---

European Parliamentary Elections (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2009

I am grateful to the Committee for agreeing to consider the draft regulations today. Subject to your approval, this will enable the statutory instrument to be in place in good time ahead of the European parliamentary elections on 4 June. The background is that the European Parliamentary Elections Regulations 2004 apply the legal framework that is in place for UK parliamentary elections to the conduct of European parliamentary elections, with necessary modifications. The European Parliamentary Elections (Amendment) Regulations 2009 amended the 2004 regulations to take into account changes that have been made to electoral law since the last European parliamentary election in 2004. After being approved by this House and the other place, the 2009 regulations were made on 29 January 2009 and came into force the following day. The draft regulations before us today are necessary to correct a small number of unintentional errors introduced into the 2004 regulations by amendments made in the 2009 regulations. The 2009 regulations substituted new Schedule 1 to the 2004 regulations, which contain the European parliamentary elections rules. Rule 53(3), as substituted by the 2009 regulations, currently provides that, while counting the votes, a local returning officer must keep the ballot papers with their faces upwards and, ""take all proper precautions for preventing any person from seeing them"." The amendment in Regulation 2(2) of the draft regulations corrects this rule, in accordance with the original policy intention, to provide that a local returning officer must take all proper precautions for preventing any person from seeing only, ""the numbers or other unique identifying marks printed on the back of the papers"." Regulation 2(3) of the draft regulations corrects a small number of very minor errors in the absent voting provisions in Schedule 2 to the 2004 regulations, which was substituted by the 2009 regulations. My department has clear procedures in place for checking draft statutory instruments before they are laid. They were adhered to in respect of these regulations, but unfortunately the errors were not picked up. Although in some respects explicable by the length and complexity of the 2009 regulations, it is of course fully recognised that these errors should not have occurred, and I apologise to the Committee. The draft regulations were prepared as soon as the errors were identified, and it is not expected that the timing of the draft regulations will create difficulties for electoral administration in the build-up to the European parliamentary elections on 4 June.