Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Graham Stringer and Chris Ruane

Tuesday 19th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stringer]

The right hon. Gentleman makes his point well and I am sure the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) heard him.

I shall speak to amendment 38, which is in my name. With permission, Mr Bayley, I should also like to press it to a Division. Other than what I said on amendments 341 and 342, arguments about the number of people on the electoral register lie behind this debate. One argument that was touched on earlier is bogus, and it should be discounted: namely, that the number of electors that it takes to elect a Member from one political party is different from the number it takes to elect a Member for another party. That is irrelevant to this debate. Turnout, the number of candidates and the distribution of electors also affect the number of people it takes to elect a Member for a political party. If people want a kind of representation that means that it takes exactly the same number of people to elect each MP, the answer is PR. I am against that and in favour of first past the post. However, that is nothing to do with the clause.

The second point at the heart of clause 8 is that constituencies should be based on an equal number of registered electors. That is a reasonable starting point, but there are two exceptions—one is relevant to this clause and the other will be debated later. If people are to represent constituencies, geographical features, boundaries and real communities should be significant considerations, as well as absolute numbers. However, how can the Committee say that absolute numbers is the overwhelmingly relevant consideration and accept that change to the system when 3.5 million people are not on the electoral register?

In amendment 38, I am seeking, in a different way from the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George), to address voter registration. He is trying to get the Boundary Commission to assess the difference between those who are registered and those who are not. The point of my amendment is to get the Electoral Commission, which is the more appropriate body, to try to satisfy this House and the other place that enough changes and processes have taken place to ensure that as many people as practically possible are registered. Once that has been done, but not before, the figures can be taken into account when considering boundaries.

[Chris Ruane]

My hon. Friend says that 3.5 million people are missing from the register, but the Government announced the other week that they will introduce individual registration and remove some of the measures that could help us to increase registration. When individual registration was introduced in Northern Ireland, there was a 10% drop in registration. If it is introduced on the mainland, that could mean 4.5 million people fewer on the register, so that 8 million people—including the most vulnerable in society—could be missing from the register. Does my hon. Friend agree that that constitutes a very little English coup?

[Graham Stringer]

I would not use the word “coup”, but I would use the word “gerrymandering”. In fact, a double gerrymander lies at the heart of this Bill. I would like the Electoral Commission to look at the issue of registration and report to both Houses, because there are sins of commission and sins of omission involved in why the electoral register is not complete. It has already been said that some electoral registration officers are more effective and efficient than others, and that is true. I represent areas of Manchester and Salford, and the electoral registration and returning officers there are doing a good job. They have done three canvasses and use what data they may legally access to ensure that electoral registration is as complete as possible. But that is not the case in several constituencies.