Elections getting more corrupt, says former MP
British elections are seeing increasing instances of 'corruption' and a review needs to be held to overcome the systems shortcomings, a former Walsall MP has warned.
Bruce George, Labour MP for Walsall South between 1974 and 2010 has joined with former diplomat Julian Peel Yates to raise concerns over elections in Britain.
The warning comes after Lutfur Rahman was stripped of his office as directly-elected mayor of Tower Hamlets in London after a judge found he had committed multiple electoral fraud and corruption offences.
Mr George said: "Britain remains in breach of key international standards for the conduct of elections.
"We are deceiving ourselves if we believe in the innate superiority of practice – look no further than Tower Hamlets.
"If Britain wishes to criticise others, it must put its own house in order. Potential dangers include defective postal balloting; no guarantee of secrecy – numbered ballots in a list identifying the voter for each ballot issued mean an unscrupulous official could establish how you voted; no requirement for voters to provide any form of identity gives opportunities for voter fraud.
"Moreover, Britain does not meet its obligation to guarantee the equality of the vote. At the last election, it took an average 35,000 voters to elect a Conservative MP, 33,000 a Labour MP, and 120,000 a Lib Dem MP. UKIP received more than 900,000 votes, but no seats. The best mechanism to review Britishelectoral shortcomings might be a Royal Commission."
Walsall and Birmingham were highlighted as electoral fraud hotspots where police, local authorities and political parties must work together to stamp out ballot box cheating in a report by the Electoral Commission last year.
The document said postal voting should not be restricted because it would make it harder for 'the overwhelming majority' who find postal voting a convenient and secure method of voting.
Instead, party campaigners should be banned from helping voters fill in postal votes, or from offering to take completed forms away to post them, the Commission said.
The report named 16 local authority areas, including Birmingham, Walsall and Coventry, as being areas 'where there appears to be a greater risk of cases of alleged electoral fraud being reported'.
