Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they plan to provide funding for, and ask the Electoral Commission to undertake, a representative survey of people who voted by post in the 2018 local elections so as to obtain an indication as to how many of them may not have cast the vote themselves, or without proper conditions of privacy in keeping with the spirit of the Ballot Act 1872.

The Government believes that electoral fraud is unacceptable on any level and is taking steps to ensure our elections are even more secure. At the 2018 local elections a number of local authorities volunteered to conduct Voter ID pilots to ensure that voters provided a form of identification before voting.

The Electoral Commission will produce its own reports on the 2018 polls and will collate information on allegations of electoral fraud. The Government has no plans to ask the Electoral Commission to conduct an additional survey.

Three further areas, Tower Hamlets Peterborough Slough undertook postal vote pilots looking at the security of postal votes. The Cabinet Office and Electoral Commission will undertake detailed evaluation of the pilots.