Electoral Administration Bill

moved Amendment No. 20:"Page 3, line 18, after ““for”” insert ““redirection to””" The noble Lord said: This brings us to an important part of the Bill. In moving the amendment, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 21. This section of the Bill provides the mechanisms by which the CORE scheme can be used to tackle fraud in more than one constituency and in more than one local area, or by the same person in the same constituency. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, asked earlier what the purpose of a national database was. I have much sympathy with him, in that I am instinctively against national databases for anything, because they are dangerous if they are misused. However, the main reason why I support this database is the ability to check whether there is fraud across constituencies. I do not know how much of that might exist, but there may well be some, and I have no doubt that in general elections some individuals are registered in and vote in more than one constituency, because they have that opportunity. It is not large-scale, organised fraud, but it should not happen. Indeed, I know of instances when that has happened. My understanding is that this part of the Bill makes provision for the information that can be shared across constituencies via the new CORE database about people who may be registered in more than one constituency. They may be voting more than once, which is against the law, and they may be doing other things. The circumstances are set out in subsection (6), which deals with multiple registration. In many cases, there is nothing wrong with multiple registration. Many people have the right to be registered on the electoral register in more than one place. There may be people who live at home at the weekend and work in London, Manchester or elsewhere during the week, and they probably have the right to be registered in both places—and, indeed, in local elections to vote in both places. But, come a general election, a European election and so on, they have no right to vote in more than one place. The ability to track such people is important. There is a lot of multiple registration. We want to be clear that it is not all wrong but we need to know when it is taking place. Although the Big Brother overtones of it all cause me some disquiet, nevertheless I can see the advantages of it from the point of view of having fair elections in which people exercise their rights but no more than those rights. Subsection (6)(b) relates to people applying for postal votes at the same address and refers to,"““more than such number of postal votes as is specified in the scheme””." The informal advice given by the Government to returning officers is a number of half a dozen. If the number is higher than that, the returning officers should look into it. Perhaps the Minister can tell us what level the Government are thinking of, subject, as ever, to the consultation. The paragraph continues,"““is requested for the same address””." It seems to me that that is going over the top somewhat. There are lots of addresses where all, or many of, the electors have postal votes and it is perfectly legitimate, and asking people to investigate it is a waste of time. For example, if there were an election during the summer, there might be lots of postal votes at Butlins holiday camps—if such places still exist—or at similar holiday addresses. In the normal course of events, there will be a large number of postal votes at student halls of residence and student colleges. Indeed, there are many large families and many houses of multiple occupation where a lot of people are registered. Each one has a perfect right to apply for a postal vote to be sent to his or her home address. There is nothing wrong with that and it should not be investigated. As we discussed at some length when we dealt with the European Parliamentary and Local Elections (Pilots) Bill a couple of years ago, the problem occurs mainly when postal votes are redirected to other addresses. There is an easy mechanism by which unscrupulous or crooked people can steal votes from people by getting them diverted to what in the Birmingham case was known as a ““vote warehouse””. I told noble Lords about the famous case four years ago in which 54 votes in Pendle were diverted to two terraced houses in Rochdale where that number of people could not possibly have been living. I think that we are talking about that kind of diversion of votes here. I therefore seek to insert the words ““redirection to”” before ““the same address”” so that the paragraph would read:"““more than such number of postal votes as is specified in the scheme is requested for redirection to the same address””." That seems to be the problem that the amendment is trying to tackle—unless there are other problems that I have not clocked which the Minister can tell me about. In the second amendment in this group—Amendment No. 21—I suggest that, where the same person acts as proxy for more than two electors, it should be clocked up. As I understand it, people have the right to vote by proxy in two elections in different constituencies. You could have six proxy votes—two in Pendle, two in Burnley and two in North Cornwall—and spend polling day driving around the country and exercising those votes. I understand that that is perfectly legal and therefore I do not understand why anyone doing it should be subject to this reporting mechanism. It is equally true that people are entitled to act as a proxy for an unlimited number of voters if they are close relatives. However, I can understand that if someone has 10 or 12 proxy votes, even if they are all legitimately for close relatives, people might want to check that that is the case. I understand that. It seems to me that my amendment, which will qualify this, is reasonable. We do not want a great hue and cry when people exercise their rights under the legislation perfectly legitimately and it is not causing a problem. That will simply deter people from exercising the rights that the legislation gives them. If you do not like it, then change the legislation, but if people are to have those rights, they should be able to exercise them without being investigated by the local ERO or his employee. I very much welcome this clause. It is at the heart of the CORE scheme and is the only reason that I can see for having the scheme, but we should be careful not to go over the top. I beg to move.