My Lords, at this stage of the evening I do not intend to go again through the arguments we had about weekend voting during the passage of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. However, I am a long-standing advocate of a change to voting at the weekend, or at least for it to be considered. We have never held a proper pilot to assess whether more people might choose to vote if they were able to do so at the weekend. The amendment tabled in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Tyler seeks to give Parliament a chance to decide to hold the next general election over one or two days of the weekend following the presently scheduled date of 7 May 2015. This would permit time to consider properly all the issues about opening polling stations at the weekend and about, for example, religious observance.
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The deliberate provision for polling to take place on two consecutive days would mean that no one need be disadvantaged by the requirements of their faith. Polling hours could perhaps be reduced if spread over two days to, say, 9am to 6pm, which would mitigate against potentially increased costs. To every practical objection to this measure, there is a practical answer. Those of us who campaign in elections know the frustration of trying to contact the working population of a whole constituency in the few hours between 6pm and 10pm, to remind them to vote. We know that electors who are contacted on polling day are much more likely to vote than are those who are not contacted. For that reason, if for no others, it is clearly wrong that the working population is so much less likely to meet someone on polling day asking them to go and vote than those who are retired and more likely to be at home during the day.
When we discussed the idea in principle of weekend voting during the passage of the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness said:
“I want to make clear that we are not ruling it out. I want to reassure the House that not including something in this Bill will not rule out the possibility of us returning to this issue”.—[Official Report, 15/3/2011; col. 175.]
Therefore, we are returning to it briefly this evening. On this occasion, I ask the Minister to consider moving beyond simply returning to the issue again in another Bill. We could move towards doing something about it. If this amendment is not quite the right one then
there are alternatives. One alternative I have sometimes argued for is that we try weekend voting at the next European elections in 2014. Much of the rest of Europe votes on a Sunday anyway, so we would be bringing our arrangements into line with them by having voting on a Saturday and Sunday with votes counted on the Sunday evening at the same time as in the rest of the European Union.
I believe it may be much more convenient for many voters to be able to vote on a Saturday and Sunday than it is for them to have their schools disturbed, their children perhaps to have to be looked after, and for schools to be closed. I believe it is a bad sign to close the schools on a Thursday in order to vote when perhaps our children should be continuing to learn and parents should still be able to work. We can talk at great length about weekend voting, but it is a principle that should be considered, properly piloted, and if we pass the amendment it would allow proper time for consideration of it before the next general election. I beg to move.