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Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

My Lords, unusually, I disagree completely with the noble Lord, Lord Snape. I believe that forcing people to vote is eminently undemocratic. In a democracy, people should have the opportunity to vote or not to vote. If you want to say to people, ““You must indulge in this democracy and you must go to the polling station or put a cross on a ballot paper and post it””, you are taking away their freedom not to participate in an election to elect people who you perhaps do not like or perhaps dislike completely. I am not at all sure that this is a good amendment in any sense at all. Although more people may very well turn out to cast their ballot, you will have to persuade them in some way that they should do so, and the only way you can do that is by imposing a fine on them. Indeed, that is another argument against trying to force people to vote when they might not want to. It might also be difficult for people to vote. Indeed, polling stations in some constituencies are getting further and further away these days from the voters than they used to be so that it may very well be inconvenient, to say the least, for some people to go to vote in person. However, I come back to the general position that in a democracy people should be allowed to vote for whom they wish and should make the decision themselves as to whether they should vote at all. Anything other than that smacks of autocracy rather than democracy. If this amendment is put to the vote, I should be delighted to vote against it.