Political Parties and Elections Bill

My Lords, I shall comment briefly on the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. We obviously have some sympathy with the amendment in that it is designed to help deal with postal voting fraud, which I stress was an important issue in an earlier amendment. We have just three caveats that I shall point out before the Minister responds. First, I worry that the amendment could place an excessive burden on the returning officer, and I am interested to know whether the noble Lord has carried out any assessment of the resource implications of the returning officer writing what might be a rather large number of letters, particularly in an area such as Pendle in which, as the noble Lord told us, some 400 or 500 postal votes were held not to be valid. Secondly, if the returning officer had to write to each elector setting out why their vote has not been counted, as set out in proposed new sub-paragraph (3) in proposed new subsection (2) in the amendment, and if there was the possibility of a criminal prosecution of this matter later, I worry that anything that the returning officer might say might prejudice the chances of a fair trial. I would need legal advice as to whether that is the case, but no doubt the Minister will respond to that point in due course. My third point relates to privacy. Proposed new sub-paragraph (2) in proposed new subsection (2) in the amendment tells us that, ""The list of postal votes returned but not counted"," would be kept and would count as "a relevant election document". As a relevant election document under Section 42 of the Electoral Administration Act 2006, it would be available for inspection by the public. The noble Lord set out his reasons for that, but presumably—again, I welcome comments on this—it could have a detrimental impact on privacy of the ballot. People should not be able to see a list of those who have spoilt their ballot paper, intentionally or otherwise, so there are dangers in going down this route. Although I have expressed a degree of sympathy for the noble Lord’s amendment, I think that there are one or two problems with it.