It was the right thing to do. I personally did not think that that was the right thing to do, but my Government did and they overrode my voice from the Back Benches.
When PR for local government was introduced in Scotland, it worked against the Labour Government. Labour delivered individual electoral registration in 2009. Throughout our period in office, we operated consensually and for a better functioning democracy.
What happened under the previous Conservative Government? The poll tax was pursued as a means of pushing people off the register and Dame Shirley Porter undertook social cleansing in Westminster to secure party political advantage. This Government’s original proposals sent a shiver down my spine, much like that recently experienced by Ms Lagarde. The agreed date for individual electoral registration, on which there was consensus, was brought back from 2015 to 2014 and the date of the next election was put back to the last possible date of 2015. Either the Deputy Leader of the House or the Parliamentary Secretary can intervene at this point, as we still have not had a satisfactory answer on the reason for the decisions. Was it happenstance or accident, or was there a political agenda?