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Electoral Administration Bill

We in this House must do everything that we can to tackle electoral fraud. Faith in our democratic process has been undermined by recent allegations. A judge has said that our system is wide open to fraud and similar to that of a ““banana republic””. Only last week, election results in Coventry were questioned when it was found that people who were in Pakistan on the day of the vote somehow managed to vote in person at the polling station. I understand that there are currently no fewer than eight petitions in the High Court alleging electoral fraud in the recent local elections. Parliament cannot ignore this problem, especially as we have always taken great pride in our democracy. We used to lecture the world about parliamentary democracy; now, we are in the dock, accused of complacency. Our system is criticised not only by the Electoral Commission—that is an important fact—and by judges; it was also criticised by international election observers at the last general election, including those from Ukraine and Serbia. A few years ago, we would not have expected to have to take lectures from such countries about our system. That says a lot about how our stock has fallen.