Political Parties and Elections Bill

My Lords, as I mentioned at col. 893 during our last proceedings, this amendment is inspired by the very unsatisfactory events of 4 June during voting for the European Parliament. The name of my party, UKIP, which came last alphabetically on ballot papers, was folded over at the back of a large number of them. The result was that many hundreds of voters blocked our call centre saying that they could not find UKIP on the ballot paper and either asking what to do or telling us that they had voted for another party. I appreciate that a number of noble Lords may feel that this could not have happened to a nicer party, but it is worth recording that Mr Nick Griffin of the BNP won his seat from us in the north-west by only 1,300 votes. The problem appears to have been at its worst in the south-east, where I understand that we may have been denied another seat. It is certainly true that we received a great many complaints from voters in East Sussex, especially Bexhill; from West Sussex, especially around Worthing; from Hampshire, especially in Farnborough; and from Surrey, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, especially in Aylesbury. Such inquiries as we have been able to make indicate two main causes: machine folding, perhaps before the ink was dry, by printers supplying local returning officers, and the manual folding of ballot papers by polling clerks. This latter practice is encouraged by the Electoral Commission in its guide to polling station staff. Machine folding by printers appears to have been a major problem in Yorkshire, while manually folded papers caused serious problems in the eastern region and the West Midlands. Following a complaint from our party leader, Mr Nigel Farage, the commission did issue guidance on 4 June that all ballot papers should be handed out unfolded, but this followed only very late in the day, sometimes as late as 9 pm, and does not appear to have been generally followed at all in the north-west. As things stand at the moment, the onus appears to be on UKIP to discover exactly what happened and where, and if it can muster sufficient evidence, to mount a petition to the commission for a re-run. This is a prohibitively expensive task and one, I submit, that should not fall to the affected party but to the commission. I would have hoped that, at the very least, the commission would find out how many ballot papers with UKIP over the back were machine folded and where they were distributed, and how many were folded at polling stations. I would have thought that the commission should also employ a good independent psephologist, if it does not have one in-house, and publish an objective report drawing on all these inputs. If anything like this happens in the future, surely the commission should sort it out, not the damaged party. I look forward to the Minister’s view on these questions. I also wonder whether the commission should be empowered to oversee and direct regional and local returning officers on the printing, distribution and handling of ballot papers, especially when the list of candidates is as long as it was in many areas on 4 June. I understand that the commission does not think that this amendment is necessary, so may I assume that it will be doing all the things I have suggested above under the present Act? If not, how will we get redress? What happens next? I look forward to the Minister’s reply and I beg to move.