New Clause 14
Political Parties and Elections Bill
7:00 pm
Michael Wills (Minister of State, Ministry of Justice; North Swindon, Labour)
Having achieved a large degree of consensus on the principles on which we should move forward in reforming our electoral system, it saddens me to have to resist the new clause. It is entirely unnecessary and would fetter our attempts to make our democracy more accessible and improve the efficiency of electoral administration. That is not an alternative to the sorts of reforms that we were talking about earlier—it is something that we should be considering anyway.
As it happens, the Government have no plans at present to conduct further pilots at this stage, and none was conducted in 2008. None the less, it would be wrong to place a limit on the Government’s ability in future to test pilots promising new technologies or new techniques. Governments must be free to investigate possible innovations and pilots when appropriate. Pilots allow for new technologies to be tested in controlled environments and in real-life situations. Incremental testing over time permits issues to be identified and solutions to be adapted as a consequence, with retesting to prove that the issues have been resolved. That is a matter of prudent process, and to fetter it in such a way is quite wrong. If new clause 14 were to be approved, it would only prevent piloting from taking place from under the provisions of the Representation of the People Act. It would do nothing to prevent the London mayoral and assembly elections from being electronically counted again, as they were this year, or Scottish local authorities from continuing to count their elections electronically. It would serve only to prevent the Government from taking the lead, as they should, in improving electoral administration.
New clause 15 would establish a committee to review electoral modernisation piloting. Well, sometimes committees are a very good idea, but it is difficult to understand what value that committee would bring over and above the rigorous processes that are already in place to ensure effective oversight of the piloting process. The Government take into account the concerns of electoral administrators, local authorities and the Electoral Commission. To date, all the electoral modernisation pilots have been overseen by project boards and programme boards with the involvement of the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators and others. All those different perspectives and insights from outside the Ministry of Justice and the Government have therefore informed and underpinned the piloting programme. That the boards are not currently meeting reflects the fact that no pilots are planned, but the intention is to restart that process if we were to resume pilots.
We proceed with pilots only following consultation with the Electoral Commission. All pilots are evaluated after the event by the local authorities that ran them, and by the Electoral Commission. The commission’s recommendations are taken into account when considering further pilots and moving forward. We already receive expert advice on piloting programmes, and we are considering whether to establish a panel of recognised and respected experts from the academic, technical and electoral administration fields to advise on policy, technical issues and testing and, indeed, what we should be piloting, should we decide to do so in the future. With a combination of such issues, there is no need for the new clause.
It is worth pointing out that we in the UK are far from alone in piloting new systems in electoral administration, and testing their benefits. Many countries do so. We have heard about international comparisons, and I can give some to the Committee. Australia has piloted e-voting for specific groups, such as service personnel on deployment, which I know will be of interest to the hon. Member for Chichester. The system has been piloted for visually impaired voters. Other countries have made e-voting more generally available, and some have rolled it out more widely following pilots—in Estonia, for example. Others have decided to discontinue e-voting following problems that led to a loss of public confidence.