Electoral System

I have not mentioned postal votes yet, but the hon. Gentleman has raised an important issue about service personnel. With the Electoral Commission and the Ministry of Defence, a lot of work is being done, as we speak, to ensure that service personnel abroad are given all the information that they need about registering to vote. As I understand it, the Electoral Commission says that if service personnel send back that information as soon as they get it, all of that will be taken on board. We are monitoring that situation carefully to ensure that service personnel are not disfranchised while they are serving our country. Alongside the duty to get more people on to the register, we have a duty not to undermine the system by scaremongering about the level of fraud. That brings me to what the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire had to say. Disproportionate attacks are as much to blame for driving down confidence in our system, elections, politicians and Parliament as anything else. He mentioned a poll that showed that people believe that there is fraud in the system. The Electoral Commission commissioned a poll and more than half of the people who thought that fraud was a problem said that it was because they had read about it in the newspapers. So, it was not because they had experienced fraud themselves, but because they had been influenced by what the media were saying. On that basis, the hon. Gentleman must be careful about spreading further rumours.