Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, like my noble friend Lord Soley, I oppose the Question that Clause 10 stand part of the Bill. I say to my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord McNally, that just because you are paranoid does not mean they are not out to get you. My reason for opposing the clause is primarily based on the lost opportunities. A number of amendments to it have been proposed that would have given us a great opportunity to improve our democratic process in this country. It is an example of how, if time had been taken to include a process of consultation with all political parties involved in British politics, we could have come to an arrangement that would have greatly improved the process of electoral registration. There is a crisis of democracy in this country. Every one of us who has ever knocked on a door knows that. One of the most irritating things that has ever happened to me in a long career in politics is when I knock on a door and a young woman comes to it, perhaps with two or three kids around her feet, and says, quite proudly, ““Oh, no, I never vote. I would not dream of voting””. That is because there is constant publicity around the fact that there is something slightly odd about the way our democracy works. In a number of the proposed amendments, which I really regret that the Government refuse to consider, we have looked at, for example, improving the franchise for young people and for those who traditionally have not appeared on the electoral register by providing a process that would have improved their registration levels. We had a very powerful debate, led by the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, on black and ethnic minorities. If the Government had not been so obsessed with the timescale for this for their own narrow political purposes, there would have been an opportunity to radically improve the Bill and the process of electoral registration in this country, and perhaps all of us who have a joint interest in improving the attitude to democracy in this country would have made some moves forward in reaching out to people to say that we are not all in it for what we can get out of it. It is primarily for that reason that I oppose Clause 10 standing part of the Bill. There is still a considerable amount of the Bill to be gone through, but the clauses that we have discussed tonight represent a huge missed opportunity. Legislate in haste, repent at leisure. It is a very sad day when narrow partisan interests have caused us to miss this opportunity.