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The Royal Mail has been slammed after failing to deliver thousands of postal votes – sparking an urgent investigation. At least 90 constituencies in England, Scotland and Wales are experiencing problems with getting paper ballots before Thursday’s election.
Kevin Hollinrake, the postal affairs minister, said: “We urge Royal Mail to do all they can to make sure that postal votes get to the right people at the right time, and time is completely of the essence now. There’s a resourcing issue.
“They have recruited extra people and I welcome that but they’ve got to make sure they’ve got the right number of people to deliver the mail at busy times like this. It’s not acceptable it’s sat in sorting offices. It needs to be delivered to people’s houses. So they need to put more people on to do that.”
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He added: “I don’t think there’s an issue here other than Royal Mail being competent. If people want to choose to vote by post, that’s perfectly fine. In my view, certainly from a logistical point of view, that should be something that’s available to anyone who wants to do that.”
Maria Caulfield, a health minister, told Sky News this morning: “Kevin is taking this very seriously. He’s in direct contact with the Royal Mail. It doesn’t seem to be an issue in my constituency, but I know a number of colleagues where people haven’t received their postal votes and are worried about that.
“Kevin is investigating this urgently. I know there’s extra resources going into this to try and do a sweep of all the sorting offices and make sure they’re out there.” A Royal Mail spokesman said: “We have no backlog of postal votes and, whilst we are not complacent, we remain confident that postal votes handed to us on time will be delivered prior to polling day.
“Where specific concerns have been raised, we have investigated and confirmed ballot packs are being delivered as soon as they arrive in our network. We would welcome a review into the timetable for future elections with all stakeholders to ensure that the system for printing and administering postal votes before they are handed to Royal Mail works as smoothly as possible.”
