Political Parties and Elections Bill

We have examined carefully the proposals put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Henley, and listened carefully to his explanation. We have sympathy with some of his points, but not universally. The Electoral Commission has said that it supports the proposed new clauses in Amendments 128 and 129. In its briefing it states: ""We have been calling for a 100% verification since before the introduction of absent voter identifiers in 2006. Many Returning Officers already check 100% of identifiers but we believe that, in the interests of consistency and the integrity of the electoral system, this practice should be mandated"." Hence it supports its inclusion in the Bill. The commission then goes on to make a valid point that that would imply resourcing, which is something that the Minister will need to address. It will be interesting to know, as I do not think that in the past either the commission or the Minister or the ministry has told us, whether significant concerns have been reported in previous elections when such a check has been carried out, whether it has been effective in identifying mistakes or, worse, frauds, or whether there is a major problem in completing the exercise in good order and time. We are very sympathetic to Amendments 128 and 129. On Amendment 131, it is important to make it absolutely clear to all concerned that electoral fraud is totally unacceptable. Our anxiety on this point is whether we should simply use the threat of custodial sentence for that purpose, given that the prisons are pretty full of all sorts of characters already. As I understand it, the fine is currently set at its possible highest—at level 5, at £5,000.