Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I thank noble Lords who have taken part in this debate and highlighted some interesting aspects. I suspect that parts of the 1983 legislation have not been visited for some time. To take the general point, I am not aware of any moves afoot to review electoral law in this way, but I am sure that those in the responsible department will take note of what is said with regard to the generality. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, referred to this disparagingly as a cut-and-paste job. The schedule seeks to ensure that as far as practically possible, the existing rules governing the registration for and the conduct of parliamentary elections should apply in the case of the referendum. As is very obvious, in order to take account of this, there have had to be changes in terminology. For example, it would not make sense to have references to candidates when there are no candidates in a referendum. To do that, people had to go right through. I was asked whether this section of the 1983 Act would be considered for revision in future. We will want to look at that, but it is right that we base the referendum on the rules that we know. If I had come to the House with subtle changes, I would have had a difficult job trying to explain them, and no doubt some noble Lords would have thought that a great conspiracy was afoot. In future, we will be happy to review the provisions, but I cannot honestly say that it will be done quickly—certainly not in time for Report. However, I do not think that that was what was asked: I think that the request was to look at this more generally. I will respond to specific points. I do not have the information about whether there have been any convictions under Section 61 of the Representation of the People Act. That is a matter for the courts and I am advised that the information is not collected centrally. The provision with regard to voting on one’s own behalf or by proxy, to which the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, drew attention, is intended to cover the situation where one can vote on one’s own behalf and also by proxy on someone else’s behalf, but one cannot vote twice on one’s own behalf. That brings us to the question of postal votes. There is a danger of Members of the Committee getting into their anecdotage. The noble Lord, Lord Maxton, asked whether, if you have a postal vote in one place but are registered in another, as Members of Parliament have been, you could vote in another place even if the postal vote had been issued. I know the answer because in the 1989 European elections I had a postal vote in the Highlands and Islands constituency, for which I was a Member of Parliament, and I was living in London. Local elections were on the same day and it took me a long time to persuade the polling clerk not to issue me with a ballot paper for the European elections because I had already voted and it would have been an offence to vote again—whereas I did want to vote in the local elections. I do not know how I knew about it, but I did. Perhaps it is important, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, pointed out, that the information should be in the material that will go out to those who receive a postal vote that they may not vote more than once.