If I may issue a challenge or wager to the hon. Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson), it is that there will be proportionately fewer young people on the electoral register in December 2015 than there are today. I support household registration because I believe that the most effective electoral registration officer in my constituency is mum. It is mum who fills in the form and includes her young sons—it is principally young sons, but also young daughters. It is not about people being excluded because of a bullying dad or other figures in the household. The young men I saw queuing up at the polling station at the last general election were there and able to vote because their mums assisted them in that. My concern about individual registration is not about party preference or who wins and loses, but about the disfranchisement of those groups who, for the good of us all and the protection of our society, must be included in the system.
Those listening to the debate would be forgiven for thinking that all sorts of fraud goes on all the time and that there is plenty of evidence for it, but actually the contrary is true. The report produced by the Association of Chief Police Officers and the Electoral Commission in March 2012 identified remarkably low levels of offences
relating to voter registration, stating that the offences usually concern financial benefit or identity fraud, which can be investigated separately, rather than electoral fraud. Surely we have all met mums in our constituency advice surgeries whose single person discount has been removed from their council tax bill because the council found that the electoral register recorded adult sons or daughters as living with them, even though they had moved out. That is the problem. It is not about people wanting to go on to the electoral register.