Clause 5 - Revision of procedures in light of report
European Parliamentary and Local Elections (Pilots) Bill
4:00 pm
Mr Christopher Leslie (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs; Shipley, Labour)
I will deal with the point that the hon. Gentleman made, which is slightly separate from the purpose of the clause. He asked whether, when we are combining European elections and local elections, we should use the Electoral Commission report to inform our judgment about the long-term activities of local government electoral processes on a wider scale. If he is saying that we cannot learn anything from the local government experience of the pilots from 2004, I must disagree. Local government elections certainly will take place in combination with European parliamentary elections but the fact remains that important local government elections will be taking place. It would remiss of us to fail to use the opportunity presented by the pilots to learn lessons and to inform our judgment about the wider
applicability of all-postal balloting and electronic voting in future local elections.
We already know that the Electoral Commission has drawn some conclusions and recommended that, in future, local government elections should typically take place by all-postal means. Clearly, we are considering that recommendation. I would not want the lessons that we could pick up next June to be excluded from our consideration when making decisions.