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Baroness Hanham: I thank the Minister for that reply. There is not much point in taking the matter any further at this stage. I shall obviously want to re-read the letter from the Royal Mail, which I saw very briefly. I am still slightly concerned that the facilities are not robust enough, but we shall have to look at that further. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 4 [Electoral Commission report]:
Lord Filkin moved Amendment No. 21:
- Page 3, line 3, leave out subsection (1) and insert—
The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 21 is another consequential amendment. We spoke to it previously. I beg to move.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Fookes): If Amendment No. 22 is passed, I cannot call Amendment No. 23 by reason of pre-emption.
Lord Filkin moved Amendment No. 22:
The noble Lord said: Government Amendment No. 22 is essentially an alternative drafting of Amendment No. 23, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, the noble Earl, Lord Attlee and the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth. It would ensure that, when producing its report, the Electoral Commission had a duty to consult all district or county councils in a pilot region. The discretion with regard to other tiers of local government would remain in place, although this will now be implicit rather than explicitly stated.
An amendment was tabled in Grand Committee that would have compelled the Electoral Commission to consult all local authorities in a pilot region. That was resisted on the basis that in some areas it would involve consulting perhaps hundreds and hundreds of parish councils. I am sure that that was not the intent behind it. Therefore, we have tabled this amendment
Baroness Hanham: My Lords, I merely thank the Minister for the amendment. It takes account almost entirely of the amendment that we moved in Grand Committee and, indeed, that which we have put down today as Amendment No. 23. It is a sensible outcome. Many of the other relevant authorities of course are within the local pilot areas, but I am satisfied that sufficient account will be taken of everyone who has taken part in the pilot to ensure that we get a report that matches up to what we would expect and that gives us an opportunity to see for the future how things have worked. Having said that, I clearly will not take Amendment No. 23 any further because I will not be allowed to.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Lord Filkin moved Amendment No. 24:
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Earl Attlee moved Amendment No. 25:
The noble Earl said: In moving Amendment No. 25, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 33. We decided to return to this amendment, which we debated during Grand Committee. At that stage we received some positive answers from the Minister, but nothing that we believed was sufficient to set our minds at ease concerning the issues of fraud and malpractice.
The greater potential for electoral fraud and malpractice which all-postal voting creates is evident to noble Lords. We have conceded that, despite these potential abuses, it is worthwhile trying out a system of all-postal voting in European parliamentary and local government elections.
However, it would be irresponsible to do so without trying to set out as many safeguards as possible on the face of the Bill and in the pilot order to try to minimise such abuses. That is one issue that the Government are indeed taking seriously. We can see from the policy paper that they have put forward a number of suggestions about how fraud can be countered. These include extending the penalties for personation, providing security at SDPs and in the processing of ballots and so on.
Our question, however, is how we know whether this is successful in stopping electoral malpractice. What of the coercion, intimidation or selling of votes that we know occasionally happens? What of the shared households where ballot papers could simply
Our amendment picks up that point. It focuses on Clause 4—the report that the Electoral Commission draws up on how the pilot went. There are a number of criteria, which explain who must be consulted and what kind of things should be contained in the report. Subsection (3) obliges the local authorities in the region to assist the commission in preparing its report. Subsection (4) explains that this assistance may include asking the electors their views on the administration of the elections. Paragraph (b) refers to,
The basis for our amendment is straightforward. We do not think that the local authority should merely report allegations which it has received about personation, but it should be obliged to do spot checks to ascertain whether malpractice has taken place.
The process should be proactive, not merely a case of reacting to allegations. That is clearly a vital part in collating evidence to see whether the all-postal voting system works on balance. It is designed to encourage voter participation. But if that is at the expense of a far greater increase in malpractice, either more protections need to be put in place or we need to think again about using it as a system for elections.
Research has to be done into whether the type of electoral malpractice that I mentioned earlier—the bullying, intimidation, vote buying or vote usurpation in houses in multiple occupation—is taking place. Anyone who is a victim of such malpractice is probably unlikely to report it. We need a duty on the local electoral administrators to go out into the community and ask a random sample of those who have voted whether they were party to any malpractice.
The policy paper which the Government have put out accepts the rationale behind our amendments. Paragraph 14.3 on page 16 mentions further provisions to tackle fraud which, we learn,
One of those, paragraph 14.3.4, mentions,
It appears that the Government can see the sense in our proposed amendment. Many of our concerns are covered by their Amendment No. 34. Our only difference is that we make it an explicit duty of every local authority that co-operates with the Electoral Commission in gathering the evidence on the success or otherwise of the election.
Spot checks or random sampling is the only means by which it is possible to get any representative idea of how common electoral malpractice is, or is not.
Amendment No. 33 deals with the issue of secrecy. We have had several discussions during the debate today and in Grand Committee on the problems of secrecy in all-postal voting. I will not rehearse them all again now, but will outline where our thinking has got to since our discussions in Grand Committee. As a newcomer to this area of policy, the contribution during Committee of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, was very helpful to me in understanding how important secrecy in the ballot is.
We know that the Government are taking this issue very seriously. I was gladdened to see several references to secrecy in paragraph 14 of the policy paper. Paragraph 14.3.5 mentions the,
While these proposals on secrecy are a positive step forward, we still believe that there is a need for something more specific in the Bill. We are therefore grateful for the last line of government Amendment No. 34, which will require the Electoral Commission to include in its report an assessment of whether the piloted system undermined,
Given the many ECHR concerns in relation to secrecy which were discussed in Committee and today, it is vital that secrecy is included as a separate point for consideration.
Liberal Democrat Amendment No. 35 lies within this group. That would require the Electoral Commission to carry out something like a market research exercise after the elections to research whether personation or electoral offences had taken place. It may be necessary because some might feel that such research techniques might contravene the principle of secrecy without legislative authority.
From the Minister's comments at cols. GC208–09 of Hansard for 29 January, the Government may concede on this amendment now it has been revised since Committee stage.
We support the amendment entirely. I beg to move.
Lord Goodhart: My Lords, may I start by returning the compliment to the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, in saying that while he supports our Amendment No. 35, we equally support his Amendments Nos. 25 and 33.
It is important that the Electoral Commission should look carefully—and in as much detail as possible—into the question of possible personation and electoral fraud in all-postal voting regions. As we have made clear—particularly my noble friend Lord Greaves—this is potentially a very serious problem indeed. So far, the Electoral Commission has relied to a large extent on the
I recognise that the second subsection that is to be introduced by Amendment No.34 goes a long way to meeting the issues raised by Amendment No. 35. I hope that the Government expect and will request the commission to use a sampling by polling a representative group of electors as one of the methods by which they will aim to achieve that objective. I appreciate that they cannot give orders to the Electoral Commission as it is an independent public body.
"(1) After a pilot election has been held, the Electoral Commission must prepare a report in relation to it."
Page 3, line 8, leave out subsection (2) and insert—
"( ) For the purposes of subsection (1) the Electoral Commission must consult the council for every county and district in the region in which the pilot election was held."
Page 3, line 16, leave out "elections" and insert "election"
Page 3, line 18, at end insert—
"( ) making arrangements for the inspection of a sample of ballot papers to ascertain whether there is evidence (even where no allegation has been made to that effect) of personation or other electoral offences or malpractice"
"reporting to the Commission allegations of personation and of other electoral offences or malpractice".
Our amendment would insert a further manner of assistance as paragraph (c):
"making arrangements for the inspection of a sample of ballot papers to ascertain whether there is evidence (even where no allegation has been made to that effect) of personation or other electoral offences or malpractice".
"may be included within a pilot order or may be provided in the discretion of the RROs".
"checks with a sample of people marked as having returned a ballot paper to check that they did send in the papers and were not coerced in the process of completing and returning them".
"inclusion of secrecy warnings on voting and proxy voting literature".
"extending the scope of secrecy rules to cover all postal provisions to require those serving in a delivery place, and those providing assistance, and observers to abide by the secrecy rules".
We are pleased to see that these are both intended to be mandatory provisions.
"the secrecy of the ballot".
7.15 pm
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