Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Ruane]

I have been interested in this issue since 2001, when my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown) informed me that there had been a massive drop in voter registration in 100 constituencies, 90 of which, I discovered when I looked at the figures, were Labour constituencies. Some might say that it was our fault for introducing the changes in 2000.

I have sought to get the facts and figures on this for the past 10 years. I have tabled over 400 parliamentary questions on registration, population size and boundary size, and I have spoken in every debate on the matter in this House. I have come to the conclusion that what is, or was, proposed is a political act to deliver, in the case of the boundaries review and legislation, the 2015 general election, and in the case of individual electoral registration, the three or four elections after that. I hope that we will find out very shortly that it has all come to naught.

The reasons why I say this are many. I wish to compare the attitude of this Government with the attitude of the previous Labour Government. I blame the previous Labour Government, and I do so to their face, for not getting what we thought were 3.5 million missing electors on to the register. It was our fault that we did not do that. However, no one can accuse the previous Labour Government of using our political majority, which was huge, for party political advantage on constitutional issues. One of the first things that Labour did was introduce proportional representation in the European elections. In Wales, we went from having four Labour MEPs to one Labour MEP. We had a majority of 180 back in 1997—such a huge majority that we could have delivered devolution to Northern Ireland, to Scotland and to Wales without PR, but in the interests of fair play and playing properly on the constitution, we introduced PR, which did down Labour’s vote.

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

It is good that my hon. Friend has made that thoughtful mention of Wales. Does he agree that this Bill means that the people of Wales will see a reduction of 10 seats, from 40 down to 30? I would be interested if the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) wished to intervene to say whether he agrees with that, and, if not, how he would explain it to his dwindling electorate.

[Chris Ruane]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman if he wishes to intervene.