Political Parties and Elections Bill

I will be able to give some help about regulations in a moment. Regulations made under the Electoral Administration Act 2006 set the 20 per cent figure; not this Bill. With the funding that we are making available to electoral administrators for running the elections, we have made provision to cover the expected costs for administrators in checking all returned postal votes. Administrators will therefore have the flexibility to check them all where the necessary systems are in place. We intend to review the experience of these elections carefully. This will inform future considerations. We will continue to work with the Electoral Commission, electoral administrators and software suppliers to establish whether it will be appropriate to move to mandatory 100 per cent checking of postal votes. That can be done by way of regulations. Just because we do not put it in the Bill, that is not the end of the story. Evidence from the 2008 local elections in general is that the rate of rejections of postal votes is not greater than those without postal votes, and it is often lower, around 3 per cent. Those rejected are mostly due to errors by electors with the date of birth not matching between postal vote applications, as I understand it. I hope I have dealt with Amendments 128 and 129, the first two in the group, and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Henley, is satisfied with my response.