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Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

In Northern Ireland, there is a problem with individual registration. Eventually it should improve the accuracy of the register, but it will take some time in relation to it, and household registration tends to involve more people being registered than does individual registration. We introduced individual registration because we did not like the idea of it being the head of the household who determined whether or not you got registered. My noble friend Lord Beecham is right in saying that because that measure might reduce the number of people registered, the consequence is that you need more effort on the part of the electoral registration officers to ensure that things keep up. Ultimately, you cannot—if the claim is fairness—say that it is fairness in relation to this one aspect but not another. If the position of the coalition is that it will not introduce AV, even if 99 per cent are in favour, until the Boundary Commission has reported, why will it not also accept our condition, which would have a fundamentally galvanising effect on electoral registration? It would mean that the Government of the day had the highest possible motivation to ensure that there was proper registration and that the sorts of problems to which the Electoral Commission has referred would be dealt with. This is how to make a difference in this regard. I await the noble and learned Lord’s answer as to why, if at all, this proposal would not and should not be introduced. It is a wholly good thing, which would improve our democracy and would, most importantly, bring into our democracy people in black and minority ethnic groups, which are perhaps the groups that feel most alienated and excluded by it at the moment. I beg to move.