CentreRight

Gamu Nhengu should not be deported

The Conservative Conference has been discussing crime, welfare, the economy, schools and hospitals. But outside the Birmingham bubble the rest of the country has been talking about Gamu from X Factor. She is not being put through to the next round of the singing competition and apparently the real reason is that she faces deportation.

Her mother Nokuthula Ngazana was not a welfare scrounger. She worked hard getting a job as a nurse in Scotland. But she claimed Child Tax Credit and Working Tax Credit which under immigration rules she was no entitled to.

Reports are contradictory over some of the details. But from my understanding of the facts leniency would be reasonable.

First of all the Tax Credit claims may well have been a genuine mistake. These were the tax credits introduced by Gordon Brown in 2003. She might have been confused as to whether these were welfare benefits or tax rebates. She would not have been the only one to be confused by the "over-complicated, appallingly badly administered tax credit system" as Michael Fallon described it.

Will Ed Miliband's "back story" impress voters?

Viewers of X-Factor will be familiar that contestants are not only judged on whether they can sing but also on their "back story" - their family and career background. I'm afraid it is a bit like that for politicians. It is not just about their policies and beliefs but also their background. David Cameron was attacked for having been to Eton. Margaret Thatcher attracted considerable interest when elected as Tory leader for being a woman and a grocer's daughter. John Major was the boy from Brixton. Gordon Brown the son of the manse.

What about Red Ed? He grow up in a big house in Primrose Hill, the son of a Marxist sociologist. He never had a real job - being fixed up with a post working for Tony Benn and then working for Gordon Brown. The only significant entry he gets in Tony Blair's memoirs was of Blair asking Brown not to mention a meeting to Ed - because Blair didn't trust Ed not to leak details to the press.

Chris Mullin on Ed Miliband

By coincidence shortly before hearing that Red Ed was the new Labour leader I was reading about him in Chris Mullin's diaries Decline and Fall.

This is the entry for January 27 2009:

Members Lobby

As I was leaving thus evening Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Climate Change, bent my ear about tomorrow's vote on a third runway for Heathrow. 'The author of A Very British Coup wouldn't vote with the Tories would he?' I explained to young Ed, who despite his present eminence hasn't been with us all that long, that there is not a Tory lobby and a Labour one, but an Aye and a Noe lobby - and yes I would be voting for the Tory amendment since it reflected my views. He then attempted, ina tone that suggested exasperation,  to persuade me that the expansion was conditional on the toughest emission constraints in the world and they would be legally binding. To which I protested that the airlines would find a way round whatever constraints he saw fit to impose, as they had with all previous restrictions. Whereupon he walked off, shaking his head in disbelief at my naivety.

Jo Grimond would have been a great addition to the coalition Government

The former Liberal Party leader Jo Grimond died in 1993. He would have been a great asset to the Government.

A flavour of his views can be read in Hansard.

Here he is in a debate on industrial investment in 1992:

I believe British industry bears an extraordinary burden in the form of our complex tax and accounting systems. For a brief period I belonged to an international organisation. It appears that foreign industry does not suffer from that handicap to the same extent. Again I urge the Government to simplify and reduce as far as possible the various taxes and other regulations which industry has to deal with.

Here he is in the same year taking a swipe at the EU:

Are we to be allowed to make our own regulations? Is he aware that I am informed that farm cheese made in Orkney cannot now be kept on wooden shelves? Shelves must be made of stainless steel. This, apparently, is a direction from Brussels. Surely this is the kind of matter which could be dealt with further down the democratic line, if it needs to be dealt with at all, rather than in Brussels.

Also lots of good stuff in praise of privatisation, competition and wider share ownership. He would have made a rather good Business Secretary.

Review these Quangos

There is confusion over just how Government spends on Quangos. The official total is £38.36 billion. But the definition applied is not consistent across Government Departments. Some bodies that look like a Quango and sound like a Quango escape listing by being technically independent.  This provisional list proposes potential savings of £27.68 billion on Quango spending. Some of the Quangos that could be abolished may be merely a waste of money, others are could be actually harmful. Some that offer benefits may not represent value for money or may extend beyond the remit of what the state should be doing.

The real savings would be higher. Lots of civil servants time is spent monitoring and liaising with Quangos. Many Quangos have the hidden taxation of an industry levy as well as direct funding from Government. For reasons of space I have missed off many Quangos with small budgets. I have also missed off others - for instance museums with huge budgets and overmanning - where some budget cut would probably be reasonable.

Of course abolition has already been announced for several on this list. There could well be valid reasons why some should survive the cull. Some could be defunded but not technically abolished without legislation.

Each should have to go through a genuine challenge to justify its existence. The Government should start from the presumption that each should go unless it can prove otherwise. They should be told that the Government is minded to abolish them completely and the onus is on them to explain why it is necessary for it to continue in some scaled back form. Last week the Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander suspended £8.5 billion of spending programmes. That is the approach that is needed.

The Quango State should be put not notice.
 
Cabinet Office

1. Office of the Third Sector. (Growth for the voluntary sector is vital but isn't the means to this is for Government to get out of the way, not fund multimillion pound Quangos?) £30.1 million.
2. Commission for the Compact.  £2 million.

Total Saving £32 million.

Does earning £42,375 a year mean you are rich?

As there has been nothing else going on this afternoon I have spent some more time going through the Red Book. The good news is that the spending increases quoted in my earlier post do take into account the predicted level of inflation. So I'm pleased that I was wrong and my critics in the earlier post Mark M and Denis Cooper were right. The document says that spending "will fall in real terms by four per cent over the period." I think the period they are talking about is seven years however - from 2008/09 to 2015/16. So the Government are looking to find savings of around half of one per cent a year. A tiny, tiny cut. Gievn the margin of error should be classified as a freeze. But better than I had thought.

However there is also bad news. Last year under the Labour Government any earnings over £43,875 were taxed at 40%. This year the amount is the same. Next year the situation will be worse. While the basic allowance is going up from £6,475 to £7,475 (which is excellent) the basic rate limit is being cut by £2,500 - from £37,400 to £34,900. So anyway it means from next year anyway earning more than £42,375 will hit the 40% tax bracket. They will be stung. Squeezed till the pips squeak. Punished for being fat cats.

When Nigel Lawson introduced the 40% tax rate in 1988 it applied to those earning over £21,905. If the allowances had been increased in line with the earnings it would today apply to those on around £60,000.

If the Government want to get the economy growing they should be raising the allowance - not slashing it.

Last year I asked:

Could a family where the only breadwinner earns £43,875 a year really be regarded as rich?

Doesn't the same point apply rather more where the earnings are £42,375?

Public spending is not being cut

There has been lots of talk about spending cuts. Yet, for all the talk of axes being swung little noticed are some figures on page 45 of the Red Book which shows that Government spending will rise. This year it will be £696.8 billion. Next year it will be £699.8 billion. In 2012-13 it will be £711 billion. While in 2013-14 it will be £737.5 billion. This is at current prices - not something that can be excused by inflation.

Sure there will be winners and losers. Spending cuts in some areas, increases elsewhere. But overall the Government is planning to spend an extra £40 billion a year, in real terms, on top of the spending level from the Labour Government. John Redwood has noticed this. So have the IEA. But generally the media have not given much prominence to these figures - as they confuse the broader narrative.

We also have the rich being taxed at 50% compared to 40% under the previous Government and we have Capital Gains Tax increased from 18% under Labour to 28% under a Conservative-led Government - this regarded by Paul Goodman as a victory.

Conservatives should agree to raising Income Tax threshold to £10,000

Looking on the bright side is the possibility that the Conservatives will agree to introduce the Lib Dems manifesto proposal to raise the income tax threshold to £10,000. This would be a £17 billion tax cut - although I believe part of the cost would be recouped by the impact it would have on increasing economic growth and reducing welfare bills by making it more rewarding to get into work.

However given the level of the deficit it should be a funded tax cut through a stronger start on reducing public spending. The Lib Dem approach to fund it through higher taxes elsewhere - on pensions, Capital Gains, the Mansion Tax, etc is misguided.

Might the Lib Dems agree to it higher public spending cuts for such a purpose? The Conservative negotiating team might like to have a look at this paper for the Reform think tank by Vince Cable which details ideas for £14 billion spending cuts.

Tessa Jowell breaks Labour Party rules

I wonder if Tessa Jowell is aware of the Labour Party's Rule Book. In particular the Membership Rules in Chapter 2. Section A covers "Conditions for Membership." Rule 4b states:

 A member of the party who joins and/ or supports a political organisation other than an official Labour group or other unit of the party, or supports any candidate who stands against an official Labour candidate, or publicly declares their intent to stand against a Labour candidate, shall automatically be ineligible to be or remain a party member, subject to the provisions of part Chapter 6 A.2 below of the disciplinary rules.

So are Peter Hain, Ed Balls and Tessa Jowell up for expulsion with their advice to voters in certain constituencies to vote Lib Dem rather than Labour?

Adjudicating at Labour Party disciplinary hearings is not a matter for me. But I think Hain and Balls have been careful to keep within the letter if not the spirit of this rule. They have given a duplicitous nod and a wink to encourage people to vote Lib Dem ("It's an issue..") - then added their formal advice that everyone should vote Labour. But I think Tessa Jowell has been more careless in her words and the case that she is "automatically"  "ineligible" to "remain a Party member" would be hard to refute.

The Mirror has urged people in a large number of constituencies to vote Lib Dem. Tessa Jowell says that is a "good thing." That is a much clearer breach of Party rules than anything from the Norfolk North West Labour candidate Manish Sood. At least he is still urging everyone to vote Labour.

Labour getting desperate in Hammersmith

This evening I went along to the Zizinia restaurant in Bloemfontein Road in White City where the Labour Party were holding a meeting addressed by Ken Livingstone. Residents on the White City Estate had been leafleted telling them it was a "crisis meeting" as the Conservative Council was planning to throw them out of their homes - leaving them homeless or "being sent to Barking and Dagenham."

I went along with the Council leader Cllr Stephen Greenhalgh to hand out leaflets to those attending pointing out that these allegations were straight pure lies. Only two estates are under consideration for redevelopment, which are n West Kensington not White City. Furthermore in the estates that are redeveloped residents would be offered new homes locally.

About 50 people turned up to the meeting - mostly Labour activists. The remainder were not entirely supportive. One said: "I live in Hammersmith and Fulham because I was deported from Newham where the Labour Council had an estate redevelopment. Hasn't the Labour Party doing what you are accusing the Conservatives of planning?" Another said: "The Conservatives have cut my Council Tax by 3% a year. Are you prepared to make me a better offer?" Neither question got a terribly convincing response.

Businessmen run anti Lib Dem ads

 A late addition to the election campaign from Policy Defusion:

Policy Dufusion has been set up by businessmen Richard Thoburn, Mark Rayner, Kevin Harrington and Ken Tonkin. All are very concerned about the effect of a hung parliament on the economy and believe that a Liberal Democrat  government or a coalition government with a strong Liberal Democrat influence would be a disaster for the economy and for the country.

Here are the posters they are producing on advans. Not exactly "love bombing", is it?

 

 
 

 

Mind the spending cuts gap

You can argue about the detail but in general the Institute of Fiscal Studies have got a point that over the next week all political parties should go further in telling voters where the spending cuts would fall. The Labour Party are judged the worst offenders in only identifying 13% of what is required. The IFS have been a bit soft on the Lib Dems letting them get away with vague stuff about "tackling tax avoidance and evasion" - £4.6 billion. What is needed is tackling their policy avoidance and evasion.

But with all parties facing a gap of around £50 billion I think it is reasonable for voters to want more information. Nick Wood may be right that it is too late to add to the shopping list of proposed cuts. But I think we can give voters more of an idea of the type of savings we will be looking for. Dizzy has already noted that the Written Questions put down by Conservative front benchers give a pretty good clue.

Say goodbye to the Sub-Prime Minister

One of the new things about this election campaign has been how advertising agencies have lost their monopoly on the posters. Rather than just complaining about not getting the message across we have seen teenagers, pensioners and housewives fiddle around on the internet to produce their own, often pretty professional looking, alternatives. I supposed it might have happened a bit last time but I don't remember it doing so.

In another context  have written about Bromley businesswoman Lisa Fergusson having a battle with British Gas - who kept sending her threats after she switched to npower.

Now Lisa has got in touch with her poster offering - which I am pleased to reproduce.

Nick Clegg's broken promise on the Lisbon Treaty referendum

The Lib Dems played an absolutely crucial role in preventing a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty from taking place. In the leaders TV debate Nick Clegg had the cheek to complain that the Conservatives were no longer going to have a referendum on the Treaty - but the reason for this is that it is now in force and so legally that is too late. The question is why did a referendum not take place when there was still time?

The Conservatives proposed an amendment. Cast your eye down the list of those voting for it. There are some Labour MPs such as Ian Davidson even a few Lib Dems such as Alistair Carmichael. Good for them. But you won't notice Nick Clegg's name on the list. He whipped his MPs into abstaining. Those who did not agree were sacked as front bench spokesmen. As Churchill, with whom Clegg has been implausibly compared, once said:

"Decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent."

But then when they were worried that abstaining might not be sufficient to scupper the referendum they voted against it in the House of Lords. Had the Lib Dems voted the other way the referendum would have been approved.

Nick Clegg's Euro allies are the real nutters

Nick Clegg has been quick to dismiss critical stories about him as "smears." They seem pretty well sourced to me. Furthermore in this evening's debate he was the one engaging in smears about the Conservative MEPs entering into an alliance with those he called "nutters" - "homophobes", "anti semites", etc. These charges have been refuted thoroughly enough already.

But what of the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe? This is the group which Nick Clegg's Lib Dem MEPs sit in. It's leader Guy Verhofstadt MEP wants to abolish the nation state.

The Lib Dems fellow affiliates include the Feminist Initiative from Sweden, who had an MEP until last year. This Party's propose to abolish marriage and create "gender-neutral" names.

Then there is the Latvian affiliate to the group the Lib Dem Euro MPs sit in. It is the LPP/LC a merger of two parties Latvian First Party and Latvian Way. It really is homophobic. One of its leaders equated gays to paedophiles. The Party regards homosexuals as degenerates.

In last week's debate Clegg came up with the staggeringly hypocritical and dishonest claim that the Lib Dems were clean on MPs expenses. But I think his comments this evening on European Parliament groupings manage to trump that.

Is Lord Rennard pulling Nick Clegg's strings?

On Saturday I wrote:

In January last year Clegg called for tough action on Labour peers found to have accepted offers of payments to seek changes in the law. "I am also now calling on the Government to introduce urgent new legislation to change the rules so that peers found guilty of wrongdoing are expelled from Parliament," he said. But Clegg's tough stance does not extend to Lord Rennard who claimed £41,000 in expenses he was not entitled to as his main home was in London. Rennard has
resigned as Chief Executive of the Lib Dems continues to sit as a Lib Dem peer.

Now it turns ou to be much worse. Lord Rennard is the Lib Dems answer to Alastair Campbell. Nick Clegg is dependent on him for advice on what to say.

We know this because of a scoop in The Sun courtesy of a taxi driver who handed over a Lib Dem dossier to the paper that was left in his cab.

The report says:

The dossier reveals Lord Rennard was heavily involved in planning the Lib Dem manifesto launch, despite quitting as the party's chief executive last year following a row over his expenses.

Despite claims that Lib Dems champion women's rights, Lord Rennard demanded there must be a token female involved in the launch. In the event, there was just one woman on the platform.

I think the electorate ought to know more about how the expenses abuser, Nick Clegg, relies on an even greater expenses abuser, Lord Rennard, as puppet master.

A Lib Lab pact? Such a success last time.

I enjoyed Daniel Hannan's description of last week's TV leaders debate:

Why did Gordon Brown spend the televised debate throwing himself at Nick Clegg, like a woman of a certain age making a fool of herself over a younger man?

A bit more kindly I thought of Gordon Brown as the Lois Lane of this election screaming out: "Only Superclegg can save me now." Either way Brown seem to have decided that he only hope of clinging on is with Lib Dem backing in a hung Parliament. Clegg is conscious that such indiscretions are unhelpful before the election. But he has not been able to silence his predecessor Lord Steel who has a letter in the Times this morning declaring what a success the Lib Lab pact was last time round 1977/78.

Lord Steel writes:

The last time we had a balanced Parliament was in March 1977 when the Callaghan government had gradually lost its majority. The facts speak for themselves: the very day that the Lib-Lab agreement between Mr Callaghan and myself was announced the pound and the share index both
rose. Inflation had started on a sharp upward trend in the last year of the Heath government and had reached the alarming rate of almost 20 per cent that month. During the 15 months of the so-called Lib-Lab pact it fell to under 9 per cent, only to climb again during the minority Labour period that followed, returning to 19 per cent in the first months of the Thatcher government.

Mortgage interest fell from 12.25 per cent at the start of the pact to 8.5 per cent at its end only to start upwards again after it, reaching 15 per cent under Margaret Thatcher.

Nick Clegg airbrushed lobbying job from his CV

At last the press have started giving some scrutiny to Nick Clegg's background.

Writing in the Daily Mail today Peter Oborne says:

Clegg claimed that 'all my life' he had opposed the rotten nature of the Westminster system.

However, this was an audacious fib. In fact, he has a background as a Westminster lobbyist with the firm GJW, where he worked as an account executive for 18 months. (Something he has omitted from his curriculum vitae on the Lib Dem website).

Also, after his spell with GJW, he worked for the Brussels office of the European Commissioner Sir Leon Brittan.

In truth, Clegg is a prime specimen of the British political class who has reinvented himself as a rebel and an outsider. Nor is his party more decent and honest than other political parties, as Clegg
suggests.

On the contrary, many Lib Dem MPs have been shameless beneficiaries from the expenses scandal. What's more, the party has yet to repay £2.5 million it received from its largest donor, a notorious fraudster called Michael Brown.

Expenses abusing Lib Dem MPs in the top Tory targets

I am sceptical as to whether the extraordinary opinion poll boost for the Lib Dems will be sustained. In the TV debate Nick Clegg tapped into the anti-politician, "plague on both your houses" mood. But surely he will get found out as he and has party finally come under scrutiny for their policies and conduct. For instance we have Nick Clegg's his assertions that Lib Dem MPs were blameless over expenses. Of course they were in it up to their necks. But consider who the beneficiaries would be if the voters accepted Clegg's assurances.

Several of the Lib Dem MPs who were culprits in the expenses scandal are in target Tory seats. They will be hoping that Nick Clegg's protestations of virtue mean they will be able to escape a damning verdict from their constituents for their misconduct.

Three of the Tory targets are Lib Dem MPs in outer London seats - Susan Kramer in Richmond Park, Tom Brake in Carshalton and Wallington and Paul Burstow. They did not claim second home allowances. Then on the other hand this doesn't qualify them as saints. Neither did the overwhelming majority of outer London MPs (inner London MPs aren't entitled to them.) I think among the 19 Tory MPs there were only two who did - Andrew Rosindell and Theresa Villiers both of whom have constituencies right on the edge of London that probably are rather a long commute. By the way, before you feel too sorry for the London MPs not claiming, they get a London Costs Allowance (which Kramer, Brake and Burstow have all claimed) of £7,500 a year - in return for not claiming for a second home.

Nick Clegg's expenses hypocrisy

In the Party leaders TV debate Nick Clegg declared:

There are MPs who flipped one property to the next, buying property, paid by you, the taxpayer, and then they would do the properties up, paid for by you, and pocket the difference in personal profit. They got away scot-free. There are MPs who avoided paying Capital Gains Tax. Of course, you remember, what was it, the duck houses and all the rest of it. But actually, it's the people, the MPs who made these big abuses, some of them profiting hundreds of thousands of pounds. I have to stress, not a single Liberal Democrat MP did either of those things, but they still haven't been dealt with. We can only turn round the corner on this until we're honest about what went wrong in the first place.

Blaming Gordon for the recession

One of the arguments in the election campaign is whether Gordon Brown can be blamed for the recession. Labour says he is blameless because it is a world recession. But Britain has been worst hit among the making economies and I've blogged before on why Brown has responsibility for making it worse in three ways by mistakes he made before it started. Firstly, presiding over an explosion of state borrowing. Secondly, moving bank regulation from the Bank of England too the Financial Services Authority. Thirdly, by changing the classification of inflation from the Retail Prices Index to the Consumer Price Index which ignored overheating in the housing market and obliged the bank of England to set interest rates lower than they should have been.

I think I should have added a fourth. Stephen Askins, who is the Ravenscourt Park Ward Chairman in Hammersmith and Fulham where I am a councillor, emails after canvassing:

A voter said to me you cannot blame it on Gordon Brown. My response was: Yes you can – the withdrawal of the Dividend Tax Credit destabilized everything, meaning that high risk was necessary to make the returns needed to pay the pensions meaning that banks and other were required to take higher risks and we are where we are. At least he remained as a Probable after that conversation - but it should be a national conversation not a local one.

There are a thousand different reasons for getting rid of this Government. But the heavy culpability of Gordon Brown for the recession is an important theme and within that his irresponsible decision to abolish the Dividend Tax Credit certainly merits more attention.

Scandal of freezing the Income Tax allowance at £6,475

One of the most disgraceful aspects of our tax system is that someone earning more than just £6,475 starts paying tax. That is a key component of the dependency culture. By freezing that already miserable allowance for 2010/11 the Government make the situation worse in real terms. By refusing to increase it even in line with inflation they are particularly punishing low earners.

I've written about the Budget for the Daily Mail online and have highlighted various failings. But having had a chance to look at the Budget papers it is Labour's stealth attack on the low paid that makes me most angry.

Most Unite members oppose donations to the Labour Party

Michael Gove has been doing an excellent job challenging the Labour Party over their dependence on the Unite union. But one point that deserves more attention is this Populus poll of Unite members taken a year ago.

Among the findings in the survey was that only 34% were Labour voters. There were 31% for the Conservatives and the Conservatives went into the lead among Unite members among those who said they were certain to vote and when there was a "forced choice" question between Labour and Conservatives. Yet 80% of Unite members are paying a Political Levy to the Labour Party. There must be over 100,000 Conservative supporters among Unite's membership in the position of having their money  being used to fund the Labour Party.

But the really significant question in the survey was:"Would you support or oppose Unite the union making further large financial donations to the Labour Party in the future?"

Support 31%.

Oppose 54%.

Don''t know 15%.

Would a company make donations against the wishes of its shareholders? Would any other membership organisation be so cavalier towards the views of its members over making political donations?

The Thatcher Government transfered power from the trade union leaders to the trade union members. The Cameron Government needs to do the same.

NHS spending is different to Department of Health spending

I wrote a piecefor the Daily Mail Online today about the Department of Health spending a staggering £487 million on management consultants over the last five years. But this is small beer compared to the spending on consultants by the NHS - which according to a report from the Royal College of Nursing is £350 million a year.

This reminded me that Department of Health spending and NHS spending are not quite the same. This helpful atlas by The Guardian shows that the Department of Health is spending £109.4 billion this year. But it is apparently only passing on £94.5 billion to the NHS. There one a half billion on Personal Social Services. There is also £13.4 billion on NHS pensions. There is £170 million that goes to the Health Protection Agency which appears as a separate entity to either the NHS or the Department of Health.

Apart from the management cconsultants the Department of Health also spends £632 million on Quangos (according to the Government narrow definition of a Quango.) Then how much money is being spent b the Department of Health on spin doctors, target setters and data crunchers? The Conservative transparency rules mean we shall soon know. Yet surely this will mean a Cameron Government will be pen to challenge on one of its sending plans. I can understand the reasons why the Conservatives are pledged to ringfence NHS spending. But why extend this to health spending generally? Why should Department of Health spending be ringfenced.

Soldiers need proxy votes

As I trudge around canvassing I am reminded by colleagues that it is more productive to spend time checking if existing Conservative supporters need Postal Vote forms rather than trying to convert opponents.

But what of those serving abroad in the armed forces? They need to be sent Proxy Vote forms rather than Postal Vote forms. The issue was raised in Parliament today.

Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby) (Con): I draw my hon. Friend’s attention to column 288 at yesterday’s Prime Minister’s questions, when it was pointed out that the Army Families Federation has carried out trials showing that the majority of troops serving overseas will be unable to vote. In order to maximise voter participation, will my hon. Friend speak again to the Electoral Commission and take on board the point that I have made before, which is that there should be one registration when people join the armed forces and an encouragement to cast proxy votes, so that when they serve their country abroad, which involves the possibility of dying for their country, they have the opportunity to vote?

Mr. Streeter: That is a very important matter, and the Electoral Commission is extremely alive to it. The commission is working closely with the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Defence, Royal Mail, the British Forces Post Office and electoral administrators to ensure that everything is done to improve the situation. Given the tight time scales involved in exercising a postal vote once a general election is called, my hon. Friend makes an extremely important point that proxy voting may be the right answer. The commission is certainly aware of that.

I would have thought that rather than relying on the Government or the Electoral Commission to do anything about it friends and relatives of soldiers should post them off Proxy Vote forms straight away to ensure they are not disenfranchised.