My noble friend is possibly entitled to enjoy my speech rather more than to enjoy a photograph of me making a speech. On the general considerations as to why the Bill should be amended—and the Government should be very willing to amend it—to ensure that it addresses itself to the question of improving the electoral register, I add one consideration. It is that, probably, the principal reason why the register is so inaccurate and incomplete, even 20 or so years later, is because we know that a great many people dropped off the register as a result of the introduction of the poll tax. I am not going to go on at length about this because we touched on it in an earlier debate but that political reality—that fact of history—implies a responsibility, at least on the Conservative wing of the coalition, to ensure that the problem for which it carries a large measure of responsibility is remedied.
I turn to two specific and more technical aspects of this amendment and its implications. The Minister was helpful to the House in what he had to say, both about the relevant date and the census, but I remain in some perplexity. Perhaps I have not sufficiently understood the purport of what he was saying or perhaps it is simply that it was not entirely convincing. It seems to me that it must be desirable that the relevant date should be set as late as possible. I heard the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, say that the earlier the relevant date is, the more likely the electoral register is to be complete and accurate. I found that a little counterintuitive and not entirely persuasive. The questions of the relevant date and of a census are bound up with each other, even though our constituencies are not based upon population.
The data that would be provided by the 2011 census are obviously enormously important. They will transform the appreciation that the Boundary Commissioners and everybody else will have about the distribution of population and of how, via electoral registration, the new constituencies should be drawn. It seems very odd, and the public will perceive it as very odd, that the relevant date should be set at 2010 when we have a new decennial census in 2011. While it takes some considerable time, understandably, for all the data emerging from the 2011 census to be established, none the less I would have thought that it would be possible, within a reasonable period, for the experts responsible for the process to begin to take account of that data. It would be very good if they could do so. For these reasons, I would have thought that if we could have a relevant date in 2012 there would be twin advantages: of being up to date, in any case, and particularly in that the information obtainable from the 2011 census could be fully considered and absorbed in the overall process.
The noble and learned Lord said that it all takes time, and of course it does. I do not say that the Boundary Commissioners should not start their work by reference to earlier data but I would have thought that it would be possible for them to update their work as they go along. Certainly, the objective should be—who can possibly disagree with this?—that the fullest account should be taken of the latest and most accurate and relevant data. It seems to me that these issues are worth further examination, for the major reason that it must be wrong and, indeed, unrealistic to attempt to draw equal constituencies without achieving the fullest possible registration and because we will have a rich source of additional data. It is not sensible to rush to conclude matters before those additional data can be properly absorbed.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Proceeding contribution from
Lord Howarth of Newport
(Labour)
in the House of Lords on Wednesday, 19 January 2011.
It occurred during Committee of the Whole House (HL)
and
Debate on bills on Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
724 c382-3 
Session
2010-12
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
Subjects
Librarians' tools
Timestamp
2023-12-15 14:21:41 +0000
URI
http://data.parliament.uk/pimsdata/hansard/CONTRIBUTION_703655
In Indexing
http://indexing.parliament.uk/Content/Edit/1?uri=http://data.parliament.uk/pimsdata/hansard/CONTRIBUTION_703655
In Solr
https://search.parliament.uk/claw/solr/?id=http://data.parliament.uk/pimsdata/hansard/CONTRIBUTION_703655