Electoral Administration Bill

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should work out the details of that suggestion and propose a scheme. We should consider all reasonable options to encourage people to register to vote. I am not sure how the lottery ticket idea would work, but incentivising people to register might be possible. We should make a serious effort to get those who are not currently registered on to the register, but we should always bear it in mind that it is wrong to deal with matters such as the size of constituencies based on some back-of-the-envelope calculation of how many people may be entitled to vote in a certain area. The registration system must be what we rely on and I would like it to be much better in our country than it is now. The Government have accepted a requirement for a signature and date of birth for postal voting and it seems to me illogical that they will not go the whole way, especially given that the Bill requires people to sign for their vote at the polling station. Door-to-door canvassing is an important part of electoral registration practice, and we need to improve what we do in that respect. I believe that a reason for the decline in the quality of our electoral registration system over the past 20 years is that local authorities have cut back in that respect. Certainly, they have felt squeezed and obliged to deal with other matters. Local authorities need to be able actively to canvass to achieve the best possible result. There is a great deal of disquiet about the potential for electoral fraud. It has grown significantly over the last few years. The Electoral Commission was set up to give independent advice on that issue. The House of Lords—the other place; not the democratic Chamber—has said that this measure is necessary in the interests of democracy. The Government should not contemptuously ignore the Lords.