Electoral Administration Bill

If the hon. Gentleman did me credit, he would accept that, throughout these proceedings, I have made it clear that all that we are interested in is ensuring that the people who are entitled to be on the register are on it. As a party, we have campaigned for that for some years now. Our former hon. Friend, Marion Roe, had a well-informed debate about it in Westminster Hall in May 2004, in which she set out the information that she had gained about just how inaccurate registers were. She gave examples of cases where literally thousands of people who should not have been on the register were on it and of EROs who had undertaken clean-up exercises and had to remove 6,000 people from the register who were not entitled to be on it. Judges have said that our system is wide open to fraud like that of a banana republic and that the Government have their head in the sand. In those circumstances, Parliament cannot ignore the problem, especially as we have always taken great pride in our democracy.