HL Deb 27 May 2004 vol 661 cc1498-507

3.7 p.m.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs (Lord Filkin)

My Lords, I should like to repeat a Statement made earlier in the other place by my honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Christopher Leslie. The Statement is as follows:

"With permission, Mr Speaker, I should like to update the House on progress in the administration of the European Parliamentary and Local Elections. A number of honourable and right honourable Members raised points of order yesterday in response to media reports, and so I thought it would assist the House to give a short report on the picture so far.

"No unexpected issues have been reported to my department in those parts of the country where voting will occur through conventional means.

"In respect of the all-postal voting pilots occurring in the north-east of England, the north-west, the East Midlands and Yorkshire and Humberside, at this early stage, regional returning officers are reporting good progress in general. They all remain on track for issuing ballot packs by next Tuesday, 1 June, in accordance with the regulations. There are 12 printing contractors involved in these pilot all-postal trials.

"Technical issues with data processing and printing machines operated by associates of one contractor, Opt2Vote, have meant that some local returning officers did not receive their printed ballot packs to the schedule originally anticipated. No doubt this delay has caused some of the concerns that have already been voiced, particularly in the East Midlands, where Opt2Vote has the largest contract. Contingency arrangements appear to be working well. I am assured that spare printing capacity is being employed across the country, and that the printing issue is now in hand. Revised printing schedules from Opt2Vote indicate that it will be able to meet the 1 June issuing deadline for all local authorities.

"Separately, the managing director of one other contractor was taken ill, which caused a delay with printing for two local authorities. I am pleased to report that the returning officers for those areas have been able to reallocate ballot pack printing in those cases, and I should like to put on record my thanks to those other contractors and local authority in-house printing teams for employing their spare capacity.

"Overall, there are 127 local authorities taking part in the all-postal pilots, and there are 49 local authorities still in the process of printing. This is within the margins of the targets set, and I am confident that the deadlines to hand over packs to the Royal Mail will be met. Of the 40 authorities in the East Midlands, 13 have seen their ballot packs delivered to the Royal Mail already. In the northwest. 28 of their 43 authorities' packs have been delivered to the Royal Mail. In the north-east, 19 out of 23 have been passed to the Royal Mail and other deliverers. In Yorkshire and Humberside, 18 out of 21 have gone to the Royal Mail.

"I am pleased to report to the House that the Royal Mail is responding efficiently and effectively to the challenge of all-postal voting. We have established excellent relations with the management teams in each region and at a national level. I met yesterday with Adam Crozier, the chief executive of the Royal Mail, and he confirmed plans to ensure delivery as quickly as possible. Many electors have already received their voting papers, and some have even been returned to returning officers. I would encourage electors with postal votes to make their choice. complete their ballot papers, and post them by 8 June to ensure they are safely delivered to returning officers in plenty of time for the 10 June close of poll.

"All-postal voting has been piloted over several years now, gradually scaling up from local pilots to this year's four regions. The initiative is being tested to see the impact on turnout levels, and the signs are that millions more electors will participate as a result of receiving their ballot papers at home. This is surely to be welcomed, as our democracy rests on achieving the most widespread involvement of as many people as possible.

"I hope the House finds this update useful and that it will pay tribute to the sterling efforts being put in by professional and dedicated returning officers throughout the country. They are rising to the challenge of making voting easier and more convenient for the public at large, and I am confident that the elections will run smoothly".

My Lords, that concludes the Statement.

3.11 p.m.

Baroness Hanham

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement that was made in the other place; a Statement of breathtaking complacency. It has become apparent, despite the unwarranted optimism of Ministers, that in the past 24 hours serious delays have occurred and are occurring in the despatch of ballot papers in the four regions where all-postal voting for the forthcoming local and European elections will occur.

I can report that last night Bradford council confirmed that a quarter of a million ballot papers for the June elections were unusable owing to printing mistakes. We understand that today, 300,000 ballot papers—presumably because some of those papers were all right—were having to be reprinted, and at lunchtime today only 15,000 of those had been enveloped ready for delivery to the post office. To add to the general air of inefficiency, a number of ballot papers destined for Bradford have ended up in Leeds.

It does not take a genius to work out that to have the 300,000 prepared and delivered within the legal timeframe required by regulations on 1 June will require a heroic endeavour, given that prior to that day there is a Sunday and a bank holiday. Indeed, it may not have escaped the Government's notice that people tend to go away during this period, and as a result of these disasters may consequently be disfranchised. Their only recourse may be to seek duplicate forms from their town hall, an action they may not bother to take, thus reducing the rationale of all-postal voting; an increase in numbers and turn-out. Who will be monitoring whether electors receive their ballot papers within the legal timeframe?

We also understand that in the entire East Midlands, voting papers have not even been placed into the hands of election officers because of delays. This picture is repeated across the country, with difficulties being reported in Leeds, Scarborough. Sheffield, Warrington, Chester, Blackburn, Preston and Gateshead—not quite what the tone of the Statement implied. An emergency meeting of the north-west returning officers had to be held last night because of their concerns over printing delays jeopardising the whole process. With this evidence, it is hard to believe the Prime Minister's words that, returning officers are on target to post ballot packs by the deadline on 1 June".—[Official Report, Commons, 26/5/04; col. 1566] I cannot stress enough the seriousness of this issue. The possible disruption of the electoral process is a matter of the most grave concern, and it is one on which we spent considerable time during the process of the European Parliamentary and Local Elections (Pilots) Bill. I am sure that the Minister will remember that well. Yet throughout the passage of the European Parliamentary and Local Elections (Pilots) Bill, we received nothing but assurances and platitudes that everything would be fine. The Government asserted that there would be no problems in extending the pilot areas to four regions and there was no cause for concern or worry. How wrong the Government were to believe their own statements. How right we were to push the Government as we did on this contentious issue. How wrong it now appears the Government were to ignore the impartial, independent advice of the Electoral Commission on extending the pilot regions. Perhaps it is worth reminding ourselves what was said. The Electoral Commission chairman, Sam Younger, wrote personally to the Deputy Prime Minister on 4 March while the European Parliamentary and Local Elections (Pilots) Bill was still in process in this House: Preparation time is already limited and further delays will add uncertainties and risks". Yet the Minister sitting opposite assured us in this House on 16 March in respect of the Government's discussion with the Electoral Commission on extending the number of regions, The Government have undertaken such investigations with care, patience and thoroughness, and we are now clear that it is perfectly safe to undertake pilot elections in two further regions".—[Official Report, 16/4/04; col. 140.] The Government had identified that extending the pilots would have an impact on the timeframe. The draft Pilots Order and the policy paper published by the Minister on 21 April clearly states that, it is recognised that the greater procurement and printing requirements for an all-postal election on this scale will require additional time to prepare for and print the ballot paper packages". Perhaps it is now time for a little honesty. How did the Government believe that a Bill introduced into this House with major changes as late as January of this year could complete its passage in appropriate timescales with the administration that was required to implement the proposals?

Why were the Government so confident that they could ignore the independent advice of the Electoral Commission against extending the pilots from the two recommended regions to four? Who will pay the costs for the delays? What is the legal position regarding the regulations that state that ballot papers must be received by the deadline of 1 June? If that deadline is breached by any ballot papers not being received, will Parliament have to be recalled to pass another order to enable those ballot papers to be delivered? How could that possibly be done in time for postal voting to take place on 8 June?

We appreciate that returning officers and other public servants are doing their level best to carry out the Government's absurd plans. It is not their fault that they have been working against impossible timescales and on such an extensive area. The Government must stop being so complacent, and now do everything that they can to restore trust and integrity in our electoral system, not least so that people actually have an opportunity to vote.

3.18 p.m.

Lord Rennard

My Lords, so far as I am aware, this is the first occasion on which Ministers in both Houses have had to come to present an account of how elections are proceeding; supposedly satisfactorily. You wonder why it would be necessary for Minister to come to both Houses if the elections were running as smoothly as suggested by the Statement. A different account of the elections appears in tonight's Newcastle Journal, the lead story of which is "The Big Postal Voting Farce". It is bad enough that there are different regions with different voting systems in the same election, but it is now clear that hundreds of thousands of ballot papers that should have been delivered by Saturday will not now be printed until next week, and that this is a widespread problem perhaps in all four of the pilot all-postal voting regions. It means that, at best, some voters in those regions chosen by the Government for all-postal-vote elections will have two weeks in which to vote, and others will—they hope— have about one week in which to return their ballot papers.

There may be even worse problems with the elections. Already, it is clear that some voters in Sheffield have received ballot papers for the local elections for wards in which they do not reside and are not entitled to vote. There is the same situation in Stockport, and I know of at least one case of the wrong declaration of identity—an identity belonging to someone else—being delivered to a voter. There could be huge numbers of legal challenges to individual ward results if the pattern proves more widespread.

The Electoral Commission warned very clearly about the problems that there would be if the Government insisted on pursuing the all-postal pilots on such a large scale. The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, referred to the commission's letter of 4 March, which was most eloquent in warning the Government against up-scaling the pilots to such a large degree, because it invited such problems.

This House stood against what I believe to be gerrymandering in the elections, and I argued here on 30 March that those who try to change the rules, fail to achieve consensus, ignore independent advice and refuse to compromise must accept responsibility for what they do. The Government should now come clean about exactly who is responsible for gerrymandering and a potential cock-up in the elections of massive proportions.

We have got here because the Deputy Prime Minister feared simply that the Labour Party could not get its traditional supporters to turn out at polling stations this year. Will the Government be more minded in future to try to proceed with consensus and independent advice from the Electoral Commission before seeking to change voter regulations? What support will they give towards the considerable legal costs that some candidates may face if they lose their seats purely as a result of issues such as voters receiving the wrong ballot papers?

3.22 p.m.

Lord Filkin

My Lords, we return to an issue on which we have spent substantial amounts of time in this House. Let me respond first to the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham. I assure her that there is no complacency in the Government, the Royal Mail, regional returning officers or returning officers. There has been none from the beginning. All sides have recognised that it was a significant challenge and test to ensure that we conducted the elections well and properly. She asked who monitored what happened in a particular electoral area. The answer is the returning officer for that area. He will think about that, and will watch and put in place checks to ensure that the election is appropriately conducted.

The position is as I set out in the Statement. We have no reason to think that the ballot papers will not be issued according to the legal requirement by 1 June. It is absolutely correct that the north-west returning officers have met under the leadership of the regional returning officer, Sir Howard Bernstein. I would have expected them to; that is exactly what an active and responsible regional returning officer would do. It would ensure that the relevant returning officers were together to monitor the situation and see what support was needed in any areas of difficulty.

I was asked how the Government believed that it was possible to undertake the process in the time. We came to that conclusion because we worked throughout the passage of the Bill, in the closest possible liaison, with both regional returning officers and returning officers. We took their views and advice about what was practicable and what they believed that they could deliver. I pay tribute to the professionalism with which they have addressed the issue and continue to do so. We would have been foolish had we lightly moved on to a process that they did not believe that they had a good prospect of being able to deliver.

Why were four regions chosen rather than three? I would weary the House if I repeated our previous debates. We felt that we could learn more from that process, and four regions were capable of carrying the pilot out.

The noble Baroness asked about the legal position. I shall give it in brief. The regulations governing local government and European elections provide that a technical breach—something not done explicitly according to the letter—should not result in a successful electoral petition provided that no European or parliamentary election should be declared invalid by reason of an act or omission, if it appears to the tribunal having cognisance of the question that the election was conducted substantially in accordance with the law on elections and the act or omission did not affect its result.

I shall try to put that more simply and clearly. If anyone who has a relevant interest in an area believes that there has been an electoral irregularity there, they are entitled to make a petition complaining of an undue election and questioning the result of the process. I was signalling that the courts are required, when looking at such a petition, not to strike out the election automatically simply because there has been one technical irregularity, but to look at the two tests that I quoted from the statute in that respect. Without me labouring the point, one can understand why that is for good reason.

Baroness Hanham

My Lords, the most salient point is that the ballot papers, under regulations, have to be received by 1 June. It seems very possible that they will not be. Is it still the situation as the law stands that that will be only a technical breach?

Lord Filkin

My Lords, the regulations issued on, I think, 27 April state that the ballot papers have to be issued by the returning officer by 1 June. They have to be issued to the Royal Mail for delivery by it from that point onwards. I was trying to give the noble Baroness a fair and balanced explanation of the law. If in one area, for example, one ballot paper had not been issued by 1 June, that would not necessarily strike out the election, for reasons that are self-evident given the explanation of what the statute said.

The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, raised a number of questions and returned to some of our previous debates. From the information that we are getting from returning officers, I do not believe that there will be a cock-up, and I am certainly clear that there is no exercise in gerrymandering. He asked whether we take cognisance of the Electoral Commission's advice. We do so; we did so; we will do so in future. That does not mean to say that we follow it. It is advice; it is not a mandate. Parliament makes the decisions, not the Electoral Commission.

The House is naturally interested to receive a report on such issues, given that there was some speculation and concern exhibited in the press. However, one should not rush prematurely into a celebration of a disaster on the issue, because returning officers and regional returning officers are working very strongly throughout the weekend—as are other people who have roles to play in the system—to ensure that the elections are true, fair and can be carried out effectively under the all-postal system, as we have previously discussed.

Baroness Hanham

My Lords, will the Minister answer the question about who will be responsible for paying for any disturbances caused, particularly the reprinting of nearly a quarter of a million ballot papers?

Lord Filkin

My Lords, as the noble Baroness would recognise, the answer to that question would depend on who was responsible for any failure or breach of contract. I am not privy—nor should I be—to the details of the contractual arrangements between the returning officer and the printers, but if a printer failed to meet a contractual responsibility to which it had signed up, clearly the local authority's returning officer would look to it for remedy.

3.29 p.m.

Lord King of Bridgwater

My Lords, I am sure that no one in the House doubts, as the Minister said, that the returning officers, the Post Office and Royal Mail will do their best to try to pull the Government out of the mess that they have created, because we must have free and fair elections. However, the very words he used—that the elections would be a challenge and a test—and the fact that the best that the returning officers could say was that there were good prospects that they would be able to deliver the election in proper order, indicate the difficulties created.

The Government have decided to take the risk and embark on something manifestly inaptly called pilots; half the country will vote in the full postal ballots. From what the Minister said to my noble friend Lady Hanham, I understand that the elections will go forward no matter how inadequate are the arrangements or how short the shortage may be of ballot papers for voters. It will then be for the courts to determine whether the election was invalid. Is that correct?

Lord Filkin

My Lords, I cannot genuinely think how the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, can draw the conclusion that he has just done from the Statement that I made and the answers that I gave. I said clearly to the House that, on the information that we have got from regional returning officers and returning officers, people are working actively, as one would expect senior managers to do, to address any issues of printing that occur in those ballots—essentially, we are talking about two printing firms having difficulties—to ensure that they deliver a successful election process.

I seek to address this House with moderation rather than exaggeration. I am slightly disappointed that my words were turned back against me, in the way that the noble Lord did, by not claiming 100 per cent certainty when it would be foolish to do so. The position is as I have said. We have obviously inspected the situation carefully. Regional returning officers and returning officers could not be more mindful of their responsibilities. They are working hard to deliver the position. The Royal Mail is equally committed.

I would also point out to the noble Lord that this is not a frivolous experiment. It is because we are concerned in this House and another place at the appalling reduction in turnout in our elections. That is why we believe that it is important to do something to try to increase turnout by testing effective new means of doing so. As I have said to this House previously, if, as we expect, these elections are well conducted, we expect 2 million more people to vote in these four regions than would otherwise have done so.

Lord Tebbit

My Lords, apart from an increase in turnout, what other effect do the Government anticipate that postal balloting will have? Are they of the view that the outcome of the election will be the same as it would have been? Can he further say whether there is any evidence that the previous system ever failed?

Lord Filkin

My Lords, the noble Lord asked whether the postal process will lead to a difference in outcome. It is a good question to which we turned many times during the debates on the European Parliamentary and Local Elections (Pilots) Bill. All I can say to him is that this is an issue which excites election agents up and down the land. Some view it one way; some view it another. I know of no academic research that has pointed to a clear conclusion either way on the issue. Therefore, that is the best and most truthful answer that I can give him in that respect.

Lord King of Bridgwater

My Lords, I asked the noble Lord a question which he totally ignored. Notwithstanding that a great effort is being made by the printers, the returning officers and the Royal Mail. if it becomes apparent that very significant numbers of ballot papers fail to arrive by the date required under the regulations, will it be the position of the Government and the legal position that the election goes ahead with manifest inadequacies and then it is a matter for the courts to determine whether the election is valid or invalid? Is that the position?

Lord Filkin

My Lords, I hoped that the answer to the question was clear from what I said previously. It is a hypothetical question that is posited on the probability or the possibility that there could be a substantial disaster in these elections. I repeat what I said to the House: we do not believe that that will be the situation. Therefore, I shall not answer hypothetical questions based on what if x or y disaster were to take place.

Lord Borrie

My Lords, in responding to a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, my noble friend the Minister indicated that he was not fully aware of the terms of the contracts between the printers and returning officers and, indeed, that it may not be the Minister's concern or responsibility to have that knowledge. I wonder whether I got that right. Would it be the case that the Government are not interested in ensuring adequate incentives on the printers to do what they are supposed to do, including penalty clauses of some kind if they fail to come up with the matter of urgent performance of their work?

Lord Filkin

My Lords, I have no doubt that all the parties in this system are very vigorously incentivised to work to make it a success. I am sure that that goes to the contractors, the local authority printers, the Royal Mail, the returning officers and the very many local authority officials who are working on those issues. The noble Lord is correct. It is not the responsibility of Ministers to be involved in contractual arrangements. Returning officers are the officials who carry the legal responsibility for elections. It is their responsibility to undertake those issues. I have great confidence in their capacity to do so.

Baroness Hanham

My Lords, I wish to follow up a point made by my noble friend Lord King. There must have been a risk management assessment of the all-postal situation. Part of that risk management assessment, presumably, must have included what would happen if by any chance something disastrous happened, such as insufficient ballot papers being delivered or not being delivered on time. What was the outcome of such a risk management assessment; and, as my noble friend asked, what would be the legal outcome? I believe that that is not a hypothetical question.

Lord Filkin

My Lords, the noble Baroness is correct. Of course, both at governmental level and at returning officer level, a risk assessment of issues such as this must be undertaken. We have just seen exactly what has happened in terms of one of those issues. One of the printers printed more slowly than it contracted to deliver. As a consequence, the relevant returning officers—in a sense with the knowledge of the Government because, clearly, we are in communication on such issues—arranged for other printers to undertake the printing.

Therefore, that is what returning officers should do. It is the sort of message that if the Government's advice were asked for they would give. They would make sure that effective contingency plans were in place for the definables; that is, any significant risks that can be identified.