LEAVE. FIRST READING. (Hansard, 8 February 1872)

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

, in moving for leave to bring in a Bill to amend the Corrupt Practices Prevention Act and the Parliamentary Elections Act, 1868, said, the present measure was formed of that portion of his right hon. Friend's Bill of last year which was omitted from it in consequence of the pressure of time, and because the subject really required to be dealt with separately. The Bill he asked leave to introduce was short and simple; but it contained some important clauses, to which it was right he should direct attention. It contained several important amendments on the present law in regard to personation, and which, though he had no right to call it a crime, was an offence that should be dealt with criminally. No doubt it was easy, and no 177 more easy—to personate a voter than it would be under this Bill, and there was no greater inducement in one sense to personate a voter under the system of secret voting than there would be under a system of open voting; but, inasmuch as there would be great difficulty in following the vote under a system of secret voting, it was important, and indeed essential, that the law against personation should be stringent, and that the penalties on conviction should be more severe than at present. This Bill, therefore, would make the offence of personating a voter a misdemeanour, and under its provisions it would be the duty of the returning officer to institute a prosecution against any person whom he might deem to have been guilty of personation. The returning officer would be protected from the pecuniary consequences of discharging this duty by the clause of the Bill which provided that the expenses of the prosecution and witnesses, together with compensation for trouble and loss of time, should be allowed in the same manner as they were now allowed in cases of felony. It had not been thought necessary to prohibit a private person from instituting a prosecution, if he thought fit, at his own expense, under the ordinary responsibilities of the law. Differing, however, from the provision of last year, it was proposed that in every case of personation, where it turned out that it had been instigated by the candidate or his agents or not, the person whose vote the person personated should, nevertheless, if he claimed his vote, have the right to have it put aside, in the first instance, for the purpose of being recorded if necessary; and in case of a scrutiny, whether the personation has taken place at the instigation of the candidate or not, the vote of the personated person should be recorded in favour of the person for whom he wished to have voted. He had retained the provision of the Bill of last year—that wherever the personation turned out to be instigated by the candidate or his agent, then the vote should be struck off the poll of the person so instigating by himself or his agent. There was a further provision that any payment which was not entered in the return made by the candidate of his election expenses should be deemed a corrupt payment, and subject to the consequences attributed to such payments by the existing law against corrupt prac- 178 tices. This provision, he might remark, was recommended by the Committee presided over by his noble Friend the present Chief Secretary for Ireland (the Marquess of Hartington). There was also a clause to the effect that no public-house should be hired or used by a candidate, or any person on his behalf, for any purpose connected with an election, and that in the event of this being done the holder of the licence should be liable, on summary conviction, to a penalty. The Bill likewise proposed to make permanent the provisions of the Parliamentary Elections Act of 1868, by which the jurisdiction of the House of Commons in election petitions was transferred to a judicial tribunal. In 1868 he was not in favour of the change; but he was bound to say that in that, as in many other things, he had to admit that his first impressions were not the right impressions, and that he believed, so far as he could judge, the working of that change had been, on the whole, extremely satisfactory to the country. No one could bring against the decisions of the judicial tribunals on election petitions those objections which, rightly or wrongly, were sometimes urged against the decisions of Committees of that House. All persons, he believed, were quite satisfied with the change which was initiated in 1868, and which it was proposed to make permanent by the provisions of the Bill which he now moved for leave to introduce.