That this House takes note of the Report from the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 Committee An electoral system fit for today? More to be done (Session 2019–21, HL Paper 83).
My Lords, it should have been Lord Shutt of Greetland standing here today. As noble Lords will know, my noble friend, David Shutt, very sadly died in October 2020. As the other Liberal Democrat member of the Electoral Registration Act 2013 post-legislative scrutiny committee, I have been asked to present the findings of our committee to your Lordships’ House today. I know Lord Shutt would have wanted me to begin by warmly thanking the committee staff: Simon Keal, Katie Barraclough and Breda Twomey, as well as the specialist advisers, Professor Maria Sobolewska and Professor Stuart Wilks-Heeg, for all their hard work and dedication during the inquiry and in drawing up report.
Simon Keal, the committee clerk, told me:
“Lord Shutt was exceptionally good to work with. An extremely dedicated and professional Chair, with a real commitment and passion for the subject matter and determination for the Committee to make a difference.”
In looking again at the various obituaries for Lord Shutt in preparing for today’s debate, I was struck by the frequent use of “straight talking” and “decent” to describe him. But he also had a wonderful twinkle in his eye. He liked to tell it as it was. He enjoyed a bit of gossip over a cup of tea but was always extremely kind.
As director and later chairman of the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, Lord Shutt was able to promote political reform and help community projects, particularly for young people. It is telling that his very last political act in Parliament was to promote the rights of young people to vote, and indeed he won the support of your Lordships’ House, through an amendment on automatically adding young attainers, 16 and 17 year-olds, to the electoral register. This was a subject that he felt extremely strongly about and which he was able to explore in more depth during the work on this committee inquiry.
As I am sure the other noble Lords present today who were members of the committee will testify, Lord Shutt chaired the committee in his own inimitable style, allowing people to have their say but, as ever, telling it as he saw it as he summed up a discussion. He continues to be very greatly missed.
The timing of this committee inquiry against the backdrop of the Covid pandemic, the 2019 general election and the early—and ultimately reversed—Prorogation was deeply challenging in terms of planning and continuity of the committee work for staff and Members alike. The committee inquiry ran from May 2019 to July 2020, held 16 evidence sessions and received a total of 42 written-evidence submissions. The committee also held seminars with electoral registration officers, including in the aftermath of the 2019 election, and visited the London Borough of Tower Hamlets to speak to election officials and politicians regarding the operation of the registration system there. As well as looking at the Act itself and its implementation, we took the opportunity to assess wider issues around electoral administration, including measures to tackle fraud.
My Lords, I echo the comments from the noble Baroness in relation to Lord Shutt. I do not want to duplicate anything that was said but in not doing so, I do not want it to be underestimated that he was a superb chairman. This was not an easy issue to have covered, given the political differences we will be seeing on the Elections Bill in the next few days. To produce a report with unanimity throughout is therefore a reflection of the superb chairmanship of Lord Shutt. The report is a testimony to him and his ability.
Perhaps I may also make a personal observation: I once chatted privately for a few minutes to Lord Shutt about a place called Skircoat Lodge. I doubt if anybody else in this Chamber knows about Skircoat Lodge but it was a care home for kids in Calderdale, which is well recorded in a book called Damaged, written by Chris Wild. As a child, he was admitted there aged 11, and at age 12 he ran away to live in a heroin den, until he was 14, because it was safer to live in that den than it was in the lodge. That is an indication of the conversation I had with Lord Shutt—you felt that he really felt the pain. The noble Baroness, Lady Suttie, referred to his work with the Joseph Rowntree Trust, and I will remember him for that sort of caring empathy, as well as for his chairmanship.
I want to pick up one issue that is covered in the report, as the noble Baroness has done, in relation to electoral rolls—referred to in paragraph 48 onwards—and the number of people who apply and the burden that is imposed on electoral registration officers, which is enormous. During Second Reading on the Elections Bill, I referred to the fear that, sooner or later, an election is going to crash because of the burden that we impose on local councils in one form or another.
There are two big burdens: one is postal votes and the other is registration. In evidence, we heard—I quote here from paragraph 50—that
“between … (29 October) and the registration deadline (26 November), 3,850,859 applications were made”
My Lords, I was a member of the electoral registration ad hoc Select Committee, so ably chaired by the late Lord Shutt. The tributes will be many and, if I might say so, well deserved. He was a man who I learned to greatly admire for his political integrity. He was, more than anything, down to earth and ever conscious of his roots. He never forgot them.
I turn to the issue of electoral registration, recognising the burden that recent changes to registration and voter ID will impose on local authorities. Lindsay Tomlinson, the electoral registration officer for Allerdale, in Cumbria, in my former constituency, gave evidence to the committee, and I asked her to summarise her views and those of her colleagues across the country on the reforms now under way, following the session where she gave evidence. This is what she sent me the other day—Ministers should take close note of it:
“We would appreciate some reassurance from the government that early clarity will be given over process and implementation details for Voter ID. This is particularly important for those authorities, such as in Cumbria, who are currently going through local government reorganisation and who will need to have their voter ID arrangements for the new authorities in place before those new authorities come into existence. This will have implications for example in terms of which Electoral Registration Officer has responsibility, how the government online registration service will integrate with the existing and new authorities, how electors will understand which authority they need to apply to etc.
We would therefore request an assurance from government that EROs and electoral administrators have early guidance and clarity so that they can start to put plans in place for voter ID and can communicate from an early stage and with appropriate detail with local electors.”
My Lords, I declare my interests as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and a director of the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, which gives grants to bodies seeking to improve democracy, including improving electoral registration and engagement. In past years, JRRT has supported Operation Traveller Vote and Votey McVoteface, which I shall refer to later. I am also a patron of the Traveller Movement.
I congratulate my noble friend Lady Suttie and the committee on an excellent report and want to remember the extraordinary work of Lord Shutt, who joined the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust in 1975 and was chair in the run-up to 2010. He kept the trust focused for decades on the purity of elections, including voter registration and party funding reform—causes that remain central to the work of JRRT today. This report is testimony to Lord Shutt, who is much missed as a campaigner, a reformer and a friend.
In my brief contribution, I will focus on combating registration fraud and how that balances with the accessibility of the registration process for two of those communities who are traditionally least likely to register to vote.
Chapter 4 of the report focuses on electoral fraud and the evidence of the level of fraud, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has outlined. It then considers the Government’s intention to deliver what they describe as anti-fraud measures. Paragraph 271 states:
“The Electoral Commission told us that there was no evidence from police data in recent elections of widespread attempts to commit fraud … Natalie Bodek from the Cabinet Office reported that ‘in 2017, there was a conviction for electoral fraud, and eight suspects accepted police cautions.’”
Witness after witness to the committee said that the real issue was fear of fraud rather than widespread fraud.
The report also talks about the importance of ensuring that registration reaches those who are least likely to think about it. As I have mentioned, in the past, JRRT has provided grants to the campaigning group Votey McVoteface, which represents canal and narrowboat residents—“boaters”—who often do not register because they live on the move. As with the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community, the barriers because they have no fixed address mean that registration for elections has been very difficult.
My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I want to say something that I have said before, at Second Reading of the Elections Bill. I think that noble Lord, Lord True, has heard it all before, but I am sure he will be patient and listen to me again.
I find the entire election system strangely out of date. It fails to take lessons from the world out there, which has done a much better job of giving people the right to vote. As far as I am concerned, the right to vote is my right to vote in the United Kingdom. It may happen that I have to vote in a certain constituency, but we must make a separation; the right to vote is a universal right, regardless of where you live and whether you move from one area to another—I recently moved from Camberwell to Lambeth, which is nearer to Westminster. I do not have a right to vote in general elections, but I do not want to lose my right to vote in local elections.
Why should it be so difficult for people to exercise their vote? Reference is made in the report to a five-day gap between online registration and the electoral registration officers, or whoever it is, recognising that you are registered. I can order a birthday cake online for a friend in New York in about five minutes and it will be delivered. We are so backward in using technology in terms of politics. As soon as it comes to politics, we have to be 17th-century, we have to have crowded, uncomfortable parliamentary Chambers, and, until recently when got PeerHub to vote on, we had antediluvian voting systems—and we are very proud of that. In India, where the size of the electorate was 900 million at the last election in 2019, every voter has an ID card. Most people have an ID card. It is not rocket science; it is very simple. It is an attitudinal problem, because we are not proactive towards the voter. We still have the idea that giving somebody the franchise is giving them a privilege and not a right.
My Lords, as a member of the committee which produced this report, I too will add my personal tribute to the late Lord Shutt. He combined his deep knowledge of the subject of our discussion with relentless common sense. It was a very enjoyable mixture, and a privilege to serve alongside him. I also add my thanks to the staff and advisers who contributed so much to the report.
The report examines what may be seen as a narrow piece of legislation concerning electoral registration but, as we all know, it is absolutely essential because it lies at the heart of our democratic system. As others have, I will focus on only two issues: the worrying number of those not on the register, and resourcing the electoral registration machinery. As we have heard, the Committee concluded that the 2013 Act brought much-needed reforms to the registration system, but more needs to be done. We found that these reforms had helped with the accuracy of the registers but their completeness had not noticeably improved. Estimates vary for the so-called missing millions. We did not put a figure in the report, but the Electoral Commission mentioned an estimate of between 8 million and 9 million in its 2019 report. More recently, others have reported that the problem is getting worse. By any standard, this is a staggering number and a serious problem. However, it is not an impossible problem. Other countries with comparable electoral systems—we have heard about Canada—have managed to do much better than us.
The report mentions various steps to take. I will briefly touch on three: automaticity, assisted registration and better data sharing. There are many options for automatic voter registration. The Government’s general objection appears to be a matter of principle as much as practice, resting on the principle that it is the citizen’s civic duty to register. May I gently challenge this thinking? It is a citizen’s civic duty to vote, and registration is part of that process. Therefore, it is the Government’s duty to make that process as easy, accessible and robust as possible. It may be that automaticity is appropriate. A particular example of this is the automatic registration of attainers. If this is too far for the Government, then I would urge them to continue to look at assisted registration—namely, to take every opportunity to give that behavioural nudge to people to register or to update their details when they access other public services, such as applying for driving licences or renewing passports.
My Lords, I will add my tribute to Lord Shutt. We both cut our teeth politically in the town of Pudsey, between Leeds and Bradford, where birds fly backwards to keep muck out of their eyes. He was somewhat older than me, although we fought the same elections. He started young but I started even younger. I recall that he had the advantage of a large Liberal hall to operate from, whereas we had the caravan of the church Sunday school superintendent, Tony Rogers. Tony celebrated his 91st birthday very recently, so I am pleased that he still going strong. We altered the balance because we had a whole operation of sending our voters in the rather luxurious Liberal Party cars to the polling station—a practice which survived for at least 15 years. Lord Shutt is sorely missed.
Without straying into future business, I will make the brief point that the Labour Party ought to be celebrating—they might be surprised by this—at how outdated the paradigm of the Conservative Party machine is in understanding voters today. Voter ID at the next general election will cost the Labour Party very little, but it will cost the Conservative Party an awful lot, including red wall seats and red wall voters. I know what the attitudes will be, and that the voters for the Conservative Party won red wall seats for the first time. As an observation, I merely say that the Conservative Party does not know what it is doing with this in relation to the next election. I will be proved right when it is analysed afterwards: the Conservative Party will lose votes because of the Bill. I merely throw that in as a factual piece of information.
I have a question for the Minister in relation to ID; it would be helpful to have clarification now, or perhaps even a government amendment, if what I am told is accurate. The practice of party agents and candidates standing inside a polling room has crept in. I have challenged that, and I am told that the law allows them to do it—not to canvas, that is forbidden, but to stand the entire day in a polling room with a rosette on, saying nothing. I think that is intimidating the voters. However, voter ID is an entirely different concept, as people’s personal data can potentially be discussed in the polling station—voting of course is done privately, but not necessarily the dialogue over identification. Is it therefore good practice to allow party candidates or agents—including those wearing rosettes—to stand in a polling room on election day? If it is, which is what my returning officer informed me in ruling out my objections to this practice, will the Government bring forward an amendment to make it illegal? It seems to me that it is highly inappropriate.
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Some of the committee’s recommendations have now been passed by events in the 20 months since it was published, not least as a result of the Elections Bill, but today I shall highlight a few issues raised by the report that I believe are still highly relevant. The first is the question of resources. Implementing electoral reforms requires administrators to be properly trained and resourced. We heard during the course of the inquiry that when it comes to resourcing this is certainly not always the case.
Our report found that intolerable burdens are often placed on administrators during times of multiple elections, such as we saw from 2015 to 2019, with three general elections and the EU referendum in fairly rapid succession. We believed that the Government should consider a scheme of financial support or compensation for election-related registration activity because of the very high volume of online applications to go on the register being received in the run-up to those elections. These applications were on a scale that the 2011 reforms did not really anticipate. In their response, the Government stated that the Cabinet Office has “launched a project” to identify and put in place measures to mitigate impacts on electoral administrators. Can the Minister say a little more today about how that project is going?
The second area of particular concern raised during the inquiry was the completeness and accuracy of the registers. This was an area of particular concern to Lord Shutt. The committee was keen to explore ways of improving the registration levels of underrepresented groups and to study best international practice on these matters. Canada was seen as a particularly positive example in this regard. I believe that there has been no further general study of accuracy and completeness of registers since the committee published its report. What action have the Government taken since the publication of this report to improve the completeness and accuracy of the registers? What evidence do they have, if any, that completeness and accuracy are improving?
A third area examined during our inquiry was the simplification of the registration process. Anecdotally, I should mention that it was only because of my membership of this committee that I learned that making an application online, just to be sure that I am correctly registered, actually results in staff having to check online applications for duplicate entries and therefore takes up a considerable amount of staff time that could be usefully used elsewhere. That is why the report calls on the Government to explore the options for an online checking tool, which I believe could save time and money in the long run, even though there would initially be cost implications. I believe that this is a very important recommendation of our report. An online checking tool would also make it easier for electoral administrators to identify whether people were registered in two different locations—sometimes legitimately, sometimes not—and make it easier to transfer an elector from one district or constituency to another if they move house.
In their response, the Government stated that they are
“sympathetic to the potential benefits”
of an online registration checking tool but stated that issues around security, cost and implementation
“would need to be analysed”.
They indicated that they were “prioritising other interventions” to modernise the system that they believe will be more useful and other interventions to reduce the burden of duplicate applications. I would be grateful if the Minister could expand a little on these “other interventions” in his response.
The Government noted in their response the long-term nature of the process for consolidating and simplifying electoral law. However, as the House of Lords Constitution Committee, of which I am currently a member, noted in its report on the Elections Bill:
“The consolidation of electoral law is necessary and overdue, but it would be a significant undertaking. We recommend that the Government takes steps to consolidate electoral law before the next general election.”
In reality, the Elections Bill is yet another Bill containing a range of miscellaneous election provisions.
I will not say much about the issue of voter ID, as I am sure that issue will be much debated in the Elections Bill in the weeks to come, but our report called for voter ID not to be first introduced at a general election, instead suggesting that it should be rolled out first at a local election and a full evaluation conducted afterwards.
I have two final points in conclusion. First, our committee was set up in particular to assess the implementation of IER, which faced a multitude of electoral tests shortly after its introduction. While the implementation of IER proceeded successfully, thanks in no small part to the dedication of the administrators, it has not resolved some of the wider concerns relating to the electoral registration system. There remain particular concerns regarding the completeness and accuracy of registers, and about multiple registrations and the rules surrounding these. There also remain concerns about the negative impacts of this Act on, for example, student and attainer registration as well as those from other underrepresented groups. To date, the Government have not yet indicated that they are minded to tackle any of these issues as a matter of priority.
Secondly, I stress the importance of post-legislative scrutiny itself. I have had the privilege of working in many developing parliaments throughout the world, including four years ago in the Verkhovna Rada in Kyiv. In that work, we have regularly promoted the use of effective post-legislative scrutiny. It is a very positive feature of the Westminster model that we use post-legislative scrutiny to examine the impact of legislation in reality through speaking to experts and practitioners on the ground several years after the legislation has been passed. However, for post-legislative scrutiny to be truly effective it requires the Government to listen. It also requires them to acknowledge the findings of inquiries like ours and be prepared to make changes. I beg to move.
to register, of which 659,000 were made on the final day. About a third of those were recorded as duplicates, to which the noble Baroness has already referred. The Government say that the cost to the local authorities is between £0.4 million and £1.2 million. I am sorry, but I just do not believe that figure. I also do not believe that the estimate on the cost of installing a system is as identified in the evidence we received. If Ireland can run an effective online registration-checking system then I am sure this country can as well, and it would reduce dramatically the burden. Again, that is identified in the contrast referred to in those sections.
We are talking about 1 million people being taken out of the registrations but a large number being added, whereas in Canada—as recorded at paragraph 58 —because it has an online system, 80,000 were added. There is a huge contrast between our system, where people make false applications, not malignly but because they do not realise they are already registered, and that in Canada, where people can check for themselves.
The point is that I believe the Cabinet Office is looking at this on a national basis, as it wants a national system. But we actually register on a local authority basis, and therefore, because of all the other records, it should be possible to implement easily a local authority checking system.
I make those comments in relation to this report. I know that it covers part of what I was going to raise on the Elections Bill. As a result, I can promise the Minister that I will not re-raise them in a few days’ time.
In conclusion, as I said previously, I thought Lord Shutt was an excellent chairman and I enjoyed serving on the committee. I also thank the staff, as there is so much in the report that is worth considering and will no doubt be quoted in full when we get to consideration of the Elections Bill.
Will the Minister reply to me in writing, in detail, on each of the issues that she has raised? I am sure she will want to circulate those notes among her colleagues around the country and, equally, to the administration officers.
In the sad absence of the former chairman, I want to flag up some of the comments in our report on mandatory voter ID, a subject which I know caused our chairman some concern. First, as we say in our report:
“We are concerned about the potential impact voter ID could have on the participation rates of BAME groups, young people and students”.
Can we have a response on that matter from the Government?
In paragraph 335, we state:
“The Electoral Reform Society described itself as ‘strongly opposed to the introduction of mandatory voter ID’ arguing that it risks ‘undermining the principles of fair and equal representation that have been at the heart of British democracy since the adoption of universal, equal suffrage in 1928’. Darren Hughes, Chief Executive of the Electoral Reform Society … told us that voter ID as a means of tackling personation fraud was like using ‘a sledgehammer to crack a nut’ and said the Government should be making policy based on evidence and not ‘on things that people think might be a problem, even though the data and the evidence tell us that they are not’.”
What are the total estimates by the Government on reduced turnout, which will be the real measure of whether this works?
In paragraph 271, we said:
“The Electoral Commission told us that there was no evidence from police data in recent elections of widespread attempts to commit fraud.”
In that light, what is the Government’s estimate of the level of fraud?
For the Conservative Party, Alan Mabbutt told us:
“Most allegations of fraud appear to be based on hearsay rather than fact”—
and he is a supporter of the Government. He continued:
“It is likely that most fraud takes place within the confines of a household where a … person tells everyone in the house how to cast their postal ballot.”
Was Mr Mabbutt asked to give evidence or meet Ministers, even in private, prior to this legislation being introduced?
The electoral registration officers then told us in their evidence that they all agreed that a national ID card system would make voter ID requirements easier to administer. They were supported by Richard Mawrey QC, who said that a national ID system would be an effective means of tackling certain types of electoral fraud and could be used both to register an individual and to check people at the polling station, adding that
“electoral fraud of the kind we have had here … is almost unknown in continental countries”
that have a national ID card system. I had the feeling throughout the inquiry that ID cards were the answer to the problem, and we could save millions of pounds in the event of their being introduced.
They are just some of my comments and those of others, drawn mostly from the evidence that we were given by our witnesses. I hope that the Government are listening. I believe that this whole agenda is being driven for the electoral advantage of the Conservative Party at the ballot box, and I find that quite deplorable.
The Votey McVoteface campaign over a number of elections reaches out to the boater community and explains to them how they can register in a community and how to respond if they face electoral registration staff unfamiliar with those who have no fixed address but who are not homeless. It is a small community, but the work of these campaigners has been important in empowering those whose homes are on our canals and rivers to have the right to vote. For those who say that it is too easy for it to be abused, the Votey McVoteface website is very clear, stating:
“Please make sure that you do have a genuine local connection with the constituency that you vote in. Voting in a place where you've never had a connection could be constituted as electoral fraud which has serious legal repercussions.”
It then links users to the section of the Crisis website that provides support for homeless people in registering.
The Traveller Movement also runs registration campaigns and offers advice and guidance for its community. There was a moving account by Cassie Marie McDonagh on her first experience of voting, encouraged by Operation Traveller Vote. She said:
“Some Travellers don’t vote. But ask yourself this, would you vote when the only time you hear politicians speaking about your community it’s in a way that is disrespectful at best and racist at worst?”
She is right, but what is even worse is when marginalised members of our society—our UK community—are discouraged from using their right to vote. There must be cultural change, and those campaigns are helping with that, but also legislation changes to ensure that everyone who is entitled to can register to vote.
Both Operation Traveller Vote and Votey McVoteface say that most EROs but not all front-line staff are helpful. Staff need to be fully trained to understand the rights of these communities. More burdens on registration will impact these communities and, while registration needs to be robust and fraud proof, it must also be accessible to all our communities, especially those who have been discouraged in the past.
Campaigns such as those that I have described are vital. I agree with the report that our current registration system needs updating, and I commend it for its clear recommendations that overall legislation is now due.
Again and again, I am very surprised when people say, “Oh, you know, ID cards are going to be very difficult because of the poor BAME. They can’t understand what an ID card is, because it is so peculiar and so white. You have to be white to understand ID cards”. It is deeply insulting to say this. Everyone always turns to talking about BAME people. I feel sympathetic to them because I am BAME, but I do not understand this argument. People have smart cards and smartphones, and children can go online much better than grown-ups. Yet, somehow, we still think that we must have elections where we need to go to a booth, take a pencil and a paper vote, mark it, and put it in a box. Why do we not have electronic voting machines, as is the case in India? They are so easy to use to count votes.
The whole problem of fraud has been completely exaggerated and we should forget about it. Fraud is not the problem; the problem is our patronising attitude towards voters. We are still not a fully democratic system in which we actually consider voters our masters. We think that they are supplicants to the political system. Read the debate on the Great Reform Act 1832. More or less, it was the elite giving something to the poor. Both the Elections Bill and this very good report are here, and we ought to take this chance to totally revolutionise our election system and bring it, at least, into the 20th century, if not the 21st. We must use electronic equipment and online tools to make our elections simple and joyful exercises to carry through.
Finally, as we have heard, there is surely greater scope for using more digital techniques to continue to bring the registration processes into the 21st century. Online voter registration has been introduced but, as has been said, there is no online look-up function. More can be done to allow EROs to mine other public service databases to verify—or help them verify—the accuracy of their registers while respecting privacy issues.
This brings me to my second point: the cost and administrative burden on electoral registration officers. During the committee hearings, we heard evidence of what seemed to be something of a hand-to-mouth process of ensuring adequate resources for funding EROs. In the Elections Bill, we now have other additional requirements being made on the system with voter ID cards and the registration of more overseas voters. I hope that the Minister, in summing up, will assure us that the adequacy of resourcing our election machinery, and this issue of increasing registration, are government priorities.
The issue of disabled voters and other vulnerable voters is one I want to home in on. Disability can be defined in many ways; returning officers do not seem to be using their powers—perhaps those powers should be strengthened—to define who are vulnerable voters, in particular in relation to assistance with postal voting. There is a remarkably high wastage rate among that section of the electorate on postal votes. Almost by definition, it is impossible to say which party that affects; I imagine that, overall, it balances out over the country. The kinds of people who get it wrong, however, tend to be those with, for example, very low levels of literacy; those with a learning disability; elderly people whose eyesight is not as good as they would like to admit; and people whose manual dexterity, otherwise known as “writing”, is not as good as it needs to be for the signature required. Their votes often get ruled out.
There ought to be a duty on returning officers to consider that and to make available far more election officials who can assist in completing a postal vote, and specifically the verification of a postal vote. That could be at town halls or in other local authority venues, or in care homes or people’s homes—particularly in people’s homes. I think, indeed I know, that would increase the actual turnout of votes counted, as opposed to the number of votes submitted. While it is a small number, in a general election it can be many hundreds. I do not know whether this was totally within the rules, but I recall one returning officer who, on opening wrongly filled-in verification forms early, used to return them to the voter explaining what they had done wrong and giving them a second chance to vote. That kind of intervention, if necessary by additional law, would be extremely helpful. Literacy and other such issues are often overlooked. However, as the Government are very concerned about the propriety of postal voting, such an intervention would also further ensure that postal votes are completed in the way in which the voter wished them to be.
As we all know, the reality is that, if a 95 year-old with failing eyesight and a trembling hand is trying to fill in a vote, they will tend to call in a relative to assist—and hopefully get the vote that they wish. Their ability to bring in an official, or the ERO themselves, would be quite a significant improvement. I am aware of cases where people have objected to their family standing over them and pressuring them on their postal vote, but do not have a route out of that. While those cases of pressure small in number and concern precisely the people who would never complain—certainly not to officialdom, although perhaps to a candidate who has been denied a vote—it seems that this could be an enhancement of the system, and one that would be relatively easy to make by giving a further duty to EROs to consider this.
I have two final points to make. The first is that I do not understand why we allow more than a single registration. I do not mean that it should be illegal for someone not to have removed themselves from one register as they move to a second house, but the principle that people—people like us—can vote in two different locations seems fundamentally anti-democratic. Why should someone with two homes choose where they vote, whereas someone with one home cannot? I understand the principles historically in terms of local government and finance but, with the myriad elections we have today, why should someone be able to choose which mayoral election they vote in or, as the law allows, vote in two mayoral elections on the same day? That seems fundamentally flawed in logic. Such a change would also discourage people from jumping around, because some of the registrations and where people claim to be living can themselves be dubious. If we are looking for something dubious in the system, that is a dubious part—I will finish in a minute.