Electoral Administration Bill

I accept that there is no absolute read across, but the basics of a pretty accurate register would be provided. Certain things would have to be done to add people and perhaps to exclude others as well, but a firm base would be created on which to proceed. I listened carefully to what my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg) said about whether there should be a household form or an individual form. We need not necessarily have one sort of form or the other. Indeed, we do not have one or the other now, do we? The canvass goes out using a household form, but if people apply to register during the year, they apply on an individual form. Both systems operate. I accept that that can get a bit confusing, but I am with the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) in spirit about individual registration. Ultimately, I think that we may get that system, but it would be very difficult to move the whole step at this stage. I do not know whether the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire has tried to address some of those practical problems. However, given the amendment moved by the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) that we discussed in the first group, the Opposition accept that there are people on the register who should not be there, that some people registered at certain households may not live there, and that there are houses where no one is registered. So how do we decide how many individual forms to send to those houses? If no one is registered at a house, do we send one, two or three forms? What happens with a house in multiple occupation? It is all right to say that forms will be sent to the people whom we think live in a certain place, but if those people are not there because they are last year’s students, rather than this year’s students, how do we know the number? Does the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire favour sending individual registration forms around the system like confetti, when he is arguing that we should have a more secure system that stops people registering if they are not entitled to register? Those practical problems need to be thought through, but we might get such a system in the end. When we develop a much more accurate registration base and when we start to use data from different sources, we can then write to people, as is done in Australia, on the basis of the information held by the Post Office, the utilities, the college or the driving licence people to say that there has been a change in circumstances at an address and that we understand that so-and-so is living there now. We could send the registration form to the individual whom the registration officer—or the Electoral Commission in Australia—is told now lives at that address. That is how individual registration could build a completely new system, but that would be difficult under the current arrangements when we have an inaccurate register and do not know to whom we are sending the forms. Again, I return to the fact that there may be a case for both systems. I want to address a practical problem. I listened to what my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister said about registration officers being encouraged to go out into the community and knock on doors as part of the existing arrangements. If that sort of canvassing is done, I hope that the officers go with both forms. If they find the head of household in, I hope that they get that person to register everyone at the address while they are there. If they knock on the door and the head of household is not there, I hope that they have taken some individual registration forms so that they can at least register those people who are present and get them signed up on the spot.