Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Sheila Gilmore Excerpts

Wednesday 27th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

On behalf of members of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, who have taken part in various stages of the debate, I acknowledge the thanks that have been given to the Committee for the job that we have done. It is a good example of how to deal with legislation, and I hope that there will be many more such opportunities.

I am not sure that we will offer ourselves up for the next piece of constitutional legislation, however, because that might delay it even further, and if we spent several months on it, as we could, it would definitely be kicked into the long grass. Therefore, I can see why the Government may not be so keen to send it to the Committee, but in general such scrutiny is important, because it gives people the opportunity, in a much less stressed and antagonistic atmosphere, to go through the difficult bits of legislation and to get people in to explain what really would not work. We should do more of that.

As with many of these things, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. If not enough resources are put into the effort to carry out individual voter registration, it will be extremely difficult. We know how different various parts of the country are. We even know how different various parts of a city or a constituency are. In some parts of my constituency, one can go down a road of bungalows or other houses and find that virtually every household is registered; the only one that might not be is where somebody has only just moved in. In other places, it is almost frightening how few people are registered. In some cases, the household has been registered in the past but those people have moved away and the next lot of tenants have moved in.

There is no doubt that getting people registered is very challenging, especially if local authorities do not put the effort and resources into it because they themselves are not properly resourced. I see the benefit of ring-fencing in that respect. In a debate earlier today, I spoke about council tax and council tax benefit. Ring-fencing is not a bad thing—it can be very useful, and this might be an occasion when it would be. The differential resources and the different sorts of efforts that will be needed to keep registration up will be a crucial factor. It is important to give people the chance to vote. We have all encountered people on election day who suddenly discover that they cannot vote because they are not registered, although they wanted to do so and had been listening to all the coverage. We might say, “Ah, well, if people haven’t registered they probably won’t vote anyway, so it doesn’t matter”, but it does matter.

Registration is important in terms of changes to the size of constituencies as part of the difficult process of boundary changes. People will understand that there is a worry, particularly with differential registration, that the next round of boundary changes will be affected. I still hope that the Government will be prepared, even at this late stage, to reconsider the Select Committee’s recommendation on the next set of boundary changes.

Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

The House proceeded to a Division.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I ask the Serjeant at Arms to investigate the delay in the Aye Lobby.