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Political Parties and Elections Bill

It would be a rash politician who ever said "never", but when the hon. Lady has heard the rest of my remarks, I think she will agree that rushing the matter in the way she suggests would be unwise and risk tarnishing our whole electoral system. I will go through the details shortly, but I ask her to bear it in mind that we already have 3 million people who are eligible to vote but are not on the register. That represents a huge challenge to registration, which we must tackle. Some measures are already in train—we are doing everything we can to tackle the problem, and then move to a system of individual registration. As she will hear, that will create genuine problems and challenges to the registration system over and above the existing ones. To rush the matter and take the risk of even more people falling off the register as a result of undue haste would be unwise and damage the integrity, and the perception of the integrity, of the entire system. When she has heard what else I have to say, she may agree that it would be most unwise to proceed before 2014.