Clause 39 - Control of documents after
Electoral Administration Bill
2:00 pm
David Heath (Shadow Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs & Shadow Leader of the House, Law Officers (Constitutional Affairs); Somerton and Frome, Liberal Democrat)
We now come to the control of documents after a parliamentary election and the issue of marked registers and access to them. This is, to an extent, a probing amendment, because I want to understand the relationship between this clause and clause 43, which deals with marked postal voters lists. There is no clear link, but clause 43 will provide explicitly for postal voters lists to be marked. Currently, we have the strange phenomenon that marked lists are to be kept of those who have voted in an election unless they happen to vote by post or by proxy by post. The procedures adopted by electoral returning officers in different parts of the country vary enormously, in terms both of their marking of lists and of whether they are prepared to make those lists available to the political parties during or after an election.
A degree of controversy has arisen in several elections about whether, particularly in the context of an all postal ballot, it is appropriate to provide a running total of marked postal voters lists. Some would say that it is inappropriate to give that information to political parties and others would argue strongly—I think that I am one of them—that it is in the interests of electors and of the political process that those marked lists be available because it prevents repeated canvassing of people who have already cast their vote. It is in their interests for everybody to know that they have voted and that it is a waste of time to continue knocking on their doors. In that way they will not be bothered on their doorsteps.
My amendment simply inserts the word ''marked''. I would welcome clarification from the Minister of how the two clauses that I mentioned fit together, and whether it is his intention that the marked postal voters lists be made available to political parties either during the course of an election or following its completion.