Clause 6 - Personation: arrestable offence
European Parliamentary and Local Elections (Pilots) Bill
4:45 pm
Mr Christopher Leslie (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs; Shipley, Labour)
In the debate earlier, when the hon. Gentleman was not here, I rebutted at some length the misapprehension that somehow the Government did not undertake proactive checks to consider whether the electoral systems were prone to infiltration or fraud. We do not rely on reports or wait for allegations to surface. I said that the ability exists to contact a sample of people who appear to have voted on a marked register to ask them whether they actually did so. We can also compare a sample of signatures on declarations of identity, and review logs produced by electronic voting arrangements. I do not want to rehearse my explanation, as I felt I dealt with that comprehensively this morning. I also dealt with the idea that there was no auditing of electronic voting. Government information security specialists, who are credit expert assessors, undertake rigorous quality assurance of the software used in electronic voting, and of the wider electoral processes involved in the pilots.
Sufficient powers are available to the Government and to the courts so that prosecutions for personation can successfully take place, and that is a deterrent. Extending those arrangements in clause 6 is important, and I hope that the clause stands part of the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 6 ordered to stand part of the Bill.