Electoral Fraud

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am informed that, in practice, almost all electoral registration officers are already checking 100% of postal votes, although they are currently required by law to check only 20%.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, coming back to the point raised by my noble friend and the issue of potential impersonation at polling stations, does the Minister recognise that in some places, particularly Birmingham, there are instances in which large crowds of men gather outside schools and intimidate some voters to prevent their going into vote? Does the noble Lord agree that that is what attention should be focused on and that the police need to be advised that they should take action when it occurs?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I do a lot of my politics in Bradford, as the noble Lord knows, and I am well aware of the differences between the local problems we have with the voting system. One of the reasons that the new regulations allow for police community support officers to be present in polling stations is precisely to deal with that sort of occasional outbreak of intimidation. There is, as we all know, a problem of registration fraud—ghost voters being put on the register—but, again, it is localised. As I am sure all noble Lords know, this is much more of a problem for local elections than for parliamentary elections.