Elections and Returning Officers

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and John Leech

Wednesday 20th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Laing]

I accept the shadow Minister’s comment. I understand what he is saying, but he is making a different point on a different matter. I have a list of returning officers who allegedly did not do their jobs very well and yet were paid sums in excess of £12,000 or £15,000 to do that particular job for a few weeks. I am not the kind of politician who embarrasses individual members of society by announcing their names to be recorded in Hansard. We will leave that sort of thing to the tabloid press. The point is that there is no chain of accountability. That is where the problem lies, and that is where the problem lay when we examined how returning officers could be required or even just encouraged to start the election count upon the close of poll. That is also what we discovered when inquiries where carried out correctly by the Electoral Commission into how administration was taken forward for the election in May this year.

It is appalling that senior people in local authorities who have a position of responsibility and normally command salaries well in excess of £100,000—usually far more than that, as far as I can see from the statistics—have not properly planned for a general election and have got things so badly wrong that people were deprived of their vote. In the instances that occurred in May, it is fortunate that there were no cases in which the number of electors who allegedly were unable to vote because of returning officers’ maladministration was greater than the majority in that particular seat. Therefore, there was no reason for an appeal to the courts on the election result. In one way, that is fortunate because it would have meant uncertainty about the results of the election. In another way, however, it is unfortunate, because the matter has not been properly examined, which is another reason for my initiating this debate.

[Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)]

The hon. Lady is right: there is no evidence to suggest that any outcome would be different as a result of people being unable to vote on election day. However, we can never be sure about how many people turned up at polling stations, saw the enormously long queues that resulted from all sorts of chaos, went away again and did not bother coming back. That was a big disincentive in some areas, where people saw big queues and thought, “Well, I can’t really be bothered. I’ll just go home and won’t bother voting.”

[Mrs Laing]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct; I am glad he made that point. We have spoken a lot lately about the need to encourage people to be involved in the democratic process and to encourage all age groups and people across the social and economic spectrum to register and use their vote. I mentioned earlier the number of people who allegedly turned up at the polling station and were denied their right to vote. That number may even be far greater than we estimate, because of the situation that he has described.