Political Parties and Elections Bill

I am not aware of any electoral fraud in postal voting in the county of Cumbria. I am aware, from criminal cases that have been before the courts and which have affected, I am afraid to say, all three of the main parties represented here, that there has been electoral fraud in various parts of the country as a result of postal voting, with which we are particularly concerned. I am not aware of any in the county of Cumbria, but I will wait to see what criminal cases might or might not emerge from any other part of the country. Having dealt with the interventions from the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, I will say a word or two about Amendments 125BA and 132AA in this group, in the name of myself and my noble friend Lord Bates. They have been tabled to invite the Minister to make a response; in other words, they are probing amendments. Amendment 125BA deals with our concerns about data protection implications. The introduction of individual voter registration will mean that a lot more personal information is held by the electoral registration officers and shared between both central and local governments. Therefore, before such schemes for individual voter registration are established by order, consultation should take place with the Information Commissioner, as well as the Electoral Commission, to ensure that adequate data security procedures are in place and that best practice is followed. We certainly do not want any further examples of large-scale data loss on our hands from local government at a time when we are trying to improve confidence in the electoral register. Amendment 132AA deals with the fact that there is currently no provision for personal identification at the ballot box. That bit of electoral fraud arising from impersonation has not been dealt with. I appreciate that that is not a major problem. As will be obvious to the Committee from the exchanges between myself and my fellow Cumbrian, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, most of the problems with electoral fraud are in relation to postal voting. There have obviously been problems with impersonation in the long distant past but, in the main, postal voting fraud is the principal problem. However, I would be grateful for the Minister’s response on the question of personal identification at the ballot box. I hope that that is helpful. I look forward to further debates on this matter on Report. No doubt we will hear more from the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, both then and later on this amendment. For the moment, however, I leave it at that.