Clause 2 - Pilot order
European Parliamentary and Local Elections (Pilots) Bill
12:00 pm
Mr David Wilshire (Spelthorne, Conservative)
When we adjourned part of the way through our debate, we were focusing our attention on amendment No. 3. If my guess is anything to go by, the Government may respond by saying, as they did in the previous debate, that to have all normal polling stations available for handing in postal votes would be excessive and the cost would not be justified. That argument was used earlier and I suspect that it will be used again. I have some sympathy with it and see the logic of it, but I am concerned that the Government believe that it is necessary to make provision in the Bill for the use of places other than polling stations.
As I understand it, the traditional arrangement for postal votes is that they are put into a postbox and sent to the returning officer at the council offices, or elsewhere. If it is possible to deliver one's postal vote somewhere else without such legislation, the only query that I have for the Minister is why we now find it necessary to make the arrangements in the Bill. What does that say about the traditional arrangement? If we are going to spell it out here, is there a need to do something to avoid a challenge elsewhere?
Is the Minister minded to urge the Committee to vote against the amendment? If I remember rightly, my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins) said that it was a probing amendment that had been tabled to see what the Government had to say, rather than something about which we are desperate to go to the stake. I still find it difficult to say that one can vote in a place that is not a polling station when a definition of a place that one can vote is a polling station, but I have been around that course so I shall not go around it again. If the Minister insists upon that arrangement, I would like him to give an undertaking that information about all places where
votes can be delivered will be published so that there can be no doubt whatever about the arrangements. If it is not, some candidates will complain that they did not know what was going on.
Such places must be identified in the public domain so that everyone involved in the election knows where they are. On the day in question—or on more than one day, as the Minister says can happen—the places should be identified to avoid a situation in which people know that they can hand their vote in somewhere along this street but not know where. Assurances would be useful if the Minister wants us to consider withdrawing amendment No. 3.
I worry about the Bill, and something along the lines of amendment No. 4 would be very valuable. I draw on my experience over the years as the chairman of a planning committee, where one could only too readily get locked into committed development orders, which dictate what one can and cannot do. To save having to go round the course of saying, ''Let's have one here and let's have one there'', any Government could say, ''We believe that any supermarket over X sq ft is a suitable place, and therefore all supermarkets, or alternatively all Crown post offices, will be suitable places.'' A general pronouncement from the Government that does not make any reference to the suitability of supermarkets, post offices, council offices or whatever else could be used.
Even if we adopt a way of giving returning officers the ability to say to the Government, ''No, we don't think that in our case this supermarket or that post office is suitable'', I fear for the chaos and difficulties that might break out. If the Minister is going to urge his colleagues to oppose amendment No. 4, would he give the Committee an assurance that care will be taken, advice will be sought and that the Government will not insist on the use of places that local knowledge suggests would be thoroughly unsuitable?