Mr. Art O'Leary:

We will see what we can do. On the postal voting issue, some progress was made last year with the Electoral Reform Act 2022. There used to be a requirement for annual registration for a postal vote so every year a person would have to go to his or her doctor to get a medical certificate. Now it is a single registration. If the doctor says that someone will be permanently unable to vote, then that will last a lifetime. There is still a difficulty with having to go to the doctor to declare an illness or a medical difficulty with voting, as I understand it, from the group. Therefore, we need to explore that a little further to see how we can make this particular process better.

With these eight electoral events in the next two years not only does it give us an opportunity to do something but it provides such a brilliant opportunity to learn. We will do a review after every single electoral event where we will capture all the things that were hard, and all the things that did not work. The lived experience of people with a disability is so important to us. We have had this conversation at the Electoral Commission about the rights of people with disabilities to engage in the electoral process and I said that our ambition in this area should be eye-watering. This is an area where we can make a real difference to people's lives. I look forward to working with the groups to find out, in granular detail, what makes it hard and what we can do to overcome barriers. I suspect it is an area we can make a real difference in the next couple of years.