Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what the implications are for the Government's policies of recommendation 17 of the report of the Association of Electoral Administrators entitled It’s time for urgent and positive Government action: The AEA’s review of the 2017 local government elections and the UK Parliamentary general election, published in September 2017, on the Government introducing a process to cancel a postal ballot paper issued to an elector who is subsequently deleted from the electoral register during an election period as a matter of urgency.

Electoral law is clear that a person must be included in the register of electors for a poll in order to be entitled to vote at that poll. The Government recognises that it is possible for postal ballot papers to be issued to a postal voter who may subsequently be removed from the register to be used at the poll. The Electoral Commission has issued guidance explaining that postal ballot papers returned under these circumstances cannot be counted. We will look to review the current provisions on the cancellation of postal ballot papers to see whether improvements can be made to the law in this area.