Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

In terms of this Bill and the four Boundary Commissions’ reports, which are required by October 2013, the relevant date is 1 December 2010. That is fixed. There is the separate issue of trying to get the electoral roll as complete as possible through a number of initiatives such as the rolling register and data matching, which the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, and I have discussed. That will not be used for determining the electoral quotas for constituencies until the next boundary review, but it will be relevant for determining who is eligible to vote at any election—be it a European election, by-elections, local elections, Scottish parliamentary elections, Welsh National Assembly elections, Northern Ireland Assembly elections, and indeed the general election of 2015. That is why it is so imperative that we give an impetus to get people on the roll. In terms of their being eligible to vote, that effort ought to be made. I do not want to mislead the House in any way. If those people came on the roll now, or during a drive that brought them on to the roll in the next 12 months, that, by definition, would not affect the number of people on the electoral roll on 1 December 2010. Hopefully, by sustaining that, these people would be on the electoral roll on 1 December 2015, and therefore would be part of the calculation for the quota and the constituencies, which would be the subject of the ensuing boundary review. The other point, which goes along with that, is that people might not be taken into account if they come on to the register now for the 2015 election, but many people have come on to the electoral register since 2000 in England who likewise would not be taken into account for 2015, if the amendment that is being moved by the noble Lord’s noble friend were to be carried. An update of 10 years is some considerable improvement.