Electoral Administration Bill

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman makes that point. The hon. Member for Belfast, East (Mr. Robinson) said that a significant number of those who disappeared from the register jolly well should have done because they should not have been on it in the first place. Some people were not entitled to vote, some were registered more than once and some entries were fictitious. Measures that have been taken since then have meant that some people who should have been on the register have been put back on it. I shall not repeat the points that others have made about the letter that the Electoral Commission sent to hon. Members. However, the letter said that commission recognised"““concerns that the initial impact of a . . . switch to individual registration might be a fall in the number of people who register to vote””." The commission also said that it realised, as do my party and I, that a move to individual registration needs to be part of a package. Such a change cannot be made on its own, but must be carried out at the same time as other changes. The importance of registering to vote should be explained to people and electoral registration officers need to be given the duties, powers and resources to carry out their activities to ensure that only those who are not entitled to vote end up disappearing from the register. The hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Khan) makes a valid point, but we should consider what happened elsewhere and take steps at the beginning of the process to avoid problems. According to the Government, the Bill has three objectives:"““access to voting for all . . . highest possible turnout . . . and . . . lowest possible fraud””." I am worried that we have spent most of the debate considering registration. It is a good thing if everyone who is entitled to vote is on the electoral register, but that misses the point. If we get all the people who are entitled to vote on the register without addressing some of the wider issues—admittedly that might not be possible through the Bill—we will just end up with more people being entitled to vote, but no more people voting and turnout thus going down. I think that the Minister has said on previous occasions that the mechanical process is not one of the main reasons why people do not vote. Labour Members have said that some 4 million people are not registered to vote, but the sad thing is that the process is not difficult. If someone wants to vote it is not difficult for them to put their name on the register and cast a vote. Depressingly, 4 million of our fellow citizens do not care enough about voting to take relatively simple steps to register. We have just had a general election, but I do not remember millions of people beating down my door because they were outraged that they could not cast a vote. That is what we should be worried about. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) is pulling face, but according to his colleagues millions of people were not able to vote. However, they were not angry about that, and we should be worried that many of our citizens do not think that elections are worth participating in. Perhaps that is because the House has less power, as many of our powers to make laws have gone elsewhere. Many people say that all the parties are the same and so there is not enough reason to vote. We should be concerned about those issues rather than the mechanical details. Like my party, I support the proposal to allow people to stand for election to the House at 18. It is important to equalise the age at which people can vote and the age at which they can stand for election, but I do not support the proposal to allow people to vote at 16. One has to have a cut-off point, and it has to have some logic. Some say that people can do other things at 16, but that argument does not hold water. One can pay taxes at any age. I accept that someone can join the Army at 16, but they will not be sent to the front line. They can get married, but only with their parents’ permission. We have to draw a line somewhere, and if we do not do so at 18—the age at which one becomes an adult—we could end up extending the provision to young teenagers. Voting is a rite of passage into adulthood, so it makes sense to keep the existing limit. Finally, the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) touched on the issue of funding. Many hon. Members spoke about the duty on electoral registration officers to produce a complete register and their increased responsibilities for door-to-door canvassing, producing publicity and liaising with other organisations to obtain data for databases. That will impose a burden on local authorities, and we cannot simply will the ends unless the means are provided. Although I welcome the £17 million set aside for publicity, that equates to less than £30,000 for each parliamentary constituency and does not relieve the burden on electoral registration officers. Only a few people in local authorities do such work permanently. Many people are hired at peak times, so they are not particularly well trained. Electoral registration is seriously under-resourced, and I sympathise with officers in areas with universities that have a large student population or in areas with a large transient population. It must be difficult to work in such areas, and officers do not always receive the funding and resources that they deserve. National standards for electoral registration are to be implemented, so when the Minister of State talks to the Minister for Local Government she needs to highlight the fact that those activities needed to be financed by funding local government properly. If we put burdens on local councils by giving electoral registration officers a duty to produce a good register without providing them with the resources to do so, we are effectively promising a lot but we will fail to deliver. Moreover, we will not produce an accurate register in more challenging areas. Some provisions in the Bill are welcome, but unless we address the problem of individual registration and the need for integrity in the voting system we will fail to make progress. My party tabled a reasoned amendment because, as has been said, this may be the only opportunity before the next general election to tackle the problem. We are concerned that the Government are not grabbing that opportunity to introduce a proper system of individual registration.