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Returning Officers (Accountability)

It is nonsense, quite right. In the words of one of my former constituents, "I don't believe it." [Hon. Members: "Who?"] A good Labour supporter. The Interim Electoral Management Board for Scotland justifies a possible move to Friday counts by referring to the problems experienced at the Scottish Parliament elections in May 2007, and it quotes Professor Gould, who was appointed by the Electoral Commission to investigate the election, to support its view. I know quite a bit about what happened in 2007—rather more than I care to know. There were two problems at that election: the unacceptably high number of spoiled ballot papers, and the breakdown of the counting machines. Both problems would have occurred in full had the count taken place the next day. Neither of them were in any way related to overnight counts, and they should not be used as a spurious pretext to abandon overnight counts. I accept that checking the identifiers on postal ballots is an additional burden, but it should not add three hours to the count. The vast majority of such ballots arrive prior to polling day and can be processed well in advance. Some will come through the post on polling day itself and others will be handed in at polling stations, but there is no reason why, with proper planning, the vast majority of those could not be checked prior to 10 pm, or why they should add significantly to the length of the count. There are other arguments against moving the count, but I will not make them, because I want to finish now. Contrary to what is occasionally trotted out in some sections of the media, I do not believe that we have a serious problem of deliberate fraud or wholesale incompetence in our elections in this country. When fraud occurs, the weight of the law should be brought to bear. Most of our returning officers take seriously their responsibilities as administrators of our democratic processes, but to deny that there is room for improvement would be complacent. I hope that today's debate will contribute to the process of improvement in this exceptionally important profession.