First, may I emphasise how different the Bill that we have deliberated on in Committee is from the one that was first initiated and from the Bill that was expected to be initiated when we had the Opposition day debates on these matters earlier in the year? The Government have made this Bill better. The opt-out would have made it difficult for my party to support the Bill. Concessions were made on the annual canvass and the penalty, matters that were also of great concern to those who served with me on the Lib Dem Back-Bench constitutional reform committee. I thank the Government for those huge concessions, as they are significant. They illustrate the fact that the Government have listened, that the pre-legislative scrutiny process has worked and that we have had the necessary response. To be fair to the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David), throughout the Committee stage he has acknowledged the extent of those concessions, appreciating and applauding them. I, too, have concerns about the release of the draft secondary legislation, although I applaud the fact that it came, albeit a little late in the day. We are told by my hon. Friend the Minister that that draft legislation will appear before the deliberations in another place.
The aspirations of completeness and accuracy are shared by all of us, on both sides of the House—or they should be. As the Bill leaves this place, I wish to make some observations. I welcome the fixed penalty. We had a good debate on the scale of the penalty and whether it should be £100—we had a probing amendment from the hon. Gentleman on that. The Chairman of the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), dared to suggest that it should be as much as £500. For the people who may stumble into the prospect of having to pay this—some of the hard-to-reach groups we are talking about—a £500 penalty would be dangerous. The debate should be much more about the prominence of the penalty notice, the extent to which the invitations to register reach the people they should and the messages on those invitations, rather than the size of the fine. To some extent it has been about those things, but it should be about the size of the font, rather than the size of the fine. We wait with interest to see what figure the Government come up with, but I tend to agree with the hon. Member for Caerphilly that it should be of the order of a parking fine.
I wish to discuss the position of the annual canvass. Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but I still think there is a huge premium in politicians and agents of Government or local government actually knocking on people’s doors. The annual canvass is not just about those poignant messages on the literature or about reminding people of those all-important implications of non-registration and their civic duty; it is about getting out to those hard-to-reach groups in practice.
We talked about the student community, and the houses in multiple occupation, and my area’s 147 villages mean that there are challenges of rurality that make groups hard to reach. Someone with a serious physical disability who lives in the Cambrian mountains has added difficulties. More prominence should be given not only to their difficulties in accessing polling stations but to the means by which they register. It is important that those in the other place focus on those questions, too.
We debated the dissemination of good practice and the role of the Electoral Commission. I am glad that the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) is in the Chamber. He has been in the Chamber a lot, but every time I have tried to congratulate Denbighshire on the excellent work it has undertaken, which he has brought to the attention of the House, he has not been present. I am glad to be able to say again that some really good work has been undertaken in Denbighshire and I look forward to the Electoral Commission’s being in a position to spread that practice around the country.
Had we made it a little further through today’s business, we would have reached my new clause 10 on ring-fenced resources. I hesitate to call it a probing amendment, because I am quite aware of what happened to my last probing amendment at the hands of the Opposition. New clause 10 was an intentioned attempt to have a debate on the significance of ring-fenced resources. If we agree on the goal and the aspiration, it is that this is about guaranteeing and ensuring that local authorities have the means to undertake the job they need to do.
Finally, I paint a scenario that is a worry, but it is not a worry that leads me into the hands of the Opposition or into the Lobby with them tonight. My worry leads me to remind the Government, as I support them, that it is urgent that we get the resources, responsibilities and delivery of accuracy and completeness right. I have 12,000 students in my Ceredigion constituency, largely living in HMOs and halls of residence. Some 11 Members of this House—two on them on the Labour Benches—have been students at Aberystwyth at some point in their careers. If we do not ensure that all those students have the capacity to register individually, that will have a huge and detrimental effect when we next have boundary changes. The Ceredigion constituency is likely to be altered significantly by the boundary changes, and the prospect of another large, beautiful chunk of mid and west Wales being added to it because we have not registered hard-to-reach groups in HMOs and our student halls of residence is a huge worry. That is why the Government need to tackle that with energy, enthusiasm and vigour and to get it right.
I hope that my friends on the Opposition Benches will not take offence if I say that in the early stages of the debate there was an air of conspiracy theories. I applaud the positive way in which the Opposition have tackled issues of concern, many of which I share, but I regret that that principle of consensus will not be carried forward in the vote tonight.
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