Electoral System

I welcome this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) on taking the initiative and tabling the motion. As you may have worked out from the fact that my colleagues and I have not tabled an amendment, Mr. Deputy Speaker, we will support the motion without reservation. We think that the debate is timely as we are in the run-up to the local elections, and because it follows a clear view having been expressed by the Committee on Standards in Public Life. A persistently clear view has been expressed by the Electoral Commission, too, in both the previous and the current Parliament. The Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, the hon. Member for Lewisham, East (Bridget Prentice), has always been willing to engage in debate on the subject, and she is concerned to make sure that the Government respond to it appropriately. The debate is about three things in general, although there is a list of agenda items, as it were, in the motion. It is about maximising the registration of people who are eligible to vote. I share the Minister’s view that we are nowhere near to doing so yet; I will come back to that point. Clearly, there are many people who should have the right to vote who do not. Some of them, when the time comes, discover that they have not got that right, and are very angry to discover it. We have all seen people come into polling stations, insisting that they are eligible to vote, but finding that, for one reason or another, they are not on the electoral roll. Secondly, the debate is about maximising turnout at elections. No matter what party we are in, it is in our interests that there should be a much better turnout. There used to be much better turnout, but it declined. It has just begun to increase again, thank goodness, but turnout is nothing like what it should be. It must be in the interests of healthy politics for people to participate in choosing their local council, London Assembly members, a mayor—in the places that have one—Members of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, whose elections are coming up, Members of the United Kingdom Parliament, and Members of the European Parliament. That is clearly an objective. The third objective of the debate must be maximum accuracy. If we are to ensure maximum integrity of the voting system, it is important to ensure maximum accuracy of the electoral register. That is the issue before us today. We all have stories to tell—the Minister, the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire and I, and many other hon. Members of all parties have told such stories—about how, after looking at electoral registers, it has been blindingly obvious that there are people on it who should not be, and people who are not on it who should be.