Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a compelling point. In many cases, the individual who has not been educated has been born and brought up in a cultural system that might not encourage that, and that might not be their fault. There is obviously individual responsibility to get educated but, in terms of the bias, it is clearly the case that the more money people have, the more educated they and their children tend to be, and the more likely they are to be registered. If we consider the system overall, we have clearly moved to a system—[Interruption.] Oh, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) is crossing the Floor on the basis of my argument. That is good to see.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

On the point about individual responsibility, does my hon. Friend agree that there is an individual responsibility on all hon. Members to ensure that every eligible adult gets on to the electoral register and that we have a particular moral responsibility when we consider that somebody might be disadvantaged in any way? That very much equates to individual responsibility in this case and it is shameful that the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) does not seem to recognise that.

[Geraint Davies]

I certainly think that more resources need to be put in. More people need to be registered and to participate in the vote, but it remains the case that as we stand—as has been pointed out, not many resources have been put into this—there is a systematic bias against poorer areas in terms of the number of eligible voters being reflected in the number of registered voters. If we are going to make this massive change based on a numerical system of one size fits all, that numerical system needs to be rooted in the best estimate of eligible voters, not in the number of people who happen to have registered. As we go downstream with individual registration, my fear is that things will get worse and worse as groups of people who are not very literate and so on fall off the register because they are not being registered as a household. That will produce more and more of a bias.