Electoral System

Much has been said about fraud, but the other problem is when constituents are unaware of their rights and they are prevented from casting their postal votes by things that are not specifically fraud. Let me give the Minister one example—probably the most frustrating case that I encountered in Shrewsbury during the 2005 general election. A lovely elderly lady who lives in Hanwood, a village south of Shrewsbury, had voted in every election for the past 70 years and she was looking forward to voting for me in 2005—she had a large ““Vote Conservative”” poster in her garden. She had received her postal ballot for the county council elections, but not for the general election, and with one day to go when I met her, it was too late for her to reapply to obtain another postal vote. She did not realise that, because she had applied for a postal vote, she could not go to the polling booth to cast her vote. She was not the only one affected by that frustrating problem: many other constituents in the village of Hanwood did not receive their postal votes. I am not saying that that was the result of deliberate fraud—it was perhaps the result of an error by the Post Office—but those people did not receive their postal ballots, and in the present system they could not simply go to the polling booth to cast their vote. Shrewsbury is to pilot various electronic voting processes, and I hope that the Minister will tell us how much she will give Shrewsbury and Atcham borough council for piloting those schemes. I very much hope that the Government will pay for them, rather than the local Shrewsbury taxpayer. Our borough council is excellent and is doing an excellent job. I have confidence in the chief executive, Robin Hooper, as a good returning officer; he is accountable to my local council and is part of our community. The one problem with the Government trying to force unitary status on us is that we will no longer have just one council and one electoral officer. One person will cover the whole of Shropshire and could have to deal with four or five constituencies on one night. No chief executive can properly manage on one night an election involving four or five constituencies—that is absolutely ludicrous. One chief executive of one borough council should be the electoral officer on the night in question. I am very pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) secured this debate, because there are a couple of related issues that I feel passionately about that I want to raise. My hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) mentioned his passion for democracy, and, I, too, came into politics because of my genuine passion for democracy. There have been allegations in Shrewsbury against certain Labour councillors who work in our local post office; indeed, I have received these allegations myself repeatedly. What can I do if they are anonymous? However, the situation is imprinted on one’s mind. One ultimately thinks, ““Yes, they work in the post office. They could, as Labour party activists, play some role in manipulating postal votes.”” What is the Minister going to do to ensure that Members of Parliament such as I can have confidence in the process? Now, I find out that the Labour parliamentary candidate selected to stand against me also works in the sorting office at Shrewsbury post office.