Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

That is how I was going to come to the conclusion of my remarks. I was responding to an intervention about that, and I was not talking about my ministerial career; this is about the process of legislation, which is directly relevant to this clause. All parties in the House of Commons agreed, parties that have now changed their minds about it, including the party of the noble Lord opposite. His spokesman in the House of Commons agreed with what we proposed, which has now been jettisoned. When I have sat down, I would like to hear him explain exactly why his party has changed its mind about the importance of people being on the register. That is relevant to this debate. The reason why we were able to persuade the spokespersons from both the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat parties about the importance of a timescale—in other words, to 2015, not the new precipitate timescale—was, above all else, the importance of the 2011 census data. Only when those are available can we be sure that we have a comprehensive and accurate register. This was not a political decision; we were assured by officials, and I am sure that the Minister is getting exactly the same advice, that the full benefit of those data will not be available until 2014. So we come back to the central point about the timescale. I understand all the arguments that the Minister has made in resisting the amendment. They are important, they are not negligible and I do not resist them all. There is a greater argument, though, about the central importance of having a comprehensive and accurate register, and, at the earliest, that cannot be available before 2015. I am not necessarily opposed to what the Minister is proposing overall in the legislation, only to the process and unforgivable rush. If he sticks to this timetable, he is putting forward profoundly flawed legislation, and I urge him once more to think again.