Electoral System

That may be so. I do not wish to underplay the problem, but I am trying to make sure that we get the balance right. Clearly, there is fraud, and there are many reasons for being concerned about that, but there are not hundreds of thousands of cases every year. Prosecution is difficult, I accept, because the evidence may be difficult to collect. In conclusion, may I urge the Minister to accept the Committee’s recommendations? Some of them are proposals to Government, but others are of a different nature. She knows that we support individual registration. We tried to secure it during the passage of the Electoral Administration Act 2006 between the Commons and the Lords, but we did not do so, and the Government got their way. The Committee makes eight proposals, including three to the Electoral Commission. First, it suggests that the commission"““undertake detailed research into the scale of…fraud””." The Minister told us that the commission has started to do so, which is welcome. Secondly, the Committee suggests that the commission should include in its statutory reports on this year’s elections in Scotland, Wales and England"““a specific section dealing with the impact of, and any problems encountered in the implementation of the new measures on postal voting. In light of this report the Government should consider similar measures in relation to registering immediately before an election as have been put in place for Northern Ireland””." The third recommendation is that the Electoral Commission implementation plan should include a focus on measures to minimise under-registration. That is the commission’s business, and as far as I know, it is working on all three proposals, although one of them will come back to the Government. There are four proposals specifically addressed to the Government, as well as three to the political parties, one of which is that we start discussions now in order to reach agreement on the precise form that the new system of registration may take and the measures needed to assure comprehensiveness and accuracy. Will the Minister announce at the end of the debate that the Government will invite Opposition parties to take part in those talks now, so that we can start the process as soon as possible? That would be a good sign. The second recommendation to political parties is the same as that made by the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire—that the Government accept, as the Opposition parties do, that individual registration should be implemented and should include at least one objective identifier. The hon. Gentleman suggested the national insurance number, but I do not think that that is the right one. In addition to signature, address and date of birth, or signature and date of birth, we need to find another identifier. The problem with national insurance is that many people do not know their numbers, and one can get a number off the shelf, as it were. That is not an infallible system. The last recommendation for political parties is that if the new arrangements in Northern Ireland, including the abolition of the annual canvass, are successful, they should be adopted as part of the system of registration in the rest of the United Kingdom. The Government are asked to do two further things—first, that it should be a requirement that the Electoral Commission’s views on proposed primary and secondary legislation on electoral issues should accompany any such draft legislation. That is similar to the proposal that I made. There must be a means of allowing the House to see what the independent body recommends, so that Government cannot try to put an alternative proposal, suggesting that theirs has greater merit. Finally and crucially, the Committee recommends that a decision should be made and legislation should be developed to implement a system of individual voter registration immediately following the next general election, or by 2010 at the latest. The time frame is ““within one year””, meaning that that should be agreed and the necessary legislation passed within one year of the report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. I hope that Ministers will say that they are now willing to accept that there is one other important body that supports the Electoral Commission, the Opposition parties, some though not all Labour Members, and many bodies outside. If we are to achieve maximum accuracy of electoral registers, we need to move to individual registration within a year of the report. I hope that Ministers will be positive about that. I know that it is difficult and I know that there is some opposition on the Labour Back Benches, but I hope that we will see some movement so that we get maximum effectiveness, maximum accuracy, maximum turnout and maximum participation in elections, which after all is the only way that people can feel that the democracy that we claim is theirs as well.