Electoral Administration Bill

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. As Members of this House, we are all here because we are elected to represent our constituents under our democratic system. That is an extraordinary privilege, and as we swing through those Doors marked ““Members Only”” we cannot help but feel a sense of pride. However, I bring the Electoral Administration Bill to the House on Second Reading today because all is not well with our democracy. As Members, we need to acknowledge the problems; as the Government, we need to take action to tackle them. The legitimacy of our democracy depends on three things—everyone having the right to vote, everyone wanting to vote and no one fiddling the vote. However, we have problems with each of those three legs of the stool. Before I come to the specific measures that I am commending to the House in the Bill, I want to make it clear that the problems of under-registration and low turnout are not evenly spread, so those problems with our democracy are the map of inequality in our society. We are all familiar with the concept of social exclusion—with communities that suffer from poorer health, lower educational achievement and worse housing—and we all agree that it is the business of Government to act to tackle the problems. However, what is less accepted is that social exclusion has a political dimension—that although the better off are on the register and go out to vote, people in poorer communities are more likely to be left off the register and are less likely to go out to vote. As the Constitutional Affairs Committee pointed out in its report of March this year, people who are white owner-occupiers in non-metropolitan areas will be on the register. However, about 3 million people—most of whom are poor, council tenants, black and living in inner cities—will not be. In those areas, low registration and low turnout compound each other to create what I call democracy deserts, where it is the norm not to vote. Therefore, the Bill contains measures to ensure that those hard to reach people are included on the electoral register.