Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

John Hemming Excerpts

Wednesday 27th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

It does seem to be a much more complicated issue than I expected when I stood at the Dispatch Box. My understanding is that under the present arrangements parties can register more than one emblem, for example to demonstrate regional or national differences within a single party, so I do not think that that is a problem. That is my understanding, unless I have completely misunderstood the intention behind this. I will write to the hon. Gentleman to clarify that point.

The hon. Member for Caerphilly referred to other elections. This applies only to parliamentary elections because we have already made the necessary changes in secondary legislation to address the issue for most other elections that are affected by the change. We cannot do that for UK parliamentary elections without primary legislation, and that is why it is in the Bill today. It will complete the process, so that we no longer have that discrepancy. I hope that that satisfies the hon. Gentleman.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 18 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 19 to 21 ordered to stand part of the Bill.



New Clause 1

Personation

‘In section 60 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 (Personation) after subsection (2) insert—

“(2A) The Secretary of State shall introduce regulations by statutory instrument to facilitate actions by electoral registration officers, their agents and others, including candidates and their agents in elections, to—

(a) prevent, and

(b) detect personation.”.’. —(John Hemming.)

This Clause would enable action to be taken to prevent or deter personation.

Brought up, and read the First time.

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 2—Other voting offences—

‘In section 61 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 (Other voting offences) after subsection (6) insert—

“(6AA) The Secretary of State shall introduce regulations by statutory instruments to facilitate actions by electoral registration officers, their agents and others, including candidates and their agents in elections, to—

(a) prevent, and

(b) detect the offences listed in subsections (1) to (6).”.’.

This Clause would enable action to be taken to prevent or deter other voting offences.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Hemming]

First, I emphasise that all political parties have had members who are responsible for electoral fraud. In Birmingham it has tended to be the Labour party, but that is not to say that any one party is perfect or any one party is necessarily much worse than any other.

I have unusual experience as a Member of the House in that I have drafted election petitions. The best known is the one for Aston; less known is that for Sparkhill, which dealt with issues of personation. When it was passed to some lawyers, they missed the deadline for serving it, and it was never considered in court. So whereas in 2002 it might have been possible to have proven the scale of personation, it was not until the elections of 2004, when there were election petitions in Aston ward and Bordesley Green ward, that he looked substantially at postal vote fraud. To start with, most of the evidence came from the fact that the Labour candidates were found some time in the early morning on an industrial estate in Aston checking that there were three Labour votes on each of the 273 ballot papers because they did not trust each other to mark them with three Labour votes, it being a three-up election, thinking that the person with the most votes gets elected for four years. A number of the ballot papers in the then Springfield ward were cast with only one Labour vote if they were postal votes, so it was reasonable to assume that the Labour candidates could not necessarily trust each other and therefore their reasoning for sitting late in the morning to look at the ballot papers was justified.

In trying to deal with election fraud, the Bill tries to ensure that the people who are on the electoral roll should be there, and that is a good thing to do. What it does not do and where there is a big gap—although I intend this as a probing new clause—is to try to ensure that people cast their own vote. Historically, there has been a tendency at times for there to be a sort of informal proxy. This has gone on for decades; it is nothing massively new. People think that someone is away and somebody else goes to vote for them. That has also turned into other situations where parties cast votes intentionally for people that they do not expect to vote. We have one way of spotting that through tendered votes. For those people who do not know, if someone turns up at the polling station and is told that they have already voted—it could be that the wrong name was marked on the register—they can get a tendered vote, a pink ballot paper, which is put in an envelope, so that if there is an election petition it is possible to consider the tendered votes and see whether they would have made any difference to a narrow election result. The difficulty, as we have seen in Birmingham, is that vans of people can go from polling station to polling station casting a vote in each one. “Newsnight” found out some of the details of that.

Anyone who is interested in these issues must read the full judgment of Richard Mawrey, an electoral commissioner. He has done a number of election courts since, but he was the electoral commissioner who dealt with the Aston and Bordesley Green election petitions. We have to consider how to ensure that elections are honest. We cannot entirely rely on the apparatus of the state to do that. In his judgment at paragraph 150 he says:

“The reaction of the police”—

to the allegations of election fraud—

“can best be summed up by drawing attention to the code name they gave to the complaints of malpractice—Operation Gripe. This indicates better than anything else their view that the whole business was a complete waste of their time and that Mr Hemming and the other complainants were a tiresome nuisance.”

I may be a nuisance at times, but at paragraph 264 he said:

“As set out above, in the course of the campaign the Liberal Democrats asserted on several occasions that the Labour Party candidates and their supporters were cheating. Mr Hemming and his team made their complaints to the police and the police largely ignored them.”

Paragraph 265 says:

“Mr Hemming also complained to Mr Owen, to be told, politely but firmly (and certainly correctly), that the Elections Office could not intervene.”

There are issues there. The elections office has to handle the paperwork of the elections in a way that is seen to be fair. My particular concern at that election was that the 273 arrested ballot papers found their way to be counted, and, most importantly, I as leader of the Liberal Democrats and Mike Whitby as leader of the Conservatives at the time, were not told that 273 ballot papers had been arrested on an industrial estate and found their way into the count. So the idea that one casts a vote and it goes off to an industrial estate, the police arrest it after a little discussion and then take it in is quite strange.

Paragraph 707 says:

“But, when all that is said and done, Mr Hemming was right and his critics were wrong. He said that there was a massive, Birmingham-wide electoral fraud by the Labour Party and there was in fact massive Birmingham-wide electoral fraud by the Labour party. He may have played the part of Cassandra, but like Cassandra his prophecies were true. He emerges from the case with credit which is more than can be said for those police officers who treated his complaints as no more than Operation Gripe.”

But the most important part of the judgment from Richard Mawrey was paragraph 717, which says:

“The systems to deal with fraud are not working well. They are not working badly. The fact is that there are no systems to deal realistically with fraud and there never have been. Until there are, fraud will continue unabated.”

With personation, in theory it is possible to appoint polling agents who can stand in the polling station and potentially put the statutory question to people: “Are you such and such a person of such and such address?” If a woman comes in and says, “Yes, I’m Gordon Brown of such and such address,” the fact that that woman—unless she has changed her name by deed pool—is unlikely to be telling the truth is no good reason for the presiding officer not to give her a ballot paper.

[Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting case. Following the incident that he describes, have the police apologised for the way in which they behaved, and have they given any reassurance to him that in future they will treat complaints of electoral fraud seriously?

[John Hemming]

There was no apology. They did start going down a different route, but they then started prosecuting people for offences that were not offences. There was one case where they prosecuted someone for what they thought was postal vote fraud, but they made the mistake of not checking whether the votes were cast to work out whether there was a chance that there was postal vote fraud. Most people indulge in electoral fraud to get more votes and be elected, but if someone assists someone else in filling in the forms for a postal vote and the vote is not actually cast, one can assume that there is no offence. A person was prosecuted for that. There has been no apology for it.

I am more concerned about the fact that we are doing nothing to control personation. I want to draw a distinction between actions that enable the system as a whole to act to prevent personation and actions that enable political parties to do so. Issuing an election petition is very difficult. Again, it is worth reading the judgment. The prosecution in Birmingham took place in the Birmingham and Midland Institute, in a room that could accommodate possibly 300 people, and there were often 200 people there watching the election court’s proceedings. It was the best entertainment in town at the time, and many people who saw it would accept that as a fair description of the situation. Whatever processes are put in, there must be a facility that allows them to be transparent and enables the political parties to be involved in challenging them through an open and transparent judicial process in an election court.

At the same time, it is useful to have processes that allow the police to get involved. In Birmingham it was clear that 4,000 people’s votes were stolen in the Bordesley Green ward. There were three local election votes and one European parliamentary vote, so basically 16,000 votes were stolen. That involved threats to the postman, who was told, “We’ll give you £500 if you give us your box of postal votes or we’ll kill you.” It is an offer you cannot really refuse. One letter box was actually set on fire in an attempt to stop postal votes reaching the electoral office. There was a semi-riot involving 200 people, because obviously when this sort of thing goes on the tension goes beyond what we would normally have in rows about unparliamentary language and people start fighting in the street instead. Those are the sorts of issues that arise.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

The hon. Gentleman’s new clause rightly suggests first deterring people and then being able to catch them and take action. False registration is clearly an issue, and obtaining postal votes when they are in transit is another. Has he considered whether powers are needed to be able to film each person delivering a vote in person, because there is either the postal vote personation or the voting-in-person personation?

[John Hemming]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I would rather he had not made it, because I had intended to say that and now he has mentioned it first. I think that technology has facilitated recording in polling stations. Making that recording available would be the best sort of change, because it would not record which way people vote.

I had started to talk about the Greek situation, where transparent ballot boxes are used, which, in terms of transparency, are better than black boxes. In Cheetham Hill ward in Manchester in 2003 a ballot box went astray for about an hour and a half after the end of polling. Obviously that is a good opportunity for ballot box-stuffing, as people can put a few extra votes in the ballot box as they drive around Manchester. There are a number of advantages with the filming process. If someone is personating, we would see who it is, which in a sense is the better challenge.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I am interested in the hon. Gentleman’s example, but surely if someone stuffs extra ballots into a ballot box the number of ballots in it would not tally with the number issued at the polling station.

[John Hemming]

What happens is that basically they mark off extra votes on the marked register, so it is not difficult.

[Mr Jones]

I am sorry, but that is not what they do; they mark off the marked register, but there is also the counter stub with the number on, which is then tallied with the number of votes issued. I think that what the hon. Gentleman suggests would be very difficult for someone to do unless they also had control of the book of ballot forms.

[John Hemming]

We have experience in Birmingham of identified presiding officers campaigning for the Labour party in the polling station. In Hodge Hill ward, for instance, the presiding officer was handing out poll cards to the Labour agent, which is a criminal offence, and I reported it to the chief executive at the time. In one polling station the poll cards were given to the Labour party. It cannot be assumed that just because people are presiding officers—I accept that there are two people there—they suddenly become perfect people who behave exactly as we would wish them to. If we had enough activists and we could put polling agents in each polling station for all the hours of the poll and monitor what was going on, that would not be such a problem.

[Mr Jones]

I find it remarkable that the hon. Gentleman opened his speech by saying that electoral fraud, of which I think there are a tiny number of cases, affects all parties, because he seems to be very partisan in using examples only from the Labour party. Is he really suggesting that polling agents and people who work in polling stations are involved in fraud, because in my opinion that is not the case? There is a danger in what he is suggesting, because if we put in agents from some parties they could intimidate the polling clerks.

[John Hemming]

Under election law, putting in polling agents is already allowed; that is not a change to the law.

[Mr Jones]

Well, that can be done, but what is being suggested is that they would somehow have a role in interfering with the polling agents. I am sorry, but I think that would be a dangerous move.

[John Hemming]

I have two little points to make on that. First, I said that all parties have people who are responsible for election fraud but in Birmingham we have tended to find problems with the Labour party, so I am tending to talk about the Labour party. Secondly, with regard to polling agents, that is the current law. If the hon. Gentleman does not know the current law, that is life. The current law allows people to appoint both counting agents and polling agents. Most people do not appoint polling agents but in Birmingham, because of the large amount of personation that tends to go on, we appoint polling agents in some wards when we can manage it. I have sent to the presiding officer, with evidence, examples of presiding agents who attempted to persuade people to vote for the Labour party in the Soho ward in Birmingham. There would have been other election petitions in 2004 on the basis of those particular issues had it not been for the fact that running one election petition is a major challenge and running two would be a bigger challenge, so much so that we had legal assistance on the second one.

[Wayne David]

The hon. Gentleman has made some accusations, admittedly only in passing, but they are quite serious and he has stated them as though they are fact. If he has serious allegations, he really ought to produce the evidence to the police, rather than relying on parliamentary privilege in this House.

[John Hemming]

I did provide that information to the police in 2004, and they had an operation called Operation Gripe, in which they basically did nothing. We have now moved on. We are eight years down the track. I do not think that it would be reasonable to prosecute people for things they did eight years ago. Let me quote again from the judgment:

“The reaction of the police can be best summed up by drawing attention to the code name they gave to complaints of malpractice—Operation Gripe. This indicated better than anything else their view that the whole business was a complete waste of time and that Mr Hemming and the other complainants were a tiresome nuisance.”

I gave all the evidence to the police, who piled it in a box, called it Operation Gripe and did nothing. At the same time, we have to be realistic. We have moved on eight years and I am not going to spend all my time trying to get a particular woman prosecuted for handing poll cards to the Labour party. What I said to the returning officer, the chief executive of the council, was that I wanted her to stop doing it, not get her imprisoned. There are questions about the objectives. My objective in the campaigning I have done on election fraud over a number of years is to stop it. To do that, we must have systems to monitor and detect things. That is where these particular probing amendments come in. They would give the Government a facility to make changes. I happen to think that the proposal for video recording in the polling station would be one of the best solutions.

[Chris Ruane]

What estimate has the hon. Gentleman made of the cost of kitting out every polling station in the UK with such video evidence?

[John Hemming]

What value does the hon. Gentleman place on integrity in electoral processes? That is the real question. One of these new video camera thingies, such as a mobile phone, would cost about £100 per polling station, and if we do not necessarily introduce them throughout the country, the question is, what value do we place on integrity in election processes? To me, the integrity of an election is absolutely critical.

[Chris Ruane]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about integrity, but within that, and in hard times, we have to weigh two things in the balance: integrity and cost. So what assessment has he made of the incidence of such electoral fraud—personation or whatever? Would it be worth paying out £100 for every polling station in the UK, or would some of that money be better spent on installing disabled access, which is a far bigger problem?

[John Hemming]

Somewhere in the judgment, Members will find that I made about 50 complaints to the police in 2004 in Birmingham. As I have said, things have moved on, and some progress has been made on dealing with election fraud.

One issue was the large amount of postal vote fraud, and we proved that a small number of people had forged all the witness statements, but since then witness statements have been abolished so we can no longer prove whether any are forged. So changes have been made, but not all have necessarily been good changes.

[Chris Ruane]

The hon. Gentleman says that things have moved on in eight years. Does he have the statistics for the number of cases of electoral fraud and personation last year and this year? Is it a current problem, or would we be spending £100 on every polling station to resolve problems that existed eight years ago but do not exist today?

[John Hemming]

Paragraph 717 of Richard Mawrey’s judgment states:

“The systems to deal with fraud are not working well. They are not working badly. The fact is that there are no systems to deal realistically with fraud and there never have been.”

In paragraph 714, which I did not read out earlier, Mawrey states:

“In this judgment I have set out at length what has clearly been shown to be the weakness of the current law relating to postal votes. As some parts of this judgment may be seen as critical of the Government, I wish to make it clear that the responsibility for the present unsatisfactory situation must be shared. All political parties welcomed and supported postal voting on demand. Until very recently, none has treated electoral fraud as representing a problem. Apart from the Electoral Commission, whose role I have described above, the only voices raised against the laxity of the system have been in the media, in particular The Times newspaper, and the tendency of politicians of all Parties has been to dismiss these warnings as scaremongering.”

So there we go: personation is still going on.

In South Yardley ward this year, for instance, we put in a little bit of effort after the election and uncovered personation, but one difficulty is that when people are asked, “Did you vote?” they all tend to say yes—whether they did or not. There is a record of people who voted in 2012 but not in 2011, and when they are asked, “Do you remember whether you voted in 2011 or 2012?” they tend to say, “We voted both times,” when in fact we know that they did not vote in 2011.

We did, however, find a small number of personated votes in South Yardley ward—not enough to affect the result, but the point is that we found some. There are difficulties in dealing with things retrospectively, however, and that brings us to the point about new clause 1, which is about facilitating change. Emotionally, I like what some democracies have, which is orange or purple dye on the finger.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

Has the hon. Gentleman thought that his suggestion of installing a camera in every polling station might create a whole new raft of electoral fraud—namely, one party making a spurious complaint against a known supporter of another party in order to deter that party’s voters from voting later on or in another election?

[John Hemming]

First, I do not think that that is true; and, secondly, the new clause is not necessarily the best way to deal with the issue, because it is an important one that needs consideration in primary legislation. Experiments—pilot schemes—might be undertaken to see how the proposal worked in certain areas, but it is an important issue that in primary legislation would attract far more Members than are currently in the Chamber to look at it. So we cannot say now what the exact solution would be, but at the moment Richard Mawrey is still right: there is no system for controlling personation.

A voter does not need their polling card, so they can turn up and say, “My name is X, of this address, please give me a ballot paper,” and the officials are under a duty to do so. Interestingly, during the 2010 general election I had in Birmingham observers from Kenya and Bangladesh, and, after I took them round and showed them how it all worked, they were quite surprised at how easy it was to defraud the system.

To return to the point I was about to make before the previous intervention—that is no criticism of the intervention—I am emotionally attracted to the practice in some countries of putting purple dye on a finger.

[Chris Ruane]

If we were to adopt the hon. Gentleman’s policy of putting an extra 60,000 CCTV cameras in polling stations throughout the country, how would that fit with his party’s view that there are too many such cameras already? An extra 60,000? Surely that would be Big Brother.

[John Hemming]

The question we have to ask is whether the use of something is proportionate, because in my constituency I supported the use of closed circuit television cameras, for instance, in the Yew Tree shopping centre, where they provide a useful function in an area with a history of crime. Sadly, there has been a history of crime in certain polling stations too, and, although I am not saying that we should put cameras all over the place, I think there is an argument for them as an option.

[Chris Ruane]

What criteria would the hon. Gentleman use for placing those—[Interruption.] The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons, the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) sniggers, but this is a serious issue. What criteria would the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) use for placing those extra 60,000 CCTV cameras across the nation? Would he do so if there had been previous electoral fraud or personation in an area, or if a certain socio-economic group or ethnic group had been involved? If he had a plan of the UK, where would he plonk those cameras?

[John Hemming]

Any decision would be better driven by the requests of the political parties. If they were willing to fund the measure so that it did not affect the deficit, they could place a camera to record what was going on and make sure that people were not being intimidated in the polling station.

There have been serious problems with people being bullied by their families in what is supposed to be a secret ballot. That is not supposed to happen, but it happens at the polling station as well.

[Chris Ruane]

Would political parties decide where the cameras went throughout the nation? If there were 60,000 of them, would there be 20,000 for Labour, 20,000 for the Tories and 20,000 for the Lib Dems, or would there be some kind of proportional representation for the allocation of CCTV cameras? Will the hon. Gentleman clarify that point?

[John Hemming]

One point about the new clause is that it does not try to be explicit about how we might deal with a specific problem; it would allow a discussion to take place. I am very pleased to have the hon. Gentleman’s interventions, however, as we look creatively at how we can deal with an issue to which, effectively, a blind eye has been turned for more than a century. When political parties had larger memberships it was easier to arrange polling agents all over the place; it has become harder as political party activity and social capital has gone down. So the hon. Gentleman might make that proposal, but what is important is that something should happen.

[Chris Ruane]

I was not making that proposal; I was asking the hon. Gentleman whether he agreed with it and was proposing it.

[John Hemming]

I am proposing, believe it or not, new clause 1, which would facilitate secondary legislation to deal with the matter. I accept the point that the issue is so important that it should be dealt with in primary legislation, but it would be nice to see the Electoral Commission showing some interest in pilot schemes to deal with these issues. Personation is well known in many areas of the country, and the noble Lord Greaves has highlighted cases in his area.

[Wayne David]

Listening to the hon. Gentleman, I have a novel suggestion: might it not be a good idea, first, to have ID cards?

[John Hemming]

We do not need an ID card to have some way of checking an identity. I would not go for the fingerprint solution; I think the video camera is—[Interruption.] The reason I like the idea of colour on the finger is that it would be a badge of honour. People who had done their civic duty and cast a vote could say to those who had not, “I’m one up on you—I’ve been out to vote.” I always say to people that others have fought for the ballot and that even if they spoil the ballot paper, they should cast their vote. I also explain to them that if something sufficiently rude is written on the ballot paper the agents and candidates often get to see it, so it is a way of getting a message across, whereas sitting at home and not casting a vote does not have an effect, and those who do not cast votes tend to be ignored. People should be aware of that.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

In fairness, Mr Hemming, you have taken a lot of interventions, and we have to deal with other new clauses after this. You have already been speaking for 30 minutes, and I think you are in danger of being drawn into something you do not want to be drawn into. It may be helpful if you are not drawn into it, and I am sure that you are now coming to the end of your speech.

[John Hemming]

Paragraph 717 of the Mawrey judgment, which I quoted earlier, deals with the hon. Gentleman’s point. These are probing amendments. However, we do need systems to detect and prevent personation, and according to Mr Justice Mawrey, we do not have them.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

This has been a fascinating debate. In my view, one of the weaknesses of the new clause is that it calls for action but does not outline what should happen.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) that the number of cases of fraud in this country is small. Overall, we have a very good electoral system. In the Electoral Commission’s report after its voting pilots of the early 2000s, it found that the incidence of fraud was quite small, but, as we know, concentrated in certain communities, whether Asian communities in big cities such as Birmingham, which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) represents, or those in other areas such as Bradford and Tower Hamlets, where the Liberal Democrats do not have a fantastic record. We must therefore be careful not to get this out of proportion.

I am worried about some of the hon. Gentleman’s suggested measures to detect fraud, which would be completely out of proportion to the problem that is being addressed. Having seen his performances in this House over the past few years, I am not surprised that the police chose the name Operation Gripe. Making scattergun accusations such as those he made today is not very helpful, either to the police or to the real debate about electoral fraud.

The hon. Gentleman proposes to extend these measures to candidates and polling agents. In Durham, political parties do appoint polling agents, but their role is very clearly defined. They cannot interfere with the issuing of ballot papers. They can ask people for their numbers, but many, rightly, do not give them. They may be asked for the number of people who have voted, and will be happy to give that. If polling agents were able to sit over the polling clerks, as he suggests, that would be wrong because it might intimidate them. The polling clerks I have dealt with in the many elections in which I have been either an agent or a candidate are very professional individuals. If the hon. Gentleman has evidence of a polling clerk issuing ballot papers incorrectly, then he must provide it. He should not throw it out in such a casual manner as he has today. I would be very uncomfortable with polling agents taking on the role that he suggests in sitting over the clerks when they are doing their job.

I accept that the hon. Gentleman’s community is very different from the one that I represent, but I find it strange that voters take other people into the polling station to vote. In my experience of the elections in which I have been an agent or a candidate, if someone arrives who is infirm or needs assistance, the polling clerk will take them into the voting booth to assist in pointing out the names of the candidates. I have never known polling clerks allow a relative, or a candidate or representative of a political party, to go with somebody into the voting booth. The message is the quality and rigour of the polling clerks, who, in my experience, are professional individuals who know what the rules are.

In Durham, when polling clerks take numbers at polling stations, it is made clear that they must sit way outside the balloting area—if it is a school, usually in a corridor; if it is a community hall, usually outside—so that they cannot in any way interfere with the process. I have sometimes taken infirm people to vote. The usual procedure is to take them to the door and indicate to the clerk, who will take over from there so that we do not get involved in the process.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd said, the hon. Gentleman is doing us a disservice in perpetuating the myth that electoral fraud is a huge problem in general, because it is not. I accept that it is a huge problem in certain areas, and the people involved should be dealt with properly.

I find it strange that a Liberal Democrat has such a schizophrenic attitude towards CCTV given that the Liberal Democrats pride themselves on saying that CCTV is against civil liberties. I would not want any recording device in polling stations, because the ballot is private. No matter how many assurances people were given, they would fear that a CCTV camera was recording or indicating which way they had voted.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

I am—

[John Hemming]

As I said, I think that it creates an emotional attachment, but I do not think that it is a good solution.

[Mr Jones]

It might have been only a suggestion but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd said, why not stick the ink on people’s noses? Why not brand people? I am sorry, but that is not the way in which the electoral system operates in this country.

[Mr Jones]

Having known my hon. Friend for many years, I know his sense of humour and will take his comment in that spirit. I certainly would not support electors having to have their fingers, noses or any other part of their anatomy dipped to show that they had voted.

I think that robust training for polling clerks is important. The safeguards are already there. The hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) spoke about police officers at polling stations. That is a good idea where there are problems. If there are problems in certain wards, as hon. Members think there are, the Bill allows for community support officers to take that role. That is a good move because it will free up police resources. The mechanisms are there to ensure that the ballot is run fairly.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley made the accusation that somebody was giving out polling cards to the Labour party. His speech was interesting in that he said that the problem affects all parties, but did not name one case that involved his party, when we know that the Liberal Democrats have been at this on an industrial scale in parts of the country. If he has evidence of polling cards being given out, he should report it. The only problem comes if he bombards the police with 50-odd minor complaints. In that case, even I would consider him an irritant.

[John Hemming]

I did report that problem—it was called Operation Gripe.

[Mr Jones]

I am not being funny, but if somebody turns themselves into a serial complainer, I can understand why an authority would start to ignore some of the complaints. The hon. Gentleman would be better off concentrating on specific cases on which he has hard evidence, rather than throwing complaints around like confetti, which is not helpful.

The other thing that will help the process is individual registration, which will ensure that the register is as up-to-date as possible. I reiterate that elections in this country are largely run fairly and correctly. We should keep reinforcing that message. When we had the pilots for all-postal and e-mail voting elections in the early 2000s, the report from the Electoral Commission was very positive. A council by-election in my area achieved a 67% turnout. If the number of votes cast is increased, the effect of minor fraud is diminished, so getting turnout up is important.

I accept that the constituency that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley represents is very different from mine, and that there are communities that engage in electoral fraud. The effort should be made in those places, rather than there being a scatter-gun approach. I therefore see no reason for the new clauses. They are quite weak, because they do not prescribe what the action would be. They are not well thought out.

Finally, we should praise the many local returning officers and council chief executives who work very hard and are scrupulous in running elections.

--- Later in debate ---

On that basis, I hope that my hon. Friend feels that he has been able to air his concerns, that the Government are responding to them and that we will make further progress on dealing with fraud and personation, which undoubtedly remain but which we hope we can eliminate in due course.

[John Hemming]

I am sorry that the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) is not here to hear the answers to his points. First, he confused tellers and polling agents. Secondly, it is wrong to say that this is a one-community issue. It might be limited to certain areas of the country, but it is not an issue for just one community, and I resent his assertion otherwise. There is clear evidence that it goes wider than one community, and in Birmingham, as I said, it has gone on for 100 years, which shows that it is not confined to one community.

The issue is one of evidence. At the moment, if somebody’s vote is stolen through personation, there is no evidence of who did it and nothing for the police to investigate, hence there is a hole. I agree with the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) and disagree with the Deputy Leader of the House about cameras. They would not cause a problem, because simply identifying who picks up a ballot paper does not track which way they cast it. I agree with him, however, that it would be better to withdraw the new clause and for there to be a continuing discussion. It is important that we do not forget about this issue, because it does go on, and as it currently stands there is no system to pick it up. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 3

Representation of the People Act 1985 (Amendment)

‘(1) The Representation of the People Act 1985 is amended as follows.

(2) In section 1 (Extension of parliamentary franchise) omit subsections (3)(c) and (4)(a).

(3) In section 3 (Extension of franchise for European Parliamentary elections) omit subsections (3)(c) and (4)(a).’. —(Geoffrey Clifton-Brown.)

Currently, British citizens can qualify as overseas electors only if they have been resident in the United Kingdom within the previous 15 years. This also applies to Members of the House of Lords for European Parliamentary elections. This amendment would remove this qualifying period, so that British citizens could qualify as overseas electors even if they had ceased to be resident in the United Kingdom more than 15 years before.

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.