Individual Voter Registration

What the research has showed about the drop in the register in Northern Ireland is interesting. Some of the drop was expected because, after all, part of the point of introducing the system early in Northern Ireland was that it was understood that a number of people on the register there did not exist and we wanted to get rid of them. However, it is not clear that the drop in Northern Ireland was any larger than that in the rest of the United Kingdom. Therefore, there may well have been a drop in those who were eligible to vote because they did not go through the slightly increased bureaucracy. However, most of that seems to have been fixed by reintroducing the carry-forward, so that people who did not register the first time around are not penalised. We have learned from that. Having had Northern Ireland go first and having learned the lessons from what it has done, we can be reasonably confident that we will not run into the same problems. I am also pleased that, as the right hon. Member for Tooting said, we have gone about this in a conciliatory way. We published a White Paper last year. We then published draft legislation, consulted on it and asked the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee to do full pre-legislative scrutiny on it. The Committee has taken evidence from a wide range of stakeholders, including me. It has raised a number of concerns, some of which the right hon. Gentleman mentioned. The Government will respond shortly to the Committee's report. I urge all hon. Members, particularly those who are interested in this subject, to look at our response because it will address a number of the issues that were raised. Hon. Members can be confident that we will not run into those difficulties. For example, we have already mentioned the carry-forward, and we will not require people to re-register all their details every year if they do not move house. They will simply have to confirm that they have not moved. In Northern Ireland, people have to go through the whole process every year. I have referred a few times to data matching. We have examined other public databases in a number of local authorities to see how successful we can be in finding people who are not registered to vote. We are in the process of finalising our assessment of that programme, and the Electoral Commission will also be doing so having worked closely with us. I am confident that it will demonstrate that we can use those extra data, as happens in Northern Ireland, to improve the register. Younger people have been mentioned, and we want to ensure that we allow people to register online in a secure way, which will particularly help younger people. To pick up on a point made by the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), it will potentially also help people who are disabled and find it easier to use electronic methods. I absolutely agree with her that people with learning disabilities are entitled to register to vote and to cast their vote. From my experience of working with Scope and attending its reception immediately after the election, and of talking to people with learning disabilities, particularly younger people, I know that they are just as able as anybody else to understand the issues involved and make decisions, and nobody should tell them that they should not. I wanted to put that on the record in strong support of what the hon. Lady said.