Electoral Administration Bill

moved Amendment No. 50A:"Page 7, line 37, at end insert—" ““(   )   In an election in which candidates or parties are entitled to a free delivery of election material by Royal Mail, the returning officer shall arrange to be sent to each elector at that election who has an anonymous entry (A) a copy of each qualifying item of literature provided by the candidates or parties by a specified date in an envelope or other form of covering so as not to disclose to any other person that A has an anonymous entry.”” The noble Lord said: The amendment explores how candidates and political parties may be able to get their message through to people when they do not know who they are—so, by definition, they cannot ring them up or knock on their door to say, ““Hello, are you Mrs. Anonymous?””. It follows the wording in subsection (8) of new Section 9A of the 1983 Act, which lays down that if a registration officer or a returning officer for the election has to send a communication to an anonymous elector, he does so in a plain envelope that does not identify that it is an election communication. The amendment proposes that in circumstances where candidates are entitled to a freepost communication, a similar process should operate: that the returning officer should be responsible for forwarding such material in a plain envelope to such an elector. The amendment recognises the importance of candidates in political parties being able to communicate with voters. If you do not know who your voters are, it is clearly much more difficult to communicate with them. Of course, you may communicate with them by accident: they may live in a street where you are delivering leaflets, so a leaflet goes through their door and that is okay. But the law lays down that candidates and, in some circumstances, parties are entitled to a freepost in every election except local elections—I think it is nowadays. My noble friend may contradict me on that, but certainly at general elections, European elections, mayoral elections and elections for the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, it is possible to send a communication that the candidate produces for free by the Royal Mail. So it seems only fair to provide that system of free distribution by whatever means is necessary to preserve anonymity to anonymous electors. Clearly, that cannot be done through the Royal Mail because it cannot be addressed to an anonymous person. So the purpose of the amendment is to see whether the Government agree and how they feel that that problem can be overcome. I beg to move.