Electoral Administration Bill

I am most grateful. I am a better drafter than I knew. The Minister got close to giving a Second Reading speech in some of the areas where she reminded us of all the good things that the Ministry of Defence has done; I have had them in letters, in meetings and on Second Reading. I am aware of them, but I did not repeat my arguments from Second Reading. I draw attention to two things that the Minister said in that list. Yes, we have welcomed the establishment of unit officers with a responsibility for electoral matters. The practicality, though, is that an enormous number of secondary duties are placed on officers at units, as we all know. Recalling my days in the service, I can say that your hearts sinks when you get some of them. They are not going to advance your career greatly and tend to go to the bottom of the in-tray. It is a question of how the issue is given priority. That is part of the continuing need to make this a priority for the Ministry of Defence. The other thing was the survey that the Minister talked about. I put down a Written Question on the survey only last week because, as she rightly said, it is due in March. If my calendar is correct, that is the month we are in. At our meeting with the Electoral Commission, the electoral registration officers were very dubious about how the survey was being done. Nevertheless, we were promised that it was being done in January, to be analysed in February and published in March. We do not yet see it. This is symptomatic of the approach. My final point on the Minister’s case for my amendment not being the best is about paragraph (c)—the need to keep effectively a central register for the Ministry of Defence—which is my method for keeping the MoD up to the mark each year. The Minister says that this will need extra resources. Of course, the MoD used to keep a central record, but stopped when voting changed in 2001. It admits that it has fallen away since then. So it had a duty, and the resources, before; whether the money went back to the Treasury, I do not know, but the system was there. The MoD is currently introducing a new personal administration computer system for all three services; this would presumably be a small thing to add to that. I am not persuaded by the Ministry of Defence’s usual resistive arguments. I obviously intend to withdraw this amendment, but plead for a serious government proposal that is not little bits and pieces. We want something that we can sell to the Armed Forces, in that we have all worked together to produce a sensible proposal; we want something that will keep the Ministry of Defence honest. The Minister pulls a face. There are lots of pressures on the Ministry of Defence, but it is the only organisation that knows where everybody is and has the ability to make this work. I am afraid that this is an extra pressure that we must add. We must have something in the Bill telling it that, and not something saying that we might tell it that in the future. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 10 [Anonymous registration]: