Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I know from my experience as the Minister responsible that if, for example, you do door-to-door inquiries, check who lives there, hand over a form to get on to the register, rather than sticking it in an envelope, and then go back and pick it up, you dramatically increase the number registered. My noble friend Lord McAvoy referred to the effort by the city of Glasgow. In my speech, I referred to the way that Manchester and Birmingham have 95 per cent registration because they are making the effort whereas London and Nottingham have 91 per cent, which is much lower. Picking up the approach of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, work has been done to identify the practical steps that can be taken. That is why I am submitting that it is not unreasonable and does not impose an unreasonable burden on local authorities for the Electoral Commission to say that it expects good practice from everybody. Our democracy is crucial to the well-being of our society and only when all the local authorities have got to that standard, measured not by an absolute number but by doing the right thing, do we then move on to this particular approach in relation to registration. We then avoid the bias against young people, particularly in the BME communities and in the private rented sector.