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Electoral Administration Bill

To pick up on the point with which the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) ended his speech, it is important that we have an electoral system that has integrity. Indeed, the first of the Electoral Commission’s aims is to promote a system that has integrity. Our discussion of individual registration is at the centre of that. The Government have said that they are willing to conduct pilot schemes, but having listened to the whole of the debate, it would seem sensible, given that this might be our only opportunity to discuss the matter before we have another general election, to consider the situation in Northern Ireland, where a pilot scheme effectively took place. The Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), talked about evidence-based policy making, so we should analyse what happened there and consider examples of what did and did not work. We should examine the problems and learn from them, instead of holding another set of pilots, because after we had considered the pilots’ outcomes, we might not have time to introduce another Bill and could thus find ourselves back here again after the next general election.