A further source of partisan division was the manner in which the Labour MP Graham Allen chaired the House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in the last Parliament, when he strongly directed its investigations and reports into promoting “engagement” to the neglect of the issue of voting fraud.

In the UK, unlike some other developed democracies, there has been ample proof of voting fraud, especially in some urban local government elections. The decision of an electoral court last April to invalidate the results of a mayoral election in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets was the most dramatic but by no means the only proven example. It followed notorious cases in the 2004 municipal elections in the Birmingham wards of Aston (where a court found there had been at least 1,000 fraudulent votes) and Bordesley Green (1,500 to 2,000). Between 2004 and 2013, courts imposed jail sentences for electoral fraud in Ashford, Blackburn, Bradford, Bristol, Burnley, Coleraine, Coventry, Derby, Guildford, Oldham, Peterborough, Slough, Walsall, and Wolverhampton. In several of these places, it was Conservative candidates who were found guilty.

Since voting fraud is extremely hard to document and to prove to the standards required by the courts, and since — as shown by the failure of previous investigations by the Metropolitan Police in Tower Hamlets — few police forces possess the special skills required to identify it, electoral corruption is almost certainly more widespread than the list of convictions indicates. We do know that it mainly affects local elections in urban areas and that candidates of all of the main parties have been involved. Evidently, the perks of local office and the ability to provide jobs, contracts and other benefits to political cronies provide incentives.

Voting fraud, though now associated with immigrant communities, is a long-established British tradition celebrated in Victorian novels. In Northern Ireland, the slogan “vote early, vote often” was an indication of malpractice which led to the Labour government’s introduction in 2003 of a requirement that voters produce photo identification. Such identification, though controversial in the US and Canada, is the international norm. Before the 2015 general election, the UK Electoral Commission announced plans to require voters to produce a form of identification at the polls by 2019. Therefore, the Conservative proposal to implement this proposal seems wholly reasonable.

Nevertheless, the review being conducted by Sir Eric faces two major problems. First, as evidence from Northern Ireland shows, and as has been argued repeatedly in foreign court cases, the introduction of more stringent rules for administering elections does tend to lower voter registration and turnout. If the UK is to avoid the conflicts over voting rules which are plaguing the United States and Canada, it is important as far as possible to minimise conflict between the main parties over these rules. This is a hard task because party officials naturally advocate regulations which they calculate will work to their advantage. Certainly, the current government needs to dismiss bogus pleas such as those of Liberal Democrat peers to postpone yet again the equalisation of constituency electorates by redrawing the boundaries. At the same time, the Cameron administration would do well to take the high ground both by consulting fully with opposition parties and by considering measures to promote registration and political engagement among underprivileged sections of the electorate.