Electoral Administration Bill

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point—although I must say that my business is being a Member of Parliament. He is right to say that a lot of databases are corrupted and that when one puts rubbish into a database one gets rubbish out. The register is too important to have rubbish put into it, and I accept the point that he makes. We have to get through many groups of amendments in the next couple of hours, so I shall not speak at length. I shall briefly introduce amendment No. 1, which I tabled. As the hon. Member for Huntingdon said, it has a typographical error and should read ““2005””, not ““2001””. I think that that is what the original text said. All I seek from the Minister is clear guidance for registration officers that it is important to look after people with disabilities in the registration process as well as in the voting process. We are getting it right more and more in the voting process, but I am less convinced about the registration process. Communication with people with disabilities needs to be appropriate, and that is not always the case. Canvass officers need the appropriate skills to communicate with people with disabilities and registration officers may need to use means of communication that are not the obvious ones. Instead of advertisements in newspapers, they might need to be placed in specialised forms of media that will reach those who would otherwise not be reached. The whole question of household registration as opposed to individual registration also needs to be considered. If one or two people in a house have disabilities, they may need specific and separate treatment to enable them to register correctly. The Disability Discrimination Act 2005 will—I think—impose a duty on registration officers as of December 2006, and that general duty may cover all the issues that I have mentioned. However, this is an opportunity to be explicit before that date and ensure that a sector of the community is not effectively disbarred from taking part in the democratic process. That is the purpose of my amendment. I do not intend to press it to a Division, but I hope that the Minister will respond positively to it.