Jack Straw has ordered his officials to scrap “unacceptable” proposals to reduce the number of polling stations and cut voting hours to save tens of millions of pounds.

The Justice Secretary said that he was unaware of the proposals, which his officials had already sent to the Treasury, until they were revealed in The Times yesterday. But the options to save up to £65 million, which have enraged democracy campaigners, were drawn up in August and have been seen by some electoral groups and local authority chief executives.

The working paper, which includes plans to move to a fixed parliament, raise deposits for election candidates and even abandon the polling card, was also discussed at a meeting in September between civil servants, town hall chiefs and election officials.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice had said that the working paper was part of a dialogue over election costs. But the proposals attracted fierce protests from election officials and democracy campaigners and Mr Straw said that the plans would be abandoned.

“Officials need the space to examine all possibilities before they put proposals to ministers. This examination of the costs of elections comes within that category,” he said in a statement. “I and other ministers had absolutely no knowledge about this exercise. I make no complaint about that but, now that it has gone public, I make clear that I would have told officials privately that these proposals are simply unacceptable.” He added: “The exercise has therefore ended. Democracy has to be paid for.”

The U-turn over Whitehall plans to cut costs is the second this week after Gordon Brown reversed plans to cut the Territorial Army training budget by £20 million after an outcry. The Treasury has asked all Whitehall departments to come up with a list of cost-cutting options for next year that will be fed into the Pre-Budget Report in December. If plans are abandoned in one department, other services will face deeper cuts.

The working paper to cut election costs proposed a series of measures including reducing the number of temporary polling stations, which cost about £6,000 each to put up during general and local elections. It also suggested cutting the number of election staff, which would have threatened many rural polling stations in schools, post offices and community centres, which attract few voters.

Other proposals included the closing of polling stations at 9pm instead of 10pm; replacing polling cards with e-mail or call centre contacts; increasing deposits in parliamentary and European elections; reducing pay for election staff; having fixed-term parliaments and transferring the running of the elections from local councils to the Electoral Commission.

The plans were condemned by the Electoral Reform Society and other groups. Ken Ritchie, chief executive of the society, warned that they represented “a threat to democracy that would save peanuts”.

The turnout at elections has dropped sharply in the past 50 years and ministers have been trying to find ways of re-engaging with the voters.

Mr Ritchie said that Mr Straw’s intervention gave some reassurance that the Government did not intend to take risks with Britain’s democracy.

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