Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Cathain]

My Lords, does that mean that the demands of time for the Electoral Commission are more important than the demands of time for us to make sure that what we decide on is the right way of tackling this Bill?

[Lord Cormack]

Further to that, my Lords, could the Electoral Commission be gently told that it itself should not procrastinate as much? We were debating an issue yesterday where the Electoral Commission has taken so much time that we were not able to consider its recommendations on the Scottish referendum question because those have not yet been made. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, in the process of considering this Bill I have met quite a large number of electoral registration officers. They are a subculture that works incredibly hard during electoral campaigns. I have real respect for what they do and how hard they work at the local level. We all have to recognise that getting this right, and improving the declining accuracy and the incompleteness of the current register as we move towards a different one, is a very important goal which we share across all political parties and Benches in this House.