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Representation of the People (Combination of Polls) (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2006

I apologise for missing much of the Minister’s speech. I was caught napping by the previous business happening rather quicker than forecast. Like the noble Baroness, we do not find anything to quibble about in these regulations. They are sensible and technical and carry through decisions that have been made about personal identifiers and other matters. We are looking forward to seeing how well the new security rules work. These regulations repeal the rules that were made for the 2004 all-postal elections. We had some long debates on them. The debates were not bitter but were argumentative, and we marched through the lobbies a few times before the Government were able to hold those all-postal elections. We now seem to be in an era when all-postal elections have been abandoned. I hope that is the case, and it is welcome that the Government are nothing like as enthusiastic as they were about them. I wish to make one or two detailed points, the first of which is on the issue of the ballot papers in a combined election. As I understand it, those of us who will not be allowed to have one type of ballot paper at a parliamentary election but can have a paper for a local election or referendum will be dealt with by having a strange squiggle or alternative mark put down on the corresponding number list and the marked register to show that we have had one type of ballot paper and not another. There are various categories like that. However, I presume that an elector who is entitled to two or three ballot papers at an election is entitled to refuse to accept one or more of them and to have simply the one he wants to vote on. Can the Minister tell us exactly what happens under those circumstances? The only time I have seen someone not want one, he ran out of the polling station, waving the ballot paper over his head and shouting a certain amount of abuse about it. The last time we discussed this matter, underthe Representation of the People (Amendment) Regulations, the Minister told us about the system for signing in the polling station. There will be a machine to prevent people seeing the signatures of other people, which might potentially breach the secrecy of the ballot. What progress has been made in designing that apparatus and are the Government in a position to tell us how it will work? Clearly, the people involved in elections will need to be able to tell electors what to expect. As far as the return of postal votes is concerned—the regulations cover the situation in a combined election—there will be sample security checks of at least 20 per cent of them. Will that include checks being done throughout the period in which votes are coming back, or will a returning officer be able to fulfil their 20 per cent quota by, for example, taking the first 20 per cent that come in and not taking the late ones? There might well be problems of delaying the count if there are lots of late postal votes. Some people might see an opportunity there for getting round the regulations and getting round the security and not having particular postal votes checked by putting them all in late at the last minute. Will that be possible? Finally, one thing I picked up from reading the regulations is that where there are pilots for electronic counts, the voters will be asked not to fold their ballot paper. Normally if you go to a polling station, you are asked to fold the ballot paper in two, so that when you put it into the box no one can see the top side of it and therefore they cannot see how you have voted. If you do not fold it, how do you get it into the ballot box without people being able to see how you voted? There seems to be a problem with secrecy there. With those detailed questions, I am happy to support the regulations.