My Lords, I, too, must apologise for being a little late. I was brought up on the good trade union tradition that an agreement on procedure is an agreement, although clearly it was not this afternoon.
I want to add a couple of comments to the important speeches that we have already heard—particularly those from the Cross Benches—and to what the noble Lord, Lord King, said. We are seeking three things. The first is that the unions should be consulted as part of this review. Secondly, we would like to see some form of pilot as part of the review, bearing in mind that the Electoral Reform Services has conducted in the past year 2,000 polls and covered 1 million votes. There is a lot of experience out there, so this review does not actually need a lot of time. Therefore, our third requirement is that there should be some form of deadline. We are concerned that this will be heading for the long grass otherwise. The whole concept of electronic balloting is very important to the future of trade union democracy, not only for ballots for industrial action, but ballots for union leadership. Postal ballots were seen 20 or 30 years ago as essential reform, but now that turnouts in postal ballots are disappointingly low, we have to look at alternative methods of making such ballots more representative. Electronic balloting, as we have discussed in this Chamber, is now the next important reform. I hope the Government will exercise this review quickly and expediently and get a positive response.