Electoral Administration Bill

I beg to move that the clause be read a Second time. [Hon. Members: ““Hear, hear.””] It is gratifying to hear such noises in the Committee; I have the sense that they may have come from more than one part of it. The purpose of the clause is simple to explain. It is to restore the armed services personnel scheme that used to exist and to take the armed services back to the position they enjoyed prior to the 2000 Act. It will mean that at the next election all service personnel will be registered to vote. The fact that we need a clause such as this tells its own story. It is a story of a Government who took us to war in Iraq having just disfranchised a large proportion of the servicemen who were fighting in it. But it is worse than that. It is a story of a Government who were warned repeatedly that this would be the consequence of what they put on the statute book in 2000. I warned the Government repeatedly in the nine months prior to the election that as many as half of all service voters would be disenfranchised unless they took urgent action. I have discovered that a number of senior officers also warned the Government that their men did not have the vote, but no action was taken. I fear that we may get some promises and assurances but nothing more concrete from the Minister and I really do not think that is going to be enough this time. We must not be put off with a few more assurances. It is all too reminiscent of what I heard from the then Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the then hon. Member for Hove, in a debate in Westminster Hall. He committed himself to discussions with the Electoral Commission and said he would come back to me. The fact is that he did virtually nothing more than sit on his hands. The Government and the Electoral Commission could, and should, have done much, much more. To her credit, the Minister has admitted that a serious mistake has been made by the Government and, again to her credit, is now committed to trying to do something about it. Whether she can carry her Cabinet colleagues—I am told that there is not uniformity of view on the issue—is another matter. Nobody who knows anything about the scheme that I am proposing that we put back on to the statute book is suggesting that it is perfect. It carries the problem that the register can be out of date and that service personnel can lose any connection with the area in which they vote. It means that a higher proportion is likely to be voting by proxy. But at least they will be registered. It will force the MOD to track each serviceman and process their application. Of course, the MOD might prefer not to have that chore and I have no doubt that it will be briefing behind the scenes about polishing up the new arrangements, rather than going back to the old scheme. I recognise the problems with the old scheme, but at least it worked. I do not think that we can take any more risks with service personnel registration. We cannot afford to go into another election, as we did the last, with so many off the register. I am worried that some clever scheme is in the process of being cooked up in an interdepartmental committee as an alternative to getting back to the old scheme. I put it to the Committee that the only sensible way forward is to put the clause into the Bill. At least we would then know that, at the next election, servicemen will get the vote. The statute book is littered with faulty clauses, and the unintended consequences that flow from them, that were drafted on the hoof while legislation was passing through this House. On this issue, we cannot afford another such mistake and we cannot rely on a Government assurance about coming back to us and possibly drafting another clause in another place. That is why I hope the Committee will be able to support my new clause tonight.