Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I greatly admire my hon. Friend's perspicacity. He puts his finger on an important point—the context in which these events take place. This is about whether or not, in relation to a matter of such importance as the issue of alternative vote, we end up with a decision which could be on a knife-edge and which is decided merely on the basis of what an officer thinks. I do not know about hon. Gentlemen in the Committee at large, but sometimes I do not have that much faith in bureaucratic thinking; in fact, I have a strong aversion to it. But if the measure were to say, ““In the opinion of the officer,”” we would at least know that we were on what I would describe as generally understood judicial ground. The measure does not provide for that, however; it provides for the question of what is in his mind, not his opinion, and there is a very big and important distinction to be drawn between those two things. My hon. Friend is entirely right in believing that there ought to be a context and some criteria. Furthermore, the measure includes the wording,"““if the officer thinks””—" whatever that means—"““that there is reason to doubt the accuracy of the counting of the votes in the counting officer's voting area””." What is or is not reasonable is, again, a question that the courts are well used to determining. There is a whole stream of case law, which I am quite capable of spending some time describing, on the question of what is or is not reasonable, and for that matter what is or is not practicable. I am afraid to say, however, that when the Bill simply states,"““only if the officer thinks that there is reason to doubt””," it applies yet another spurious objective test, which is actually highly subjective, and that is not the way to legislate. We want clarity and impartiality, and to be sure that, if there is a knife-edge vote, there will not be some unfortunate mistake in the mind of the officer—and I shall make no mistake whatever about what I say this evening.