European Parliamentary Elections (Amendment) Regulations 2009

My Lords, I was fascinated by what the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, said but I do not think that it was exactly the subject of our discussions this afternoon. I entirely understand why he has taken the opportunity to put his thoughts on the record but the Minister will probably be pleased to hear that I shall not be pursuing that line. In most cases, these regulations and orders just regurgitate everything that has been before with, as the Minister said, a few changes to bring them into line with previous regulations and with the 2006 Act. Therefore, there is not much to complain about on the whole, although I shall start with a couple of general quibbles. I shall be very brief because, again, they are not really the subject of these regulations. The first is the whole question of postal voting, which is now regulated for the European elections in the same way as it is for national and local elections. It remains my personal view that postal voting in this country is far too easy and far too open to corruption. The new rules and regulations have changed the way in which people who wish corruptly to use postal votes operate but they have not prevented them doing so. Having said that, I do not imagine that there will be a huge amount of fiddling of postal votes in the European elections, as it is not clear what its purpose would be. The smaller the electoral area, the easier it is to fiddle the postal votes and change the result. I do not think we should expect there to be a lot of postal-vote fraud in the north-west, for example, on this occasion. There should certainly be a lot less than there was last time, when there was universal postal voting. It is some five years since we discussed the pilots Bill that brought about that postal voting, and I should put on the record that we on these Benches are pleased that the Government appear to have moved away from the idea permanently—at least, I hope that they have. With my second general point, I wish to put down a marker about the electoral system. Obviously, the electoral system for European elections has to be proportional. It is unfortunate that the Government have chosen the worst possible proportional system for these elections, but I shall say no more than that at this stage. We would be delighted if everyone had to put ““1, 2, 3 and 4”” on the ballot paper instead of an ““X”” but I shall not pursue that further at the moment. I have one or two questions but, before raising them, I wish to make one general gripe, which is probably nothing to do with the Minister or this legislation. Clearly, this document is laid out in the way in which statutory instruments are normally laid out. They are normally one, two or 20 pages long, but here we have a document of 139 pages. There are no running page headings so that you can understand where you are in the document, and there is no list of contents and no index. That is rather ridiculous, especially in these days of computers, when it is so easy to do such things. This style is okay for short statutory instruments but absolutely hopeless for a document of this size, particularly as this will be a working document for a lot of people. There are now people around the country—and there will be more when the document is approved by both Houses—who are using it as the basis for their administration. It will be reprinted in other forms that may be more convenient for people to use but I think that my point is valid. It is a general point about the unfriendliness of this type of government document. The Minister is nodding his head, so he obviously has the same problem as I do. I have one or two questions on this document. The first is on the verification of postal votes and the verification of personal identifiers: the signature and date of birth. Does that apply to 100 per cent of the postal votes which come in? When they were first brought in, at least in some areas, only a proportion were verified, although in some parts of the country, including parts of Lancashire, they verified 100 per cent because there was thought to be a problem in those areas. Is there to be 100 per cent verification? I hope the answer is yes. Secondly, I am a little confused about the situation in Scotland. I looked at the table and did not understand it. I understand it a little more now—it is Schedule 1A. Are the votes in Scotland counted and announced by constituency or by local authority area? I assume that in England it will be local authority area, as it was last time. The Minister said that part of these regulations referred to combined elections in those areas which will have county council elections in England, but they do not appear to set out how those combined elections will take place. Therefore, I assume there is another set of regulations and that the Minister will tell me whether they have already been approved—I assume they have not. Will they allow the two elections to be administered together, or is it already set out somewhere that that is not required? Will the Minister say where the marked registers will be held after the elections? In the past, there were problems when we had combined elections because they were taken to London and some of them were lost. I understand that all the marked registers will now be kept locally. Can the Minister confirm that that will be the case for the marked registers in June, so that people who want to check them for the county council elections will not find that they have been taken to a warehouse in Chelmsford or somewhere in the south-east of England and then lost? Will the marked registers be kept locally now for both of the elections? New Regulation 74 refers to the imprint on election literature. That is the new form of imprint with the printer, the promoter and on whose behalf it is produced. Is that compulsory from these elections onwards? There was a period when either the old or the new imprints could be used and everyone was totally confused. For these elections, will the new imprint, as I have just described it, be compulsory? The name and description on the ballot paper are set out in Regulation 22. As the Minister said, it must contain the names followed by the description, if any, of the registered parties shown in the statement of parties and individual candidates nominated. I am confused about that. One can use up to six words to describe a candidate. Instead of ““Liberal Democrat””, I could say ““Liberal Democrat against airport on Pendle Hill””, or whatever. Some years ago, the Liberal Democrats in London ran as the ““Liberal Democrats””—