Electoral System

I really would like to move on because several Back Benchers wish to speak and the debate has been curtailed already. The 2006 Act introduced the new offence of falsely applying for postal votes and extended the offence of undue influence so that it became an offence even to attempt to exercise undue influence. It also created the offence of providing false information to a registration officer at any time and gave the police extra time before prosecutions needed to be brought forward. I know that the police were keen to see that and they have welcomed the measure. There are new regulations in place to tighten the security of postal voting further. Administrators are now required to send confirmation letters to applicants for postal votes. Any postal voter who wants a vote to be redirected must give a reason why that should happen. Other measures include new secrecy warnings on election stationery and the introduction of a marked register for postal votes returned, which will help to detect fraudulent postal votes. Registration officers have the power to cross-match with other records held. Those new measures demonstrate that we have taken every allegation of electoral fraud seriously and that we are absolutely determined to prevent any future incidents of fraud, as far as we can, while ensuring that the anti-fraud measures are proportionate to the scale of the problem.