Electoral Administration Bill

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point: people in HMOs are poor at registering to vote. Why is that? It may be because one person is being sent the form for the whole household—the reality being that a group of people share the flat—and that that person simply cannot be bothered to fill the form in for the others. I believe that a more individual approach, targeting each person in turn, is more likely to succeed than the current failed approach, which the hon. Gentleman seems to want to continue with. He admits that registration has gone down in that ward by 30 per cent. in recent years and he invites us to build on that success. Surely we should look at why the system has failed so badly? I am all in favour of data matching, and think that it is a good idea. I want us to be proactive in this matter, because a register must be accurate in two ways: it should not contain names that should not appear; and it should contain names that should. We need to get beyond the use of names such as Hootie McBoob and Gus Troobev—the latter is an anagram of ““bogus voter””—on voter registration forms. That still happens, but the Electoral Commission has taken a constructive approach. Instead of insisting on full individual voter registration now, it proposes that we try to tackle the problem of postal voting fraud. In its evidence to the Select Committee, it suggested a very modest approach. It said:"““The transitional arrangement we discussed with the Select Committee would give people the option to provide their signature and date of birth on a voluntary basis when responding to the annual canvass. But it would be mandatory for those wishing to vote by post or proxy””." That transitional approach is a very modest proposal, compared with what the Electoral Commission asked for originally, but it is not the potty piloting proposed in the Bill. Piloting individual voter registration or personal identifiers in one district council will tell us nothing. After all, it could be said that a successful pilot scheme has taken place already in Northern Ireland, which is a whole country. Regardless of party allegiance, many hon. Members will not be satisfied unless action is taken on individual voter registration and personal identifiers. Therefore, I hope that the Minister agrees that the time has come for some movement on this important issue.