Electoral System

That sounds a particularly bonkers state of affairs that Plaid Cymru has managed to engineer in my hon. Friend’s constituency, but he affords me the opportunity to mention that new measures will come into place for local elections that specifically address some of the concerns that have been raised this evening. There will be a new way of operating postal votes and postal vote applications. In his opening speech, the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) revisited many of the discussions that we had at the time of the Electoral Administration Act 2006 in relation to individual voter registration and individual personal identifiers for voter registration. We had the debate at inordinate length during the passage of the Act, but we were not able to reach a consensus. There was a variety of views. The hon. Gentleman went well beyond what the Electoral Commission advocated. He wanted national insurance numbers to serve as the personal identifier. The Electoral Commission specifically ruled that out. The position of the Liberal Democrats was more consistent with the position of the Electoral Commission. We said that we did not oppose in principle the idea of personal identifiers or individual registration, but legitimate concern was expressed not just from those on the Labour Benches—it was echoed this evening from the Liberal Democrat Front-Bench spokesman—that any extension of that could have a detrimental effect on the numbers of people registered to vote. Hon. Members on my side were speaking of catastrophic impacts. That is why we put forward the compromise proposal that we would pilot the idea to get some evidence upon which to base a national extension of the scheme. I regret that that compromise was not accepted on all sides, so we adopted a second compromise for individual identifiers in relation to postal voting. That has not calmed the argument about postal voting. The hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire says that there is a problem with fraudulent registration, which he says is ridiculously easy. He argues that we need personal identifiers in relation to the register. We are bringing in personal identifiers—signature and date of birth—for postal voting, but he says that that is not enough and will not solve the problem. There is a fundamental inconsistency in the Opposition’s approach.