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Political Parties and Elections Bill

My Lords, I am very grateful for that reply. I agree with a great deal of what the Minister has said, particularly about the potential tension between, on the one hand, when a returning officer or an electoral registration officer writes to people to say, "Sorry you have made a mistake. You ought to know this because you are losing your vote"—accidentally, presumably—and, on other hand, when they think that it might be evidence of fraud. I thought about that issue before writing this amendment, but I came to the view that it would be best to put down a simple amendment in order to raise the issue and in the hope of getting the response that the Minister has given. I am very grateful for that and for his promise. I was getting quite excited until he used the word "stakeholder", then I lost interest. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Bates, I do not think that there will be a huge administrative burden. There will be a little extra administrative burden because when someone applies for a postal vote—at general elections a lot come in at the last minute—the returning officers write to people to check that they want it and that it is okay. Election offices are full of computers which are for ever churning out letters and envelopes. They do that all the time—perhaps they do it too much. Nevertheless, it is not a huge question. On the privacy and secrecy of documents, it is important that lists of everyone who has voted and everyone who has returned a postal vote envelope are produced, just like those that are produced at the moment. The noble Lord referred to spoiled ballots. We are not talking about spoiled ballot papers, but those that have not even been looked at. I agree that a spoiled ballot paper should never be divulged because that is the way someone has voted, but here we are talking about ballot papers that have not been looked at or counted, so no one knows if they have been spoiled because they are still in their envelopes, having never been opened. The Government said that they would work through these issues. Instead of waiting for the next election before introducing legislation, I wonder whether it might be possible to deal with this through secondary legislation by introducing statutory instruments to amend the election rules. I would ask the Government to look at that once they have carried out the consultation. However, I am very encouraged by what the Government have said and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 84 withdrawn.