Political Parties and Elections Bill

Well, had I had a chance to do so, I would have extolled at much greater length the virtues of individual voter registration and personal identifiers. Some in this House will know that we dealt with those matters at great length in Committee, so I am satisfied that the principles have been thoroughly examined. The Committee was more or less unanimous in agreeing that individual voter registration, personal identifiers and all the other matters that I would have proposed in the next group of amendments have now been accepted in principle by the Government. I am delighted about that; I would even go so far as to call it a U-turn, and I am delighted that it is a U-turn in the Conservative direction. We appreciate, of course, that the new clauses are necessary in order to ensure that as many people as possible who are entitled to vote are properly registered to vote. Just as importantly, people who are not entitled to vote should not be on the register, and it should not contain any names that are not those of real people—the integrity of the register itself is so important.