that it will so report. Therefore, it is already charged with a statutory duty that addresses this issue and it has furthermore confirmed that it understands and interprets the measure as it should do.
Although we do not agree with the letter of the amendment moved by the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, we totally agree with the spirit of it and we believe that we shall give effect to it through the means that I specified. For those reasons I hope that the noble Earl will feel minded to withdraw the amendment.
Earl Attlee: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, for his support. He asked a number of pertinent questions on which the Minister agreed to write to him. I hope that I and my noble friend Lady Hanham will receive a copy of the letter.
The Minister said that postal voting has advantages for disabled people. By inference that comment applies to those with mobility challenges but we are concerned at the moment with those with sensory disabilities. The Minister appears to have taken on board our concerns for which I am grateful. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Hanham moved Amendment No. 9:
- Page 2, line 14, at end insert—
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, Amendment No. 9 focuses on the problem of delivering ballot papers to houses in multiple occupation (HIMO), a matter on which we dwelt at length in Committee and which has already been touched on today. Several examples have been given, especially by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, of abusers of votes that have been delivered to houses in multiple occupation. Since Committee stage I have had a number of representations made to me on the same basis, that it is an easy, open door to fraud.
I emphasise that when we talk about houses in multiple occupation, we use the description defined in Section 345 of the Housing Act 1985 which covers a large range of communal living establishments: homes, residential homes, student halls and so on. We are very concerned about the possibility in such places of a number of ballot papers being posted through the door, collected up by one person and filled out, either without the knowledge of those to whom the postal ballot was sent, or for people who no longer reside in the house in multiple occupation. If there is one place where the population turns over quickly, it is in a house in multiple occupation. There are many examples of a 50 per cent change over between the electoral register being created and the election taking place. It is not a simple problem but a significant one.
In care homes for the sick or elderly or in student accommodation, people may be completely unaware that any elections are taking place in which they have a right to vote. If their voting papers vanish in the interim, they will be more unaware and the papers will be of no use to them. I was pleased to hear the Minister say in Committee that he would consider the matter further before Report and that he understood the concern surrounding it. However, the noble Lord said that our approach was too much of a burden administratively, it gave no assurance that fraud would not take place and it was too prescriptive. Instead, he advocated leaving the issue up to the discretion of the local regional returning officers.
Nevertheless, despite such caveats, on page 17 of the policy paper some encouraging comments appear. Having said that, as I mentioned when speaking to the
The Government have clearly conceded in principle that hand delivery would be one way of tightening up the procedures. We would like that to be compulsory for all the reasons that I have given. If left to the discretion of the regional returning officers, the worry is that they will try to justify the risk as not very great, and therefore not put in place provisions to implement the suggestion. The timescale is short and we know that the returning officers will be rushed to put in place all the necessary provisions for the election, but one or two examples of voting going wrong in HIMOs will be enough to put a question mark over the whole postal voting system. Therefore, I believe that it would be appropriate for there to be a mandatory requirement that the papers had to be hand-delivered to the premises and at least some check made that they were delivered to people who still lived there. I beg to move.
Lord Alton of Liverpool: My Lords, I support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness and corroborate what she said about the practicalities of houses in multiple occupation. Unlike a house with one family in residence, if 10 or 15 people live in a house in multiple occupation, the turnover is very great. Electoral registers are regularly out of date before they have even been printed because people move on. Many itinerants and drifters tend to migrate in and out of houses in multiple occupation.
The danger of the theft of mail in such properties is one that was regularly drawn to my attention when I represented an inner-city area. Theft of mail was a regular occurrence. Mail would just be pushed through the door of a house in multiple occupation or there could be lots of pigeon holes and boxes inside where letters could be left so that anyone would be free to walk into those properties and simply take away all the correspondence that had been placed there. Sometimes if money were sent through the post, that could lead to people being financially much worse off.
I believe that there is a real danger that the situation could be open to abuse by those who want to manipulate or to distort the outcome of an election. They could simply raid the communal boxes or take the mail that may be strewn across the doorstep, which is regularly the case when one walks into a house in multiple occupation, walk off with the ballot papers and commit the kind of fraud to which the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, has referred.
The amendment is very reasonable and I wish that it went slightly further. The noble Baroness has framed it in a moderate way. She is asking for the ballot papers to be hand delivered and the amendment refers to,
Lord Filkin: My Lords, I agree that, like previous issues with which we have dealt today, this is important. It goes to the heart of ensuring that there is confidence in the postal balloting system on which we are conducting the pilots. Before noble Lords get too excited that I am about to make some major concession, I shall explain why we think that what the Electoral Commission has advised, with which we agree, is right.
Essentially the commission has advised that the returning officers should be charged, in their local situations, with the responsibility of seeing how best to manage the potential for risk in houses in multiple occupation. That is for a good reason rather than being just a "they say it's all right, leave it to them" type of approach. Two sets of issues intersect at the same time on this matter. We are talking about situations in which common mail is delivered through a front door and it sits in a common place until people pick it up. I was reflecting that my London residence has just such a system. That may or may not be a HIMO. There can be some HIMOs—if I can use that slang—as defined in the Act mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham. In some situations, flats are in HIMOs and yet the postal delivery is secure.
A further point is that not all houses in multiple occupation automatically have high turnovers, but many do, such as the kind about which we are talking, the classic lodging house situations mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Alton, or where there is a large churning of people and therefore the risk of a large amount of voting literature being around. In other HIMOs there can be a stable population; for example, long-term homes for the elderly where facilities are shared.
There are a number of different situations. As I do not believe that it makes sense for the Government or even the Electoral Commission to specify a rule that would apply across those different situations, the proper approach is to look clearly at the guidance that we and the Electoral Commission are putting out, make clear the potential of risk, and make clear the responsibility to try to manage risk by thinking about the issue. If anything, I shall look at the guidance to see whether that is clear or not in what it says about the management of risk in local situations. I believe that is what we are talking about.
Further, as we signalled previously, this will highlight what the post-election research must consider and whether there are problems of abuse that have not been trapped. I suggest, with respect, that that is the proper way to try to manage the risks, without in any sense implying that we are not treating the issue seriously.
"( ) The pilot order must make provision for postal ballot papers relating to houses of multiple occupation (as defined in section 345 of the Housing Act 1985 (c. 68) (meaning of "multiple occupation")) to be hand-delivered by an officer of the local authority who must make reasonable efforts to ensure that those to whom the votes are delivered are still in occupation on the premises."
"reasonable efforts to ensure that those to whom the votes are delivered",
actually receive them. One could go further than that. I believe that there should be a way of verifying, such as signing a form, that people have received the ballot,
so that it is known that ballot papers have arrived in the hands of those for whom they are intended. I hope that between now and Third Reading the Minister will reflect on the matter. It is a very proper concern and one that the Government should take seriously.
6.15 p.m.
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