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Representation of the People (Electoral Registration Data Schemes) Regulations 2011

With all due respect to the noble Lord, we have to make that judgment on the basis of evidence, but the evidence is not there at the moment. I tried hard in government to put in further measures to improve registration, but for various reasons I was not able to get them all through. I want to know what this Government are doing to bring in new measures over and above what we brought in. That was my first question to the Minister. I have not seen any evidence that this Government are doing any more than the previous Government did, although I am happy to be proved wrong. The improvement of registration rates is vital for the health of our democracy. The point that I was making, which the noble Lord overlooked, was that Parliament will have an opportunity annually to assess progress towards a comprehensive and accurate register. My concern is not about the speed of individual registration but that it should happen only when the register is comprehensive and accurate. The noble Lord seems to be saying that it should just be done whenever Ministers feel like it. That is the point of disagreement between us. If a comprehensive and accurate register, assessed independently by the Electoral Commission, can be achieved earlier than 2015, that is fine, but all the evidence is that it will not be. If it can be done, then I agree with the noble Lord that we can bring in individual registration sooner, but to rush ahead before the register is comprehensive and accurate will be very damaging. It will be damaging to the register and to the health of our democracy, because it is so transparently partisan to so many of us. We do not see this as a benign oversight by the Government; we see it as another example of a Government trying to fix the system in their own electoral interest. I know that many people will just shrug their shoulders and say, ““Well, that’s what politicians always do. What do you expect?””, but we and this Government really should not behave like that. That is why this matter is so important. It may sound like a technical issue to many people out there but it is not; it is about the integrity of the whole system. I hope that when we get to debate these measures we will hear the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, engage with these issues with his customary rigour, fairness and belief in the integrity of the system. He may come to the point where he is persuaded to vote against his Government on this measure because, in my view, that is what he should do.