asked Her Majesty's Government:

Whether they intend to respond to the comments of Mr Richard Mawry QC, the election commissioner at the special elections court at Slough in relation to the election in the Central ward last year, that despite the Electoral Administration Act 2006, the opportunities for easy and effective electoral fraud remain substantially as they were on 4 April 2005.[HL2760]

We have noted the findings and comments in the judgment of the election court. Since 2005, the Government have introduced a range of new measures to strengthen the integrity of our electoral system, and there have been very few proven incidences of fraud since the new measures were brought into force. They include:

electoral administrators write to everyone who has applied for a postal vote acknowledging receipt of their application and confirming the outcome—this will alert people to any applications for postal votes made falsely on their behalf;

postal vote applicants have to specify a reason if they want their postal vote to be sent to an address other than that at which they are registered;

administrators get more time to check postal vote applications because people have to apply for a postal vote a minimum of 11 working days before the close of poll (the previous minimum was six days);

new requirement for electors to provide personal identifiers (signature and date of birth) if they wish to have a postal vote. The identifiers must be replicated by elector when they subsequently cast their postal vote, and will be cross-checked with the original samples to ensure the postal vote is valid;

new offence of falsely applying for a postal or proxy vote;

after every election a list of all those who voted by post is published which will enable individuals to check that their vote was counted. In an investigation the police will be able to check up with any individual whether they did actually vote by post or whether their vote was stolen;

new criminal offence of supplying false information (or failing to supply information) to the electoral registration officer at any time;

strengthened offence of undue influence, which will make it easier to prosecute, even if the undue influence does not affect the way someone votes; and

clear new powers for electoral administrators to cross check applications to register to vote against other information the council holds.

We will take account of the election court's judgment in any further development on electoral registration and postal voting processes and legislation.