Individual Voter Registration

Debate between Siobhain McDonagh and Graham Allen

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

I apologise to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to the House for necessarily being out of the Chamber at about 4 o’clock. I apologise in particular to the Minister, who is always most courteous in such circumstances.

If the House has any sacred duty, and that is arguable, it is that we should ensure that the British people are able to elect those of us who come to this Chamber. That is one of the most important things that any of us in the House can stand up for and fight for. Today, we have a chance to do that, but we need to consider one other thing. The hon. Member for Hendon (Mr Offord) was right to talk about abuse of the electoral registration system, but the biggest abuse of that system is not the five or six cases nationwide that went to court on fraud charges, but the fact that all of us in the Chamber have at least 10,000 people in our constituency who are not on the register to vote. That is the biggest abuse, and it is the most important thing to put right when we look at individual voter registration.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

Is my hon. Friend aware that in the ICM poll for the Electoral Commission, which has been cited as the basis for much of the legislation, barely 2% of people thought that registering to vote was very unsafe, and that 20 times as many people were satisfied with the way in which they registered to vote as the number who were dissatisfied?

[Mr Allen]

My hon. Friend makes her case eloquently, and she is a great champion of ensuring that members of the public in her constituency and elsewhere are on the register. We need to support that sentiment, and only we in the Chamber can do so.

We do that partly through the activities of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, which I am fortunate to chair. It is an active Committee, and some of its members are in the Chamber: my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) and the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths). I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), who spoke on behalf of the Committee when I was absent due to ill health when this matter was last debated.

We have worked together, and we have worked with the Government, to try to make the proposal better. Given the exchanges that have taken place, the House is in severe danger of doing the job that members of the public elected it to do. The Government have submitted a pre-legislative proposal to the Select Committee, which is how things should happen. The Select Committee responded with non-partisan efforts to determine a better Bill and to make better proposals, some of which have already been heard by the Government. Today, we are having a measured debate. There may not be a great drama if we tend to agree on a number of the issues, but that is what the House should do when proposed legislation is introduced, so that we end up with better legislation.