Representation of the People (England and Wales) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2006

I want to pick at one or two of the details of these regulations, and I suppose that the Minister will remind me that I have got my anorak on again. I have tried to work out how many election counts I have been to, but I lost count, although the number is into three figures, which is extraordinary. I wonder what I have done with my life. Very often, ensuring smooth, efficient and well run elections, and the other side of the coin—stopping people fiddling elections—are a matter of the detail, which is very often important. Regulation 4 of the Review of Polling Districts and Polling Places (Parliamentary Elections) Regulations states: "““On completion of a review the authority must publish””," a list of provisions. I am not sure what is meant by the word ““publish””, which may be obvious to everyone except me. What does that mean? I also have one or two comments on how the regulations in the main document might work in practice. Part 4, entitled ““Replacement of Counterfoils””, refers to what we will now learn to know and love as the ““corresponding number list””. Are the corresponding number lists among those documents that can be inspected by people as set out after the election? I am concerned about those lists, which are set out on pages 58 and 59. It will be fairly easy for voters—particularly at a quiet polling station where people might stay to chat for five minutes with those behind the counter because they know them—to have a good look at the list. They would be able to see the electoral number and the corresponding ballot paper number. Until now, a real effort has been made to stop people knowing ballot paper numbers because they then could go along to the count, see the number and work out how a person had voted. Usually, that is not very easy to do, but in small wards where there are not many votes it could be quite easy if forms such as L2 are just lying on the table as voters go in. The presiding officers and clerks write down the numbers and then get people to sign. When people sign, they will be able to see the names of everyone else who has signed. That worries me a little. Do the Government have a comment on that? On personal identifiers, noble Lords have picked up on the fact that only 20 per cent will be checked. The Electoral Commission has expressed concern about that. New Regulation 85A, on page 25, sets out the procedure for checking personal identifiers. The implication of new Regulation 85B—on additional personal identifier verification—is that the returning officer has to check 20 per cent, but, if having checked 20 per cent they think that things might be going on that ought not to be going on, they can check more. Is that the case? I have two questions. First, if a minimum of 20 per cent must be verified, will places where it is suggested that there might be more fraud than in others be expected to verify more than 20 per cent right from the beginning? If so, what criteria will be used for deciding that in particular places? Will advice be given to returning officers, or is it entirely up to them? Secondly, once 20 per cent have been verified, what criteria will be used to decide to verify more? By that stage, it will be quite difficult to get everything out again and start re-checking. It will certainly delay everything a great deal. Will candidates’ agents be consulted at that stage? If you go to a lot of these events, you generally find out quite quickly that the role and status given to agents varies greatly from place to place. In some places, agents are given very few rights and are simply consulted at the end when everything has been added up. In other places, the culture allows agents to keep an eye on what is happening as it is happening. I am not clear whether that will be possible under the regulations. Will it be possible, for example, for the signatures of the 20 per cent to be checked in the presence of agents, or will they be checked secretly? This is key. Will this simply be left to returning officers? If it is, there will be huge differences between the practices in different places. That is simply the way it works at the moment. On the changes to proxy applications, I shall talk briefly about the recent case in Burnley in which two people were found guilty of defrauding the returning officer as a result of wrongfully filling in proxy forms. I do not want to say too much about it because I understand that they may appeal. I shall wait until everything is finished before I have a lot to say. Nothing in the regulations tightens up the procedure for applying for a proxy vote. At the moment, it is very easy—indeed, it is accepted in a lot of places—simply to write on the form ““away at work””, ““in some other country”” or ““on holiday””. The judge in the case recommended that the system of proxy voting should be reconsidered and tightened up a little, or perhaps a lot. I wonder whether the Government have taken that on board. I have seen proxy application forms, and I learnt some time ago that, if you are an agent for an election in some of these areas and your party is submitting proxy applications, you must insist that you look at all those applications very carefully before they go in. In the light of what has happened in Burnley, I am very glad that I have insisted on that in recent years. You find that people write things such as ““shopping””—a classic one. I upset some of our workers by simply tearing the applications up and saying that they could not be accepted. The form and the system are not as rigorous as they should be. We then come to the question of access to the marked electoral registers and other documents in Part 7. The regulations set out very clearly that it will be possible to have access to personal statements after the event, and that the people entitled to make an inspection may make handwritten notes but not copies. That is a difficulty, because it depends on signatures. At the moment, it is possible, after the event, to check the declarations of identity against the witness statements. The ability to photocopy signatures and check them against the signatures of the people concerned has been a valuable way of telling whether there has been any fiddling in postal votes. This is a grey area in the regulations, although I have certainly been allowed to do it in the past. The fact that this will no longer be possible will make it more difficult for representatives of the parties and the candidates to investigate any possible fiddling. One of the reasons why there are so few prosecutions in election fraud cases is that it is very difficult to gather evidence. It is especially difficult to gather evidence within 28 days to seek an election petition. It would be much easier if one could inspect not only the statements that people make when they vote but the application forms for postal or proxy votes. In the past, the regulations have been grey and it has been possible to inspect those, but in the past two or three years the Electoral Commission has ruled that that is not possible, and registration officers seem to have applied that ruling. I do not understand why it is not possible to look at the application forms for postal and proxy votes. That would enable evidence on fraudulent applications to be gathered. At the moment, it is very difficult to do that. On page 39 of the regulations, under the heading ““Miscellaneous Amendments””, there is reference to an, "““Additional requirement for applications for ballot papers to be sent to different address from that stated in application””." That is extremely welcome. I hope that the measure will be applied rigorously and that statements such as ““going shopping”” will not be accepted by registration officers as a reason for diverting postal votes. We all know of the Birmingham case and of many allegations in other places of the wholesale diversion of votes to postal vote ““factories””. That is one of the main problems that has arisen with postal votes. I hope that reasons will have to be stated in detail so that people cannot just write vaguely, ““Away from home””, which is what has tended to happen in the past. It would be extremely helpful if applications for postal votes could be inspected by people who might have evidence on whether they were valid. Applications for postal votes must be made on white paper within a box measuring 5 x 2 centimetres. That is fair enough. Presumably, if they are submitted on Basildon Bond blue paper, or if the relevant information is outside a box on the form, they will be sent back. As regards the postal voting statement that is sent in with the ballot paper, what happens if there is a perfectly reasonable signature, which is clearly the relevant person’s signature, but it goes over the edge of the box? Will that invalidate the vote? Will the form be sent back for another signature, which would be a recipe for all sorts of complaints and chaos? Or will it be accepted and looked at manually rather than by whatever other system will be used? It seems to me that there is great scope for silly problems to arise in that area if we are not careful. Finally, page 50 of the regulations refers to the postal voting statement. As regards the boxes where the voter has to include his date of birth, no doubt it is fairly obvious to many people where you have to write the day, the month and the year. However, some people, particularly those from different cultures, may put those figures in the wrong place or write them back to front. It would be helpful if under those boxes the words ““day””, ““month”” and ““year”” were included, as often occurs on other forms.