European Parliamentary Elections (Amendment) Regulations 2009

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and will try not to make interventions from a sedentary position in future. As a former—many years ago—member of the Liberal Party, it is occasionally too difficult to resist the temptation. I offer my commiserations to the Minister, whose voice seems to be suffering a little. I shall try to keep my questions relatively short but, no doubt, he will still manage manfully to answer all the questions put by my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. I start, for once, by offering the Minister some congratulations. He said that the Ministry of Justice had narrowly missed its target for publishing the second order on time. That is a great improvement on what it has achieved in the past, as it has quite frequently missed its targets by a considerable margin. Despite what the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said, the points made by my noble friend Lord Inglewood are highly relevant and important. He pointed out that in this and in previous orders the Government are proposing to treat Members of Parliament, whether hereditary Members or life Peers, differently in relation to election to the European Parliament. We want a full and proper answer from the Minister, and I hope he will be able to give it. If he does not, he will find that this matter will have to be considered in due course by the European Court of Justice, if not by the European Court of Human Rights on a human rights issue. There is a case to answer, and the Minister must try to do so for the Government. I agree with everything that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said about postal voting. Over the past few years, the Government, in their desperate desire—so they say—to increase turnout at elections, have made it easier and easier for people to have postal votes. A lot of that is very good and quite worthy, but—I do not want to make a party political point because we all know from press reports that there has been corruption in postal voting involving all three parties—there is corruption, and it is very easy. It behoves the Government to look very carefully at postal voting to see how it can be tightened up. On the extracts from the Explanatory Memorandum that the Minister read out on postal voting, are the Government proposing slightly tighter rules in European elections than in general elections and local elections, or are they just bringing them all into line? The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, rightly said that he did not think that there was likely to be that much fraud with postal voting in European elections because, obviously, it would be very difficult to influence the result of the election given the number of votes involved. However, bearing in mind that the European elections will, as I understand it, take place on the same day as the local elections, it is also likely or possible—the noble Lord will not know any more than I do; it depends on what the Prime Minister decides—that there could be a general election on the same day. The possibility of fraud in one will influence all three, so it is very important that the Government address that in due course, even if they cannot sort it out—