My Lords, we were about to find out during the adjournment what my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours will say about this amendment, but he quite rightly got cut short by the clerk. The amendment calls for the now rather beleaguered Boundary Commission to conduct another independent review of all the consequences of automatic registration, from improved numbers of electors, to absence of democratic participation and everything in between.
This issue has gone to and fro for some time between the major parties without any party being able to point to conclusive proof that theirs is the right position. I am particularly grateful to the Select Committee on the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013, which produced a report on this issue and in broad terms supported automatic registration. It said in its second key recommendation:
“The Government should pursue further modernisation of registers, including piloting automatic registration for attainers and introducing assisted registration to prompt eligible voters to register when accessing other public services.”
We are talking about up to 9 million people—more than 100 constituencies-worth of voters—who are currently unregistered. They are mainly in rented accommodation, from the BAME community, from poorer households, students or vulnerable community members—people whose votes matter and who should take issues to their constituency MP and have them looked at, but do not participate in democracy. When they are surveyed, they all say that they want to
participate in the democratic process, register to vote and vote, but they do not take the action to do so. It seems that this is pushing at an open door.
I think that the Conservative Party generally feels that this conflicts with their policy of individual registration, which has been around for a few years now. I do not think that individual registration has increased democratic participation in our country. Therefore, something is missing in attracting people into democratic participation. It is our view that it should be reviewed and looked at. We should look at all the evidence. People should come to give their views. The Boundary Commission would not hold an opinion on this, but it would hold the review. At the end of the review, we can take a decision, one way or another, about whether automatic registration should apply or be piloted throughout the land. However, we would need to have the evidence before us to make up our minds on automatic registration. I beg to move.