My Lords, I will make a couple of comments and ask a question about the SI on assistance with voting for persons with disabilities. I declare an interest as someone with a disability.
First, I very much welcome the approach. I have turned up at a polling station in a church only to discover that the place for my part of the ward had been moved to the nave, up two steps. I was offered the chance to fill in my ballot paper on the edge of a pew in the middle of the area—much improvement needed. I have to say that the local authority concerned was very apologetic and has since moved a large number of its polling stations.
The whole balance between the new SI and the Electoral Commission’s statutory guidance for returning officers is what is going to make this work. The burden on returning officers seems to have changed from being highly specific—and, in some cases, as with the tactile voting devices, inappropriate and no longer necessary—to being entirely reliant on the training of returning officers and their key staff and the staff present at polling stations on the day. I have talked to people with a range of disabilities, including a family member with visual impairment that has got considerably worse over the years. The draft statutory guidance suggests that all staff should be able to guide people with a wide range of different disabilities, which would require quite considerable training.
I notice that this will be reviewed within five years. It might be helpful to have a review before then because I suspect we are going to find quite a lot of patchy performance, not just between local authorities but between individual polling stations, because we are asking for a large amount of expertise from people who have not had to have the responsibility for that in the past.