Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I certainly agree with the zeal with which my hon. Friend wishes us to pursue political and constitutional reform. It remains extraordinary that a party that used to call itself progressive and a party of reform failed to do anything fundamentally to reform our politics. We will now do it because the Labour Government failed to do so.

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman made reference to the leisurely time scale for the introduction of individual registration, but it was a long time scale to ensure that the missing 3.5 million people were back on the register before the introduction of individual registration. If he is to speed up one—the introduction of individual registration—will he speed up the other and get those 3.5 million people back on the register?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As I said, we need to proceed with care and make sure that the system is properly resourced. As the hon. Gentleman rightly said, the present timetable is for voluntary individual registration to continue until, I think, 2015 before a compulsory phase is introduced. We are actively looking at whether that is feasible and justifiable and whether we can resource an acceleration of the timetable. We have not yet decided on that.