European Parliamentary Elections (Amendment) Regulations 2009

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken and, in particular, the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, who, as I think he knows, I will not be able to please very much today. I pay tribute to him both as a Member of the European Parliament for the 10 years that he served there and as a Member of this House. He is a highly respected figure in both institutions. I am very sorry that he was not able to be here on 14 October, because his speech would have been, if I may say so, much more apt on that occasion, as I think he said this afternoon. We know that there are always good reasons why people cannot be here; that often happens on the days when you particularly want to be here. However, I do not intend to attempt to answer the noble Lord’s point today. I regret his phrase—in time, I hope that he will too—describing the Government as being economic with the truth on this matter. I do not think that that is either fair or a particularly sensible thing to say, if I may say so. As he knows, the instruments that we are debating today are made under different enabling powers from those needed to address the issue which—I absolutely concede—is of great importance to him and others. The noble Lord knows that the issue of hereditary Peers was given full consideration by this House in that important debate in October and he knows the line that the Government took—I was the Minister. It was that hereditary Peers and life Peers arrive in this House by different means and that that includes, as he pointed out, standing for election in the case of hereditary Peers; the consequences of a vacancy are rather different, because the House of Lords Act 1999 provides for a vacancy only following a death. I attempted to make it clear in that debate—I will quote myself now, which is not something that I am prone to do—that: "““Our intention with these regulations””—" I was referring to the regulations of that day— "““was to provide a simple, pragmatic and interim solution to a specific and pressing problem””.—[Official Report, 14/10/08; col. 677.]" We dealt sensibly with that problem in those regulations. I understand absolutely that that has not satisfied the noble Lord. I remind the House—the noble Lord referred to this—that we remain committed to ensuring that the issue that he and others raised should be considered as part of the wider debate on House of Lords reform. The European Parliament (House of Lords Disqualification) Regulations 2008, which were debated and agreed on 14 October, were intended as an interim solution in advance of full reform of the second Chamber. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, made some general points and asked some very interesting questions. He and the noble Lord, Lord Henley, quite properly raised the issue of postal voting. They will know that postal voting has proved popular and has boosted turnout at elections, which I am sure they support. They rightly pointed out that we must balance accessibility with security. That is why we have recently acted to tighten security and have introduced new requirements to produce personal identifiers to get a postal vote and stronger sanctions, powers of investigation and punishment of those who are guilty of electoral fraud. The Electoral Commission’s report on the 2007-08 elections suggests that our action had a positive effect on the safety and security of the system. The available evidence suggests that incidents of postal voting fraud remain isolated. However, it is important that the Government are not complacent about this issue. We keep the electoral process under review and will consider what future action may be taken to ensure that it remains secure and whether we need to take action to address malpractice in other parts of the system, for example, personation in polling stations and proxy voting generally. That is as far as I can go this afternoon in response to the noble Lord’s general points. I have to admit that I have a sneaking sympathy with the noble Lord’s comments on the large regulation. He explained why that happened; statutory instruments are published in that way. I hope that it will comfort him to some extent if I agree to go back and say that when a statutory instrument is of this size, an index, for example, might be of value. I do not for a moment say that I will succeed, but for our purposes and, more importantly, for those of electoral administrators, we need some sort of index. I thank the noble Lord for making that point. The noble Lord asked a number of detailed questions, including whether there was 100 per cent verification of postal votes and personal identifiers. Perhaps I may remind him that the statutory level remains at 20 per cent, which I think he knows. However, I understand that the majority of areas will aim to check 100 per cent. If 100 per cent checking proves impossible in each region, we will have to see whether the statutory level should be increased for future elections. The noble Lord asked me about counting votes and announcing results in Scotland. I advised that the votes are counted by the local returning officer in each local counting area, but that the returning officer for each electoral region announces the result for each registered party and individual candidates.