Political Parties and Elections Bill

The hon. Gentleman makes it quite clear—in contrast to what the hon. Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) said—that the fall in numbers in Northern Ireland involved real people who had not been registered, and that they are now coming back on to the register after efforts have been made as a consequence of the fall to register them. That is why I do not think that it would be a proportionate or targeted response to demand individual voter registration. But I do back individual voter registration in Slough, because I do not trust the Conservatives in Slough not to have done the same thing in other wards where we have not put in the same efforts. I also believe that, in areas where there is evidence of the abuse of postal voting—there are some such constituencies—we should take powers in the Bill to tackle that abuse. It is among the most serious abuses of the electoral system. William Hogarth got it right in the 18th century. We need to regulate the real abuses. We have become obsessed with the details of individual donations, but we should be obsessed with the right of the voter to have their views counted, and with whether the democratic process is able to work. We do that by preventing the dead, the non-existent and the invented from voting—very visibly illustrated by Hogarth's skeletons voting, although in Slough it was non-existent people in central ward—and by preventing abuse of the postal vote system, which is easier to abuse than the vote-in-person system. We also do it by preventing personation—another subject that the Electoral Commission has put no effort into dealing with, although we know that it occurs in some places. I am concerned that we have a weak regulator that runs to the media rather than tackling the abuse of democracy. I believe that that is what we face. Although there may not be a united view across the Chamber and although there may be individuals in many parties who have abused the system, as members of the Conservative party did in Slough, I do not believe that any of the parties wish that to be the case. I believe that the political parties are united in wanting democracy to prevail and real people to have real votes that should really count. I believe that they want a system of regulation—a system that is proportionate and targeted—that can guarantee that.