Postponement of Local Elections (Northern Ireland) Order 2023

The order therefore allows for a short, two-week delay to avoid these potential issues. It will allow everyone in Northern Ireland who wishes to celebrate the Coronation —I hope that will be the vast majority—the opportunity to do so. It is important that both these events can take place successfully, and this order will safeguard that. As a Government, we informed councils, political parties, the Electoral Commission and the chief electoral officer of our plans, and all were supportive of this short postponement.

Noble Lords may wonder why this postponement is needed in Northern Ireland but not in England, where there are also local elections to be held on 4 May, so I will briefly explain. This is entirely down to the nature of the voting systems in both places. As noble Lords know, local elections in England are conducted under first past the post and there is therefore a much shorter count process. The manual count for the single transferable vote system used in Northern Ireland will, as I have explained, take much longer. This is why a short postponement is essential for these elections but is not required for England. There are no elections planned in Scotland and Wales on 4 May, so there will be no changes required there either.

Finally, I thank the outgoing Chief Electoral Officer for Northern Ireland, Virginia McVea, for her dedication and service to the Electoral Office for Northern Ireland and to the people of Northern Ireland, for ensuring that elections there are undertaken smoothly and providing confidence in the democratic process. I wish her well in her next career and look forward to working with her successor in due course.

I hope your Lordships agree that ensuring the smooth and effective running of local elections is a priority for the democratic process. This order will allow that while allowing, as I have said before, all of those who wish to celebrate the Coronation to do so. Therefore, I hope noble Lords will support this order. I commend it to the Committee and beg to move.

The noble Lord also looked for an assurance that the position of Chief Electoral Officer for Northern Ireland will be filled. He is right to say that the post has been advertised, and the process is now well under way, with a number of applications. We are confident that the post will be filled in good time before the election so that there will be continuity within that office.

The noble Lord, Lord Hay of Ballyore, asked about overnight voting. The current position is that the legislation actually prevents the count starting until the following day. As the process is very complex and lengthy, as we have discussed, it has long been felt that it is not ideal to start the count overnight, although verification of unused ballots does take place overnight to ensure that the count can start in good order on the Friday morning. I am not entirely sure that he is right —I will have to check—that all local government election counts in England take place overnight; I think that in my own area, in Leeds, they start on the following morning, but I will check. In the past, security considerations have been paramount when it came to overnight counts in general elections, but in recent general elections in Northern Ireland we have had overnight counting just as in the rest of the United Kingdom. I will check on the point, but as things stand the legislation prevents the counts beginning in Northern Ireland until the following day.

With that, I think I have responded to all the points made; no, I see that my noble friend Lord Lexden is going to contradict me.