Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, this will be the first of several related discussions. We had a more substantive discussion on Monday about the challenges that having 3.5 million of our fellow citizens not registered to vote poses both for the Bill and for all of us. Today we will discuss some of the problems of individual groups of the population who are overrepresented in that 3.5 million. I have spent a large part of my life working with young people. I have been a youth club leader and many years ago I worked in a young people's locked custodial establishment, which was known then as a remand home. I have worked in children's homes and, more recently, before I joined the then Government, I worked with and became a trustee of Action for Children. Dealing with many troubled and disadvantaged youngsters convinces me that the amendment is very important. I also have a local interest as a citizen of Bradford. The Bradford metropolitan district population is set to grow by 27 per cent over the next 20 years, and 25 per cent of that growth will be among young people. At the moment, the Electoral Commission tells us that the electoral roll is inaccurate by a margin of 10 per cent, so if 10 per cent of people are not registered to vote, we have a huge challenge. Everyone agrees that we want young people to participate in public life and to take the responsibility that goes with being a citizen in our democracy. I suppose that, like any parent, I felt proud—although I may not have enjoyed the experience much—when my children disagreed and argued with me about politics. However, I thought that it was very important when, for example, they went off to demonstrate against the war in Iraq. They feel passionate about many matters, even having given up their annual leave to go and work full time against the British National Party in Barking during the last general election. Nevertheless, we know that for the poor children of politicians, their parents are both an advantage and a disadvantage, so it is a mixed blessing. However, the issue here is not our children but the more than 50 per cent of young people who are not registered to vote. This is a matter of great concern for the future of our democracy. I am sure we all agree that we want our children and young people to argue and to care passionately about things. We want them to vote and to think that voting in elections matters. I think that we desperately want them not to be cynical about politics and politicians. We also know of the chaos in which some youngsters live their lives. Even for children from more affluent families, voter registration may not be the first thing that they think about during their freshers week, for example, having gone off to university and as they settle in with all the new experiences of living independently for the first time. If they are looked-after children or unemployed, or if they are living on a very low income or no income, or if they are young parents, they are going to be very preoccupied just with the problems of daily survival. They may move many times until they have a settled life. We know, for example, that young people will be particularly hard hit by the changes to local housing allowances, as single people under 35 will be entitled to only the shared-room rate, which, even when calculated at the median, has been found to be too low for a decent-quality tenancy in many areas. The problem of a lack of available accommodation for young people has been acknowledged by this Government, as it was by our Government, and it all adds to a lack of stability and a problem with young-voter registration. Coming from Bradford, I know that because we have a young population, a university, a very large black and ethnic-minority community and some very poor communities, it is a challenge to get our register even up to 90 per cent, which means that it is still 10 per cent out of date. I am not a mathematician but I think that the Government’s proposals will mean that we in Bradford will lose a parliamentary seat because our register will be inaccurate. There are also some hopeful signs concerning young-voter registration. There was a last-minute rush of people who wanted to register to vote at the last general election. The fact that people could register right up to the Tuesday before polling day was very important, and the Electoral Commission reported a spike in the downloading of voter registration forms after the televised debates. Indeed, the commission had a tie-up with Facebook. Democracy UK was set up jointly between the Electoral Commission and Facebook, which encouraged many young people to register. The commission teamed up with the social networking site with a link to the About My Vote website. About 14,000 registration forms were downloaded by Facebook users, and just over 40 per cent of people visiting the About My Vote website—which amounted to hundreds of thousands of hits—were young people aged between 18 and 25. I know that the National Union of Students worked very hard to get students registered and voting at the election. The Electoral Commission has said that, because many people do not become interested in a general election until the election is called, this has given a major boost to the number of people being registered. I think that that must be so and I suspect that young people form quite a large part of that cohort. On Monday we discussed door-to-door canvassing, which helps to build an accurate register and bring it up to date. However, we have to be even more imaginative if we are to get young people on to the register and keep them there. I am concerned about that and I ask the Minister whether he thinks that individual voter registration will help or hinder with the specific issue of young-voter registration. The amendment seeks to ensure that the Electoral Commission not only spreads best practice on voter registration to all local authorities but uses young-voter registration as one way of measuring the success of local registration campaigns. That would be the effect of the amendment. It seems clear to me that, if a local authority has succeeded in getting many of its young residents on to the electoral roll, it will almost certainly have succeeded more generally in getting voters to register. Perhaps the Minister agrees with me. If so, I urge him to recognise the importance of this issue and to accept the amendment. I beg to move.