My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend. We strongly support the amendment. The fact that it is presented to the Committee by four very distinguished members of your Lordships’ Constitution Committee gives it rather special significance.
In general, we should trust the presiding officer in the polling station to use his or her common sense. It is their role to use their discretion in that respect. However, if anything, they should surely seek to give every opportunity to the elector who has come in good faith, and in good time in most circumstances, to vote.
I am reminded of an incident when I went at about 11 am to a very remote polling station in a draughty caravan in the middle of Bodmin Moor in a winter election. It was the smallest electorate in my then constituency; indeed, there were only 18 people on the electoral register, and 17 of them had long since voted at 11 am. Everybody knew that the 18th person had actually died in the last few weeks before the poll. Yet of course the presiding officer and his assistant had to stay there in that bitterly cold caravan for the following 11 hours.
I give that example because, of course, we do not know how many presiding officers in May 2010 used their common sense to give a ballot paper to those who were actually within the building and standing in a queue ready to vote, having been there perhaps for some time, without already being given a ballot paper. We only know about the ones who were kept out by those who thought perhaps they were doing precisely the right thing in the circumstances—the 1,200. However, in my view it is incumbent on this House and the Government to try to clarify this situation. It is clearly the case that in May 2010 a large number of people were disenfranchised by the circumstances of the particular polling station and by a sensible approach not being taken in the terms to which the noble Baroness so eloquently referred—the human right to vote in a democratic society.
9 pm
The Government, as has already been said, were quick to say that legislation was not needed, and they
continue to claim that amendment is not necessary. Surely the question that must be before the Committee today is: what harm would it do to pass this amendment to clarify the situation and make sure that we do our very best to enable everybody to vote who should be allowed to vote?
As I mentioned previously, I sit on the cross-party informal advisory group to the Electoral Commission; and therefore I take very seriously the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, has just made. The commission previously thought that it was not necessary to make this change. It now enthusiastically supports this change. I hope that the Committee will permit me to repeat the quotation which I think the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, referred to earlier, and to give it in absolutely specific terms about the Scottish local government experience, because I think that it is extremely relevant. I cannot see how my noble friend the Minister can ignore this recommendation from our official advisers. The Electoral Commission said:
“We believe that the Scottish Government’s legislative provision to enable the issuing of ballot papers to those who have arrived at the polling station by the close of poll is a wise backstop which puts the interests of voters first, and we continue to recommend that similar provisions be made for all other statutory elections in the UK”.
That could not be clearer. I believe that the logic is impeccable, and it comes from our official advisers. Parliament has recently—and continuously—said that we must listen to the Electoral Commission particularly on these sorts of issues because it is so easy otherwise for Parliament to take a partisan approach to this sort of issue.
I simply ask my noble friends on the Front Bench to recognise that it would be unnecessary and certainly counterproductive to continue to fight this amendment. They should accept it or commit to an alternative with the same effect at Report. I look forward to a very positive response from my noble friend.