Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, as has been indicated, this amendment is very similar in its terms to the previous amendment, although it focuses on the need to maximise the proportion of private sector tenants on the electoral register. It will therefore not come as a surprise if I indicate that the arguments are substantially the same. I will answer the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer. The difference is that what we are being invited to do with these amendments is put off the boundary review to some indeterminate time. No date is fixed in these amendments, although the noble and learned Lord said that it could be 1 December 2011. But we have heard the whingeing complaints that to do it in 2010 is going to make it tight for a boundary review to report by 2013. Given that, I rather suspect that using a review date for the electoral register in December 2011 is going to make it impossible for the 2015 election to be fought on new boundaries. That is the crucial difference. The party opposite appears to wish the boundaries for the 2015 election to be fought on electoral data, so far as England is concerned, that go back to the year 2000. We have quoted on many occasions in these debates the report from the Electoral Commission published in March last year, when of course the party opposite was in power. These underregistrations have not suddenly materialised since May last year. I have indicated what we intend to do with regard to younger people in terms of data matching, so I found it rather breathtaking to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, say that we should get on with it. I think that we are probably proposing to do more in our first eight months in office than all that happened during the past 13 years. I give credit for initiatives that were taken, like rolling the register, but all that would come to naught because any benefit that came from that if we hold the 2015 election on electoral data from 2000 would be lost. Any positive steps taken by the previous Administration will not have any effect. The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, mentioned Glasgow, and in previous exchanges the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, has indicated what has been done there, and it is a positive example. But of course none of that would be taken into account if we had to use electoral data from 2000. I welcome back the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, because I wondered where he was earlier.