The most important thing is the sequence of events. First, we want to get the register right. The Bill gives a much wider responsibility to electoral registration officers to get the registers complete and accurate. An accurate register makes it more difficult for somebody to commit an offence at the point of voting. The easiest thing in the world is not to vote fraudulently but to register fraudulently. That is why we are keen to make the register accurate and complete in the first instance.
Secondly, when tendering a postal vote—voting at the polling station is not an enormous problem for the communities to which the hon. Gentleman refers—the identifiers should mean that there is no problem. The Electoral Commission constantly monitors arrangements to ensure they work for everybody.
There are structures in place to detect suspicious applications to register. One thing hon. Members spoke about earlier was the liaison between EROs and the dedicated single points of contact within local police forces. That ought to improve police performance in that respect. The key is the introduction of individual elector registration, which the Bill allows and which will remove some scope for malpractice.
I criticised my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley for the vagueness of his proposals. I know he will take that in good part, because he did not intend to prescribe. I do not go along 100% with some of the things that came up in the debate. I am not sure, for example, that having CCTV in every polling station makes sense. Some polling stations in my constituency are lucky to have electricity, let alone CCTV.
In addition, there are confidentiality issues. I would be slightly worried about such a change. This country has a long and important tradition of secret ballots, and some people are already worried that simply being ticked off contradicts that principle. It does not, of course, but having a television camera trained on them might give those people cause for concern, so this is not something we want immediately to embrace.
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Having said that, I hope that the Electoral Commission, the police and Department officials will consider constantly what initiatives and changes of practice can be made to bear down on fraud, and I think that my hon. Friend’s comments are important. I am not one of those who simply say, “Oh, fraud is such a small issue that we needn’t bother about it.” It is not a small issue but a big issue, and one that strikes at the heart of our democratic system. Luckily, though, it is reasonably low-level at the moment, which is how we want to keep it—low-level to the point that we can actually remove it from the system. That is why we are taking such stringent measures in the Bill and why we will continue to do everything we can.
On that basis, I hope that my hon. Friend feels that he has been able to air his concerns, that the Government are responding to them and that we will make further progress on dealing with fraud and personation, which undoubtedly remain but which we hope we can eliminate in due course.