Individual Electoral Registration

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend would not expect me to anticipate future announcements. Today’s proposals represent one stage in improving the electoral system, and we shall be looking at others in the future. I have heard what he has said, and I shall think on it some more.

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

There are currently 3.5 million people missing from the electoral register, many of whom are the most needy people in the country, and they form a significant part of our work load. Measures have been put in place by the previous Government and this Government, and I welcome the proposals to improve registration announced today. The issue is one of timing. These measures will take time to settle in, and the freeze date for the boundary review is December. In the interests of fairness, bipartisanship and an equitable work load for MPs, will the Minister consider using estimated eligible electorates as the basis for the calculation of new seats in December? Those voters could then be registered when the new measures came into effect, and there would be no fiddling.

[Mr Harper]

I take exception to the hon. Gentleman’s use of the word “fiddling”. The boundary review proposed in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill will be carried out on exactly the same basis as previous reviews, using the same electoral register and based on the same data. I acknowledge that there are people who are eligible to vote who have not chosen to register, and that is why we have put in place measures to deal with that. My hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) has made some helpful suggestions about what we could do this year, and we plan to fix this. When the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) raised this matter on Second Reading, I responded by saying that we would put in place measures to tackle under-registration, and I hope that he will be happy with what we have announced today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

If the level of functional illiteracy in our country is as high as that, it does not say very much for the education policies of the Labour party, which was in power for the last 13 years. The whole point—

[Chris Ruane]

The Conservative party has been in power for 40 of the last 60 years.

[Mr Harper]

The whole point about—[Interruption.]