Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 2:51 pm on 19 January 2010.
Lord Bach
Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Ministry of Justice, The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice
2:51,
19 January 2010
I am grateful to the noble Lord. A lot of work has been going on and there have been debates in this House. We are still actively attempting to make sure that our soldiers and personnel from other services who are serving in Afghanistan have the chance to vote by post. Each of them can vote by proxy if they want to, but it is thought that many would rather vote by post. There is a scheme which will work within the existing electoral timetable and legislative framework, subject of course to operational priorities, because of the time saved by using the regular military supply flights to Afghanistan. A great deal of work is going on to make sure that our troops in Afghanistan will be able to vote.