Electoral System

The armed services is the most significant general category, and my hon. Friends and I have made that point, in support of Conservative colleagues, who, to be fair, have also been persistent in arguing that case. There are also people who appear twice on the electoral register, as there are people who died a long time ago and whose names should not have remained on the list. I want to pay tribute to four groups, because it is easy to be critical without saying thank you. First, I pay tribute to the Electoral Commission, which has had an unfairly critical press. Since it was set up, it has been absolutely clear about what it thought was needed. In particular, on the issue of individual registration, as opposed to head-of-household registration, it has said what it thinks time and again, and in every report that it made to Parliament. It was not its fault that Parliament did not follow up on what it recommended. We set the commission up, rightly, some years ago, and it has done an independent, non-partisan job. It kept on saying that individual registration was a better system. Last month, in an article in The Times, Peter Riddell said:"““The commission can be faulted for not being vigorous enough in pursuing and highlighting abuses, though that partly reflects weaknesses in its original remit. But it is hard to see what it could have done when ministers insisted on pressing ahead with postal voting on demand.””" The Electoral Commission was overly criticised by the Committee on Standards in Public Life on that issue, and that was unfair, given how consistent the commission has been. I pay tribute to the people who do the work out in the field every day. The hon. Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Binley) has been involved in more elections than I have, and he started when I was very young indeed.