Electoral Administration Bill

I hope that we will resume the consensual approach that we enjoyed during the previous group of amendments. There is a pressing need to improve the registration process, and I know that the Minister shares that aspiration—I am as alarmed as she is by the deficiencies in the current process. Earlier, she mentioned electoral registration levels in London, and she has been kind enough to send me a letter containing the details. It is a huge indictment of the system that more than 500,000 Londoners who are entitled to vote are not registered to do so, and it is simply not acceptable that that should be the case in our electoral system. Although London has particular issues, I am sure that that situation is replicated in many constituencies up and down the country. In constituencies such as mine, it is relatively easy to achieve high levels of registration, but communities that contain large numbers of houses in multiple occupation experience a lower level of registration. Frankly, some local authorities do not provide sufficient resources to allow registration officers actively to pursue registration and achieve the results that we would hope and expect from them.