Electoral Administration Bill

The amendments relate to pilot schemes for local elections in England and Wales under section 10 of the Representation of the People Act 2000. Amendment No. 21 would prevent local authorities from making applications to the Secretary of State to conduct pilots of all-postal ballots. In 2002, there were 13 all-postal pilot schemes. Those pilots secured significant increases in turnout in many areas. There was a 38.7 per cent. turnout on average in all pilots, compared with a national average of 32.8 per cent. In 2003, 33 all-postal pilots took place. The average turnout was just under 50 per cent., compared with the general picture of around 33 per cent. Subsequently to those first two trials—this is the point that I was making earlier, although I think that the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) mischievously chose to misrepresent me slightly—all-postal pilots were held in four English regions: east midlands, north-east, north-west and Yorkshire and Humber. Some 14.1 million electors were involved. At that election, turnout more than doubled in the pilot regions from the 1999 levels. In 2004, turnout in the pilot regions was 42 per cent., compared with 37 per cent. elsewhere. It is performance such as that that has led to many local authorities supporting all-postal ballots, as they keep turnout up. Clear and sincere concerns have been expressed about how we can tackle fraud in the midst of all that. I outlined earlier the fact that there are anti-fraud measures in the Bill, albeit only in brief because the matter was not especially germane to that group of amendments. Further measures to combat fraud in postal voting will follow in secondary legislation. The measures include a requirement for the address of the electoral registration officer to be on the postal vote application form and will require a reason for redirecting a postal vote. All applications for postal votes will have to be confirmed in writing and replacement postal voting papers will be available up to 5 pm on the day of the poll. Some of the learning and development that supports those changes has come from pilots in which specific problems have been highlighted. The Government believe that those measures will support all-postal pilots in the future, but we want them in place before any further pilots are carried out. As a result, the prospectus issued by the Department for pilots for the May 2006 elections specifically states that the Government are not seeking applications for all-postal pilots. While we have no intention to roll out all-postal voting as the default position for local elections in general, there might be instances in which such a pilot can be conducted effectively without any security concerns. In order to consider whether there is a case for allowing such elections to continue on an all-postal basis, we need to ensure that pilots of voting in such a way can be run to test and improve systems before any wider implementation.