CAMPAIGNING East Lancashire Peer Lord Greaves has lost his battle to prevent all-postal voting in the North West for June's local council and European elections.

Last night the House of Lords caved in and accepted that the region would join the East Midlands, the North East and Yorkshire and Humber in abolishing the ballot box for the poll.

The Government won the day after Peers voted five times for the North West to be excluded from the scheme.

Today, former Pendle councillor Lord Greaves blamed the Tories for caving in.

But he promised that the Liberal Democrats would monitor very closely the use of all-postal voting to see if there was any repeat of the malpractice which he claims had marred experiments with the system in Pendle, Burnley and Blackburn last year.

Liberal Democrat Lord Greaves said: "I am disappointed.

"We fought the good fight and we lost. We now must fight the campaigns and I doubt it will affect our result.

"At least the authorities will now be keeping a close eye out for fraud but they won't be able to stop it. We shall be monitoring the ballots very closely and will produce our own report on the experiment afterwards."

Peers voted by 138 to 108, a majority of 30 to include all four regions, covering a total of about 14million voters in the all-postal scheme as the European Parliamentary and Local Elections (PILOTS) Bill which now goes for Royal Assent to become law.