Electoral Administration Bill

I can tell the noble Baroness that they were considering things like postal voting—and they rejected it because they did not think that it was secure. The point I make is that the basis of those debates was the principle, not pragmatic issues like how to raise turnout. I think that the principle still applies. On that basis, I am happy to be old fashioned. I was going to compliment the Minister on being young enough to have a cassette recorder when she was a youngster. Some of us had big reel-to-reel tape recorders and thought that they were the bee’s knees. More seriously, I will compliment her on her measured and balanced response to the amendments. It contrasts quite dramatically with the gung-ho, ““white heat of technology”” speeches which have been made by some Ministers in the House of Commons. The Minister over here at the very least understands the problems, and that is welcome. If the Government want to experiment with new technology, in my view the place to do so is in the polling station or within polling places. They may want to look into setting up polling machines in the high street where the crucial issue is not whether you have an electronic machine that appears to work, but what happens to the audit trail produced by the machine and the encrypted receipt to be given to the voter. You cannot see how someone has voted, but if the technology works well the receipt can be matched to the person if later there is a query. If a proper audit trail can be produced and the voter can be given a print-out of how they have voted which they can then put in a ballot box, which if necessary could be checked if there are questions about the accuracy of the machine; and if the voter can be given a receipt to show how they have voted and which can be returned to the machine to be unencrypted, we can move towards investing in voting machines in polling places. That would deliver fairly instant election results except in those instances where there are queries or recounts. If the Government want to consider new technology, that is the way to do it, rather than looking at ways of enabling people to cast their vote away from polling stations.