Electoral Fraud

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

My Lords, very often in the past it used to be that whoever was running a nursing home made all the postal votes for everyone. I raised this with members of the opposition party at the time of the last general election. I cited a particular constituency where the candidate who was way ahead was suddenly completely swamped by a vast postal vote, with 30 voters apparently living in places that could not hold 30 people.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Sir Eric makes recommendations about postal votes, one of which is that political activists should no longer harvest postal votes. That practice is discouraged by the Electoral Commission in its code of conduct, but this is only a voluntary rather than a statutory prohibition. We will carefully consider how to deliver the ban on specified persons handling postal ballot papers, including enforcement and the creation of a new offence. As I said, we want to do all we can to increase public confidence in the voting system.