Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 4:44 pm on 16 June 2010.
My hon. Friend makes a good point. He spoke earlier about internet and phone voting. I am familiar with some of the e-voting processes that took place in Swindon. We shall consider the evidence, to discover the extent to which they drove up turnout.
I pick up on the other points made by the hon. Lady. She highlighted the problem of jointly nominated candidates not being able to use their emblem. That affected my party in Northern Ireland, where we had candidates standing jointly for the Conservatives and the Ulster Unionists, and the hon. Lady and other Labour and Co-operative colleagues. We are considering that; it should be relatively straightforward to correct the problem, and we are looking for an opportunity to do so. That point was drawn to our attention after the election.
Before concluding, I shall touch briefly on a couple of other issues mentioned today. My hon. Friend Andrew Percy spoke about polling cards. He is right that they should be issued in good time, and returning officers should ensure that that happens. In most cases they do so, but in the case that my hon. Friend highlights that obviously did not happen. Constituents were therefore not adequately warned about some of the key dates in the process. Again, that will be a learning curve for those returning officers.
I was asked about venues, a problem for a number of candidates. The choice of venue is a matter for the local authority and the returning officer. They need to consider the nature of the area, its demographics and the likely voting patterns, and to choose venues that are accessible and able to cope with the throughput of voters. If they need to create extra polling places in those areas because of the size of the ward or polling district, they are empowered to do so. It is also worth saying that for general elections, it is not a problem for local authority funding because the properly incurred and documented costs of a general election are funded from the centre-from central Government-so there is no excuse for returning officers to have any concern about such funding if things are done properly.
Returning to the issue with which we began, which both the hon. Lady and my hon. Friend have mentioned, there clearly were problems, and if nobody is able to cast their vote that should be taken very seriously. It is, however, worth putting that in context. There were problems at 27 polling stations out of 40,000, and the Electoral Commission has estimated that about 1,200 voters out of 29.6 million were affected. Although we take the issue of electors being unable to vote very seriously, given that most of the 40,000 polling stations worked well, we perhaps need to consider solutions for those stations where there were problems and, as my hon. Friend said, for areas where there might well have been problems if circumstances had been different, but without making a wholesale change.
The hon. Lady made a number of wider points about individual voter registration and the extent to which electoral registration officers are getting voters who are entitled to vote on the register. The hon. Lady knows that the coalition Government have made a commitment to speed up individual voter registration and, as my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister set out in the Chamber in his speech on the Loyal Address, we want to ensure not just that the register is accurate and that no one is on it who should not be, but that electoral registration officers do a better job of getting people who are entitled to vote on the register, so that they have the opportunity, come polling day, to cast their vote.