---

Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill

I hope that I shall be able to reassure hon. Members on these matters. The integrity of the ballot is the prime objective of the Government in our actions to date and in those proposed in the Bill. The integrity of the ballot means that hon. Members who come to this House or to the Assembly, or who sit on local councils, do so because their peers have put a cross by their name legitimately. I emphasise to the Committee that that is the Government’s paramount concern. Electoral fraud will poison the system, and I find it unacceptable to have people voting in elections when they are not entitled to do so, or perpetrating electoral fraud in any way, shape or form. I hope that that statement of the Government’s objective will reassure hon. Members. The hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson) asked why we had decided to conduct a canvass in 2010. Clause 2 abolishes the annual canvass. Clause 3 proposes that the next canvass should be not in 2006—when the next annual canvass would have taken place—but in 2016. For the very reasons that hon. Members have mentioned today, we are proposing that there be the possibility of an interim canvass in 2010 as a backstop, should it prove necessary to conduct one at that stage. That would be four years after 2006, which should meet the objectives of the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik). The year 2010 was chosen simply because it is between 2006, when the next annual canvass would have taken place had clause 2 not been agreed to, and 2016, when the next proposed canvass will take place. The debate now revolves round the 10-year period between 2010 and 2020.