Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in this debate, and I will be brief in order to keep to the three-minute time limit you have given me, Mr Deputy Speaker. I wish to follow the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) about under-representation. Indeed, my constituency was mentioned by the Deputy Prime Minister in his opening remarks. The mid-2007 estimated population of my constituency was just over 88,500. Almost exactly 20% of those people are not eligible to vote, giving a notional registrable electorate of 71,000, or around the mean of the national average, given the 650 seats in this House. However, the number actually on the electoral register is around the 60,000 mark, so we must ask where those 10,000 or 11,000 missing people are. I suggest that the vast majority fall into one of the three categories highlighted by the Electoral Commission—young people aged 17 to 24, private sector tenants and the black and ethnic minority residents in my constituency. The Edinburgh university students association did some work that estimated that there are more than 20,000 students in Edinburgh, and of those some 9,000 would be eligible to be registered in my constituency. On the Electoral Commission's figures, 50% of those students are not registered, accounting for 4,500 of the missing electorate. I mention this because the principle of equalisation is not denied. We agree with it, but we must ensure that we achieve equalisation of representation at the same time. Some 25% of all the constituents who come to my constituency officers are not on the electoral register. Therefore, if we arbitrarily adopt a 600-seat House and just divide the number of people on the register in December 2010 by 600, we will end up with an artificial figure that under-represents the most vulnerable and the hardest to reach. The evidence is borne out by the Lothian Valuation Joint Board, which by December 2010 will have completed only 85% of the work that it does on the register. Therefore, the electoral registration figures that will be used to fundamentally redraw our constituencies will be—