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Electoral Administration Bill

We have had a wide discussion on the amendment. I shall begin by discussing the spirit of the Bill and how its objectives will be implemented. The Government, working with electoral registration officers at a local level, are responsible for achieving three things, in the light of which we have considered all the amendments. Everybody who is entitled to vote should be registered to vote, and hon. Members on both sides of the Committee have acknowledged that universal suffrage is the basis of the franchise. We are not discussing numbers or an abstract register—we are discussing an individual’s right to vote. We should be concerned about every individual who does not have the right to vote, because they are not on the electoral register. In discussing his amendment, the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) failed to give that point sufficient importance, because all other hon. Members who have spoken acknowledged it. He argued that the importance of ensuring that there is no fraud must be the priority and that everything else can be overlooked. We must have full registration and high levels of participation, and we must tackle fraud. Those are our three objectives, none of which is optional. Some hon. Members have mentioned different numbers—my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) is obviously the numbers guru in Committee. Hon. Members who represent constituencies with high registration levels must be baffled to hear us going on about the problems of under-registration. Electoral registration officers sometimes think that Electoral Commission estimates are exaggerated, so I conducted a survey in my constituency surgeries over a number of weeks. I hold my surgeries in Southwark town hall and limit the number of people who attend to 60. I filled in people’s names and addresses on a form and ended consultations by saying, ““Sign here to go on the electoral register.”” Quite a few people said, ““I am already on the register””, to which I replied, ““It doesn’t matter. If you are already on the register, they will bin this application form. Sign here, and I will take the form down the corridor to the electoral registration officer.”” I put a big fluorescent ““H”” on each form to allow the electoral register officer to see how many people were not registered. Of people attending my surgeries, 30 per cent. were eligible to be on the register, but were not registered. We must always remember that those are real people who have the right to vote.