Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I warmly congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael) and my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) on their amendments. There was a time when Parliament did not consider the rights of people with disabilities at all; those people and their rights were often ignored by society. We have moved a dramatic distance over the past 15 years in the rights of people with disability. I am somewhat disappointed by the Minister's words. When I was a Minister, an amendment might look perfectly sensible but some civil servant would come up with a reason why we could not possibly agree to it. The Whips would then say that we had to hold firm and that we could not possibly give way. The Minister may be right about some of the amendments, and it would be wrong to put in the Bill precise rules about whether the font size should be 12 point, 16 point or whatever. However, it would seem from what the Minister said that there would be no harm, in terms of their general principles, if the first two amendments tabled by my right hon. Friend were added to the Bill. They would apply only to this referendum, not to everything else. The Minister made a point about the difference between the relationship in a normal election between the Electoral Commission and the returning officer, when the commission cannot direct, and the situation outlined in the Bill, when the chief counting officer can direct. That is all the more reason for us to provide in the Bill precise instructions that are in terms not of ““may”” but of ““must””. I challenge the Minister to tell us what would be the harm in that amendment. I can see no harm that could possibly accrue, whereas the possible advantage could be significant to people with disabilities. It is worth bearing in mind the statistics, which we have already heard, on the number of people who face significant accessibility barriers when voting at polling stations—67% of people with disabilities. We should recognise that there has been a tiny improvement on 2001 and 2005, but the previous Government were not enormously successful either, which is why we need to be more resolute in pursuing such issues. The interesting figures in ““Polls Apart”” on voting by post are significant. Many people have presumed that now that people with disabilities can vote by post, the problem is solved. In actual fact, the great variation in how to cast a postal vote across the country—there are different ways of folding envelops and of putting one envelop inside another—means that it is difficult to have a national campaign explaining how to use one's postal vote. Many elderly people, quite apart from other people who might have disabilities, find it phenomenally difficult to vote by post. At the general election, both in my constituency and when campaigning in other constituencies, I found that a lot of people had registered for a postal vote but found it difficult to understand precisely how they were meant to take it forward. Many of them would have preferred to have voted in a polling station, but if they are to be able to do so on an equal basis with anyone else in the land, explicit provision enabling them to do so needs to be made. At the last election, there were fewer large ballot papers available than in 2005, which is a disgrace; I take no pleasure in saying that something that happened under the Labour Government was not an enormous success, but that is a fact. The difficulty with the argument that the Minister advances is that he is basically saying, ““It's all going in the right direction. We don't need to put measures in the Bill, because it will all be provided for,”” but the truth is that while many officials who have worked on the issue in previous years have made gains in some areas, in others they have moved backwards in relation to their obligations. For instance, there are fewer polling stations in the Rhondda than there were in 2001. In the case of the polling station provided in Stanleytown, a small village in Tylorstown that is on a fairly steep hill, there was no public building in which to put it, and as the doors of all the houses are too narrow, no house could be used, so a portakabin was used. Unfortunately, halfway through the afternoon, the portakabin started sliding down the hill, which did not exactly make it more accessible than any other polling station. There are serious problems, and I urge the Minister seriously to consider supporting, rather than opposing, the amendments that have been tabled.