Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between Peter Bottomley and John Hemming

Wednesday 27th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[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.