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Adjournment (Whitsun)

I congratulate the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall), who is now leaving the Chamber, for the brevity and balance with which he outlined his local issues. I apologise to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for the fact that I could not be present for the whole debate. I also apologise to other Members, but especially to those who gave their maiden speeches this afternoon. I understand that there were some excellent, even bravura, performances. I apologise to all those whose speeches I was not able to hear. I did manage to catch the maiden speech of the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), who tells us that she is the youngest Member of the House. She gave a very mature performance, which I think will serve her well for the future. I also heard the new hon. Member for Leeds, North-West (Greg Mulholland). Listening carefully to the content of his speech, I would not be surprised if he receives an invitation to become an honorary member of the Campaign group of Labour MPs on the left of the party. Like my hon. Friends the Members for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) and for Bedford (Patrick Hall), I had originally intended to speak in the Queen’s Speech debate, but for obvious reasons—because of the large number of new Members—was unable to do so. I wanted to raise an issue from that speech that has ramifications locally. What triggered it in my mind was the introductory speech by the Liberal Democrat spokesman, the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath). I have heard much about the impact of the election and the issues and concerns that have been raised in various quarters, but I want to explain to the House the experience of my constituents and the concerns that a number of them have raised about the election. I shall deal first with the national debate that has been going on for some time. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome referred to postal voting, about which great concern has arisen because of the recent case in Birmingham. Although my view is that the judge who heard that case rather over-egged what had happened in his comments about a banana republic, there are serious concerns for democrats and we need to look carefully at them. The judge was more rightly criticised because he extrapolated the limited investigation in part of Birmingham to the rest of Birmingham. He even made comments that could be extrapolated to cover other parts of the country. We must be careful to set in context what happened in Birmingham and how we put that right, but I want to draw a comparison with what happened at the election in my constituency, where 76 per cent. of postal voters actually voted and about 58 per cent. of others voted. There seems to be a great advantage in providing people with the option of postal voting. I hope that, in whatever we do to strengthen the postal voting procedures, people will not lose the ability to make use of postal voting to increase turnout at elections. The second issue that has been raised nationally—The Independent has been running a campaign on this—is, of course, proportional representation, and it does not surprise us that that issue has been raised by the Liberal Democrats. I happen to have just a little sympathy with that issue, but when people start to talk about a democratic deficit—although some issues relate to that—they should also consider some of the other existing deficits that are as important. Indeed, I should like to talk about those deficits in relation to my constituents. When I was out and about knocking on doors during the election—we do not get the opportunity during normal times to knock on as many doors as we do during a general election—I discovered that in some of my polling districts up to 20 per cent. of houses had no one on the electoral register. Indeed, in some streets in my constituents, every second house had no one registered to vote. When I worked out a total, I realised that about 5,000 houses in my constituency had no one on the electoral register. That is the first democratic deficit that existed at the election. The second democrat deficit is that a lot of my constituents who thought that they were on the register and had voted at previous elections found that they were not on the register at the last election. Of course, they had been removed because they had not filled out and signed the form that they now need to return. That legislation was introduced by this Government. I accept the need for that safeguard, but we need to look carefully at ensuring that people understand that that is what they must undertake to secure their registration to vote at elections. The third deficit is that a lot people in my constituency have come to live in this country. After they have been here for a period, they become citizens and therefore have the right to vote. Most of them come from European countries, but others come from all parts of the world. When they received their electoral registration form, it asked whether they were from various other countries, and quite a lot of my constituents innocently ticked that box and were therefore not considered to be British citizens. When they turned up to cast their vote they discovered that because they had said they were Greek or German they had no vote and could not vote in national elections. That applied to quite a large number of people. I was not entirely surprised by some of those things. Before the election, because of my concerns about the failure of the registration process to reflect the people who live in my constituency, I contacted the Library for information. From the research that the Library undertook, I discovered that a comparison of the 2003 register, the latest edition at the time, and the 2001 census showed that about 9,650 people were missing from the register. My local authority told me that those people could not vote because they were from another country or were not British citizens. As my constituency is part of the Greater London area, a significant number of people are in that situation. The Library also told me that between 1996 and 2003, 6,200 electors were lost from the register in my constituency. That is a significant democratic deficit for a large number of people. Why did that happen? There have been a number of reports on the subject. Recently, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister issued a report on registration and turnout. I shall take London boroughs as an example, but I will come on to others. The report showed that although the mean expenditure per elector on electoral registration was about £1.60, the figure varied across London boroughs from just over £4 at best down to 35p at worst. There seems to be a failure in that regard. As a capital city, London has particular difficulties compared with local authorities in other parts of the country, so it spends more on electoral registration than almost anywhere else—but we need to look into the organisation of electoral registration throughout the country. My local authority is no different from those in other London boroughs or other parts of the country. When I asked how it ensured that everyone was included on the register, I was told that only 77 per cent. of my constituents had been personally canvassed—so no one knocked on the door of 8,730 homes in my constituency and asked the occupants to fill out a registration form. In the most disadvantaged area of my constituency, 61 per cent. of homes did not receive a knock on the door.