Electoral Administration Bill

We heard the best possible justification inadvertently made by the Liberal spokesman for a scheme designed uniquely for servicemen, when the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) tried to draw a comparison between sending Commons’ Clerks on an Inter-Parliamentary Union conference and sending servicemen to Helmand province. That seems to be a different order of responsibility and risk. It is clear from that example that there is a case for devising a scheme specifically for servicemen in their unique circumstances. I am very grateful to hon. Members for referring to the campaign that I ran before the last general election—in fact, it started in 2004—to try to draw attention to the issue. This is one of the great scandals—the other is postal voting—that came out of the 2005 general election, and neither of them have yet been adequately addressed. However, we have made some progress on this issue at least, and I pay tribute to the Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), who certainly had her heart in the right place on the issue, and I strongly suspect that the Minister does too. We have made progress in several ways. First, I had to press the Government for a survey, but we managed to get one in the end. Although it is faulty, as my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) pointed out a moment ago, it tells us none the less some of the information that we need to know. It tells us that much more work is still to be done and that a lot of servicemen are not registered. We have also made progress because we have a Government proposal. It is the product of extensive horse-trading and tension between the two Departments represented on the Front Bench now. The Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, the hon. Member for Lewisham, East (Bridget Prentice) and the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Watson) look as though they are getting on fine at the moment—I am sure that, as Ministers, they are—but I have been briefed by members of their Departments about the to-ing and fro-ing that has been going on behind the scenes, and it has been substantial at times. The Government’s proposal is to extend registration for up to five years—that is a step forward—but the second part, which is more problematic, is to place a duty on the Ministry of Defence to keep a record of the registration of service personnel. The Minister rather gave the game away when she said that the record would be used to act as a prompt to encourage registration. That is well short of the requirement that we need. The Minister said that she had been encouraged by assurances about the way in which the MOD would run the scheme, and that those assurances would enable the problem to be resolved. We cannot, however, keep relying on assurances from the MOD. The MOD understandably has different priorities. It does not want to act as a registration officer; it never did. It would rather not have such an administrative responsibility, and it was happy to see the back of the old scheme with the introduction of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. That is why I worry that underlying the Government’s proposals will be a dependence on a level of will of the MOD to make them work. That may not always be sufficient. That is why I want the provisions bolstered. I am sorry that the Liberal Democrats will not join us in the Lobby tonight, as they tabled an inadequate amendment in the House of Lords and do not want to vote against their own proposals. We should support the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire, which will place a duty on the MOD to make sure that all reasonable steps are taken to get service personnel back on the register. On many occasions, I have outlined in the House why that is essential. It is not too much to ask of the MOD, and it is particularly important at this time, when we have service personnel, putting their lives at risk to bring democracy to other countries, who have themselves recently been left disfranchised, and who may yet, even as a result of this measure, find themselves still disfranchised. That will not do.