Electoral Administration Bill

The Minister may have a point, judging by what happened with the unintended consequences of another aspect of the Representation of the People Act 2000. I am sure that she did not intend to disfranchise a large proportion of service personnel at the last election, but that was the effect of the legislation. It is a scandal that we have been sending troops to Iraq to help to build a democracy while making it so difficult for them to vote in the last general election. A very large proportion of them almost certainly did not vote. It is disgraceful that when I warned the Government about that in late 2004, on the basis of evidence that I had gleaned from my constituency, they did virtually nothing about it. Equally disgraceful has been the Government’s response since then. I can find nothing in the Bill to suggest that they will tackle the problem. In the Constitutional Affairs Committee last week, I secured the Lord Chancellor’s agreement—it is fairer to say that I wrung agreement from him—to produce a thorough report on how the problem arose and what the Government intend to do about it. If we are to avoid more delay in finding a solution, we need several things. First—I hope that the Minister will say that she agrees to this—we need a survey of servicemen to be undertaken to establish how many of them were disfranchised. We need not survey all this country’s servicemen; we need to pick a group and conduct an intelligent survey.