00:00So, the representation of the people bill is coming back to Parliament next week. We've tabled amendments that will ensure
00:06that the two and a half million people who are here in this country, not British citizens, here on temporary
00:11work visas or on student visas, who are currently eligible to vote in parliamentary and local elections simply because they
00:17come from a Commonwealth country, we will end their right to vote.
00:21We will insist that you need to be a British citizen or an Irish citizen to vote in our elections.
00:25We're also going to restrict postal voting. Currently, a quarter of all ballots cast in a general election are by
00:32post. We think that's an abuse of a system that is really only there for people who are serving their
00:36country abroad or who are physically unable to get to the polling station.
00:40So, we will restore that important principle. And we're also going to empower presiding officers in polling stations to restrict
00:48or to try and clamp down on this real problem we've got of what's called family voting, of coercive voting,
00:53where people are shepherded through the polling station, not knowing really, not understanding the voting system that they're taking part
00:58in and being told to vote, how to vote by their family members.
01:02So, we're going to empower presiding officers to challenge that, to insist that people vote on their own. And if
01:07they clearly don't understand the voting system itself, their ballot paper will be set aside.
