Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Notwithstanding what I said earlier about technical and minor amendments, sometimes they are actually technical and minor amendments, and I do not want to delay the Committee too long. I have two points. First, I do not understand why, in amendments 274 to 278—and, for all I know, in a couple of the others as well—the question has to be asked not just about ““the referendum””, but about the referendum"““on the voting system for United Kingdom parliamentary elections.””" I am not aware of many other referendums coming down the line on that date, so the amendments seem rather otiose and verbose. Will the Minister enlighten me on why they are thought necessary? Perhaps a more serious point is that several of the amendments—in particular, amendments 287, 291, 293 and 296 to 298—replace the direction to vote just ““once”” with the direction that people should vote ““in one box”” only, which is slightly confusing, especially given that we will be having a combination of polls. Elsewhere, schedule 2 provides that there may be more than one polling station in a room, which is quite common because two polling districts might be using the same polling station—so there might be two desks with two electoral registers and two boxes. I presume, however, that in Wales and Scotland, there could be four desks with different registers, given that there are different electoral registers for the different elections—for the referendum and the elections. There could, therefore, be four ballot boxes in the room, and people might be expected to mark two boxes. So the inclusion of the words ““in one box”” is rather misleading. As the Minister will know, a ballot paper will often contain the name of the candidate—for example, ““No. 1: Chris Bryant””—followed by the address or whatever the candidate has allowed on there, followed by the party and finally the box. I presume that returning officers will be allowed to count as valid votes, as they do in parliamentary and other elections, any ballot paper on which the signifier, which could be an X or in some cases a tick, has been marked anywhere along the line of the yes part of the question—in other words, not in the one box specified as the box in which the person is meant to put their cross, but at any point across the whole of that line. First, therefore, does the Minister think that extending the question on ““the referendum”” is necessary or otiose? Secondly, by inserting the words ““in one box””, will we not actually make the situation worse? At combined polls, people will expect to vote in two ballot boxes and to mark two boxes on two forms, and whether they do so in the little box itself or in the wider area on the ballot paper will be of material significance. I would be grateful if the Minister could enlighten us on those matters.