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Returning Officers (Accountability)

Sometimes people are away from their homes, and sometimes people feel that it is a bit like filling in tax forms and they can put it aside and do it another day. We must accept that numbers will come in on the day. For better accuracy, I have obtained two comparisons—one from a Conservative seat and one from a Labour seat. In Haltemprice and Howden, 180 ballot papers were handed in on the day. I cannot believe that officers required an extra two or three hours to count 180 ballot papers; that is clearly spurious. Of course, that might be unusual, so I looked at what happened in a by-election in a Labour seat—Norwich, North—although, admittedly, it is now a Conservative seat. Again, 180 ballot papers were handed in. It is just serendipitous that the figures are exactly the same. Even if those figures were widely inaccurate, and even if we doubled the numbers, I do not believe that they would require a three-hour count. Moving the count has nothing to do with the accuracy of postal votes or the numbers. If we were to talk to people below the level of returning officer, they would say, "Oh, well, it is rather difficult. People have been working a long time, and they want to get back and watch television. There might be a rerun of 'Star Trek' and our folks would like to see that after having a very difficult day." Well, other people ought to be put in. On grounds of health and safety and the working time—whatever it is called—people cannot work such long hours anyway. Traditionally, we have employed bank clerks, who are very dextrous in getting out the results, and we have used machines. Machines break down, but, by and large, they do not get terribly tired. Therefore, the change has more to do with administrative convenience and the fact that money, which has properly been given by Government to local authorities for the purposes of election counts, has been hived off in other directions. It is true that the electoral registration officer is a Cinderella service of local government, which is ironic given that it is the fulcrum on which local democracy works.