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Returning Officers (Accountability)

Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that those performance standards do not include the returning officers' abiding by the law of the land—the electoral law set in this place for them to apply? They do not have to apply it, because their word is final. If a returning officer wants to ignore the law of the land—that a photocopy should not be used, that a signature should be taken contemporaneously, or that someone saying that they have witnessed a document being signed should actually have done so, rather than signing it fraudulently—it is possible for them to say, "That's fine. The law has been broken, but I find that to be perfectly okay. I accept it, and therefore it is acceptable and the law has not been broken." The returning officer who is in breach of the law is completely without regulation.