Political Parties and Elections Bill

I will in a minute. Whether or not the Government keep this matter under review, I shall keep harassing them over it and producing all the evidence that I can at all times. The noble Lord, Lord Bates, said that my system would be a burden on electoral registration officers. Well, it is just going back to the old system, which was not thought to be burden and would actually remove a much larger burden: the volume of postal votes that now come in. If they all have to be 100 per cent checked, which they do, then that would be the bigger burden. The Minister referred to the increase in turnout at the last European election due to postal votes. He is quite right: there was a general increase in turnout. However, that part which was a result of the old postal votes was about 5 per cent. Let us get that in perspective: there was an increase, but it was not very much. I hear what my noble friend Lord Rennard said. I am tempted to say that all political parties have a vested interest in the present postal voting system because they all use it to increase their stock of postal voters. The real point about postal voter turnout is that in normal elections the turnout of people who do have postal votes is usually significantly higher than those who do not. We all know that. It might be as much as 70 per cent to 40 per cent, or 60 per cent to 30 per cent, depending on the circumstances. So it is currently in the interests of all the political parties to get as many of their firm voters signed up on postal votes as they possibly can. I would argue that those are probably people who would vote anyway. Even so, the parties do it. My noble friend is certainly very good at it. There is nothing wrong with it under the present system. It is quite true that there is a marked list of postal votes received. I was one of those who helped to persuade the Government that it was necessary. However, it does not tell people whether their vote was rejected because of the personal identifiers, which is the point that I was making earlier. They will find out that their vote was received, but will not know if it was counted or not. The Minister has already said that he will look at that. The Slough case does not show that everything is working wonderfully. It was one of the rare exceptions that managed to get as far as court and a conviction, due to the real persistence of the Labour candidate who lost her seat as a result of the vote-rigging. I pay tribute to her, because you really do have to stick at it and it is not always very easy or pleasant. She did it then, and people from other parties have done it on other occasions. The famous Birmingham case with Richard Mawrey was not brought to court by the police. If I remember correctly, it was the result of an election petition and the court case was a private prosecution. I think that I am right in saying that; I will check it. However, the local police in Birmingham were certainly extremely reluctant to bring that case. On the two registration cases that I reported last May, the local police thought that we had a cut and dried case of people who had been put on the electoral register over the years, despite warnings, who should not have been. I pursued it because it was the home of a Labour candidate. The police thought that we would get a prosecution. In the end it fell because the local police and the Crown Prosecution Service did not proceed quickly enough and ran out of time. My experience is that election matters are not always regarded as a high priority by the police. They are better now than they were a few years ago, but those matters are still not always given the highest priority. In the infamous Pendle case seven years ago, the police admitted that they wanted to pursue all this evidence I had given them about votes being sent off to wrong addresses, but there had been murders in Rossendale and things like that, which had to take priority. I understand that, but it means that electoral allegations are not always taken as seriously as they could be. Having said that, the Government are still being complacent. I will tell Members of the Committee what will happen to really put a bomb under the whole thing: when it becomes clear that one, two or three parliamentary constituencies have been rigged at a general election. Who knows when it may be? It may be at the next general election, or two or three down the road. However, it will happen sooner or later and, when it does, I am afraid that the system will have to be radically changed. At this stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 132A withdrawn. Amendment 132AA not moved. Amendment 132AB not moved. Clauses 24 and 25 agreed. Amendment 132B not moved.