Political Parties and Elections Bill

Talking about old postal ballots takes me back to our lengthy debates in this room on the European Parliamentary and Local Elections (Pilots) Bill in 2004, which ended with a record ping-pong session between the two Houses before the Government got their way and were able to organise all-postal ballots in three regions in the north of England, including my own. I think that we had six ping-pongs, so this is not new. I shall not say much more about that, except to underline the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Henley: namely, can we understand that at the moment the Government have dropped the idea of all-postal voting? If they say yes, a lot of us will be very relieved. I am strongly in favour of Amendments 128 and 129, but, first, I have a couple of comments to make on Amendment 131 and offences. Because of the obstacles that have to be got through and over in order to take election fraud to court, it is rare for such offences to reach court and for there to be a proper trial. Nevertheless, when they go to court, quite often the offences with which people are charged turn out not to be the technical election offences which we talk about in Bills like this, but much broader offences, such as conspiracy. The noble Lord, Lord Henley, referred to the recent case in Slough, which ended up with a headline in the Daily Mail about Tory councillor Eshaq Khan being jailed for three and a half years. It does not warm my heart to see Tory councillors or anyone jailed for election offences. It happens in all parties but taints and undermines the whole democratic political process. However, it is interesting that most of the defendants—most of the six people who were jailed—were not charged with election offences. One gentleman was found guilty of personation and sentenced to four months, but most offences were conspiracy to defraud the returning officer, perjury and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, which are fairly general offences. I am not saying that they are not appropriate in these cases, but they point out how, when they are looking into offences, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service find it difficult to pin down offences in the Representation of the People Act and similar legislation. In this case, hundreds of false names had been put on the electoral register. Postal votes were applied for and then they were used. It was straightforward fraudulent activity. No doubt, conspiracy to defraud the returning officer and to pervert the course of justice were genuine offences. In relation to this amendment, it is interesting that the judge, Gordon Risius, is reported in the Daily Mail—the source of all wisdom—as saying that although there are currently no sentencing guidelines for election fraud, he was required to pass sentences that would act as a deterrent. Citing a recent Court of Appeal case, he said: ""For such offences, it was said that as long as they are proportionate and not unjust, deterrent sentences are called for"." That is a little different from the point of view being put forward by my noble friend, not wanting to fill up the jails. It illustrates the difficulty of taking cases to court, getting convictions and then deciding what to do. Amendments 128 and 129 propose that 100 per cent of postal votes should be checked for personal identifiers, rather than the minimum of 20 per cent as stated in the legislation at the moment. The personal identifiers are the signature and the date of birth. My understanding is that the north-west returning officer in the European elections has written to local authority returning officers in the region requiring a 100 per cent check of postal votes. My question to the Minister is this: is the returning officer for the north-west making this decision on his own or will it be a requirement in the European and county council elections taking place on the same day? Is this a central decision or is it the returning officer for the north-west making a very sensible decision on his own?