Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask His Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the levels of fraud in the operation of postal voting; and what plans they have, if any, to introduce photo identification requirements for postal voting.

The Electoral Commission publishes a report annually on electoral fraud. I also refer the noble peer to the report by (then) Sir Eric Pickles on electoral fraud, which identified a series of weaknesses in the postal vote process (attached). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/securing-the-ballot-review-into-electoral-fraud.

That report was commissioned following the 2015 Election Court ruling on electoral corruption in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

There are longstanding security measures which enhance the security of the postal voting process, including requiring postal voters to provide personal identifiers at the time of applying for a postal vote and which are checked at the time of a poll. The Elections Act 2022 introduces a package of sensible measures to enhance the security around absent voting including an identity check at the point of application for a postal vote, whereby an applicant will need to provide their National Insurance number to be checked against Government records. This process mirrors the current practice for Registering to Vote.

As is usual, the Government will keep this area of policy under review in the future.