Political Parties and Elections Bill

I am not altogether convinced that we will see an increase in registration as a result of this legislation. Indeed, I argue that it will lead to a reduction. If anyone wants to revisit the arguments, they need only refer to the 2005 report of the Electoral Commission, which sets out the groups that would be penalised under a system of national rollout. This information is taken from that report. The five groups are: deprived groups in areas of deprivation, people living in metropolitan areas, unemployed groups, certain housing tenancy groups, and people who live in houses of multiple occupation. I do not want to read out all of the sections in that report that are relevant to electoral registration proposals in the Bill, but for the record, in case there are people who read our proceedings, they should read paragraphs 234, 237, 242, 244, 245, 248, 251 and 254 because the information in that Electoral Commission report points the way forward as to the problems that will inevitably arise if national rollout takes place. There are another two reports. There is the first report from the Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee for Session 2004-05 and the special report of that committee on the Government’s response to the Northern Ireland Committee’s first report. I shall refer to both those reports. We have to consider what has happened in Northern Ireland, and I want to produce figures that may be of interest to the Committee. If you take their figures identifying the 20 worst local authorities for electoral registration in the United Kingdom in 2004, the worst authority in the country out of 442 was Kensington and Chelsea, which disputes the figures. The second worst, at 441, was Westminster, which also disputes the figures and sent me a letter disputing why the council is at the bottom of the list in terms of electoral registration. The letter states: ""I attach as background the analysis of the City of Westminster electorate as last published on 1 December 2008. This gives you more information than you requested, but I hope you will find it useful as background. The December 2008 register was based on forms returned from just under 87 per cent of Westminster households. Further forms returned since then have raised this, so we currently cover register based on a return from over 92 per cent of Westminster households." The letter continues: ""Any comparison of Westminster’s registered electorate against its estimated adult population fails to take account of the high proportion of foreign nationals resident in Westminster who are ineligible to register (e.g. citizens of the US, Russia, China and many other countries)"." At 440th on the list is Forest Heath, which, I understand, is an area in which many American and foreign servicemen live, distorting the figure. Then you hit a group of areas in the United Kingdom where there are no excuses to justify their low levels of registration.