Electoral Administration Bill

I rise to support my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) who has correctly drawn attention to the growing worries about the integrity of our electoral system. Like him, I was proud to grow up in a democratic country, with the mother of Parliaments, which in those days was sovereign over all matters relating to government in Britain and was elected on a universal franchise that had the confidence of the British people. It is a great sadness that we witness in election after election, to local and national government, growing fear and concern—from those who run the electoral system, the independent people, as well as from some politicians and political parties—about how accurate and complete the electoral register is. Like the Government, I want everyone eligible to vote in my constituency to have the opportunity to register and when registered to have the opportunity to vote. No one on the Conservative Benches wants to deny bona fide British citizens their right to vote. We hold it as a great treasure and we want a system that allows us to continue to do so. We do not think that our constituents are incapable of providing basic information to register to vote. We know that the Government expect them to provide an astonishing array of information to do practically everything else in our society, often under duress from the force of laws recently enacted by the Government. To comply with tax regulations, my constituents are expected to marshal huge amounts of information to return to the authorities on all their financial and savings transactions and their income. If I want to deposit a modest sum from my modest taxed income in a bank or building society, I have to take along my passport or driving licence, both of which contain a photograph of me, and a utility bill showing both who I am and where I live. If I do not have those bits of information, the bank or building society, under Government and European rules, can refuse to take my modest sum of money or can even say that I might be guilty of some offence because I may have come by the money through improper means. That is grossly over the top, but the Government who say that we must do that to deposit a small sum of money in a bank account that was legally set up with all the right information now tell the House that people need provide no additional information, apart from their name, to gain the extremely important privilege of voting.