Electoral Administration Bill

My Lords, I beg to move that the House do not insist on its Amendment No. 8B, to which the Commons have disagreed for their reason numbered 8C. As I have mentioned in previous debates, the Government accept the principle behind your Lordships’ amendment for individual registration, but we believe that we should make changes that affect our democracy only with great care. To do otherwise could cause damage. Therefore, on reflection, we ask that your Lordships’ House does not insist on its amendment. We have already agreed unanimously, between both your Lordships’ House and another place, on a new system for personal identifiers for postal voters, which is of course where the main risk of fraud occurs. We will, as we have committed to do, examine what lessons we learn from this in some form of post-legislative review, as I indicated in our previous debate on the subject. The key challenge for us is to ensure that we can get these important measures in place in time for next year’s local elections in May. This will be a significant challenge for administrators and the wider electoral community and can happen only if noble Lords approve this Bill, which I hope they will do today. If this Bill is passed today, I hope we can send out the message that your Lordships’ House has approved measures which will significantly improve the security of the system. I believe that this is critical to public confidence. As noble Lords will know, within this legislation we have in place that the Bill requires personal identifiers for postal and proxy votes to protect against postal voting fraud. It creates two new election offences—it revises the offence of undue influence, enabling the offence to be prosecuted even where influence has not led to any action being taken; it increases the length of time available for the police to carry out investigations; and it provides the statutory secrecy warnings to accompany postal voting papers. These measures, and in particular the use of postal voting identifiers, will help to eliminate electoral fraud and increase public confidence. This is a comprehensive package of important changes. I believe it deserves, and rightly has, the support of your Lordships’ House. Moved, That the House do not insist on its Amendment No. 8B, to which the Commons have disagreed for their reason numbered 8C.—(Baroness Ashton of Upholland.)