My Lords, Clause 10 provides for regulations to specify the detail of how constituents may sign by post or proxy. The detail about how postal and proxy signing will operate will be dealt with in regulations made under Clause 18. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, laughs. He accused me
of not taking seriously his attempt to drive a change in the voting age into the Bill on the grounds that it made it a farce. I suggest—with the greatest respect, as he might say—that that was going considerably over the top.
The approach to regulations on postal voting mirrors that of UK parliamentary elections, where the rules for absent voting appear in secondary legislation. At an election, this is usually the 11th working day before the poll, which allows applications received in the days just before and up to the deadline to be processed and postal ballot packs issued to electors for them to complete and return in time for the close of the poll.
For a petition, it is possible to set a deadline during the petition-signing period itself. The last day of the period is, in effect, analogous to polling day at an election, so there needs to be a cut-off point. As noted in the memorandum prepared by the Cabinet Office and placed in the House Libraries before this debate, the Government accept that deadlines will need to be set within the eight-week period for absent vote applications to be made. In doing so, we recognise the additional need to check that the petition has not already been signed in person at the signing place, and to ensure that registers are properly updated to show that an absent vote application has been approved, thus guarding against the risk of double signing.