PENDLE Peer Tony Greaves has revealed he has a file an inch thick on alleged postal voting abuses in Pendle.

The Liberal Democrat spoke out in a House of Lords debate on the government's Electoral Adminstration Bill which hopes to increase the turnout in elections by extending the use of postal voting and other methods of casting a ballot.

He warned that tight new rules were needed to stop fraud including individual registration of voters with signatures held by the council rather than the current system of household registration.

Lord Greaves referred to a case in Birmingham where six Labour councillors were removed from office for postal voting fraud which the judge said "would disgrace a banana republic'."

He went on: "The abuses that went to court in Birmingham and resulted in the removal of six councillors from office were almost exactly the same kind of abuses which, in my own area of Pendle, we saw nearly four years ago. Unfortunately, that case never got to court, but the abuses certainly took place and I still have a file, which is literally an inch thick, explaining exactly what happened there.

"The cases that go to court of postal voting fraud and absent voting fraud are just the tip of the iceberg. The reason why they are the tip of the iceberg is that if you have been subjected to bribery, intimidation or undue influence by people who have a great deal of influence, authority and power over you, you will not want to stand up in court and give evidence against them.

"That is why it is difficult to take these cases to court. Nevertheless, by tightening up the system and introducing new rules, I believe that a great deal of the fraud can be stopped."