Electoral Administration Bill

I said at the outset that, in principle, we accept individual registration; we do not have a principled objection to it. However, it is clear that there are two issues that should be considered, the first of which is that the term of punishment for any offence relating to false registration will be increased from six months to 51 weeks. Some 3 million people are not on the register who should be on it, and if there were a 10 per cent. drop in registration in Great Britain, that would add another 4 million people to that figure. A register that has up to 7.5 per cent. of its eligible electors missing does not make a good register. The Bill includes a number of important changes to the way in which registration and elections will be run and the Government are confident that they will meet our objectives. However, we will keep the impact of this legislation under review and share the results of our evaluation with the House. This may also be an appropriate issue for the Constitutional Affairs Committee to consider, and we would welcome any such further scrutiny from it. We will also consider whether further evaluation may be appropriate once the Law Commission has concluded its report on the use of a formal process of post-legislative scrutiny. The Government believe that this is the appropriate way forward, and I therefore hope that Members will reject the amendment.