Political Parties and Elections Bill

But we do know that there have been no prosecutions in the county of Cumbria and that there are large swathes of the United Kingdom where there have been no prosecutions whatever. I suspect that there are no problems in probably 99 per cent of the UK land mass area. The problem exists in communities which carry a substantial ethnic minority population, and that is the reality. It is not racist to say that, because we live in the real world. In the debate in the other place some weeks ago, there were interventions from Members who were prepared to say that that was the case. My case is very simple: why do we punish the whole nation for a problem that exists in a very small number of areas within the United Kingdom? Why are we prepared to create difficulties and administrative problems? Why are we prepared to waste public money on a national rollout of a system which affects the whole country when the problem is localised in very few areas within the United Kingdom? Government policy should target such areas with the amount of resource necessary to ensure that the problems are dealt with and should not waste money in areas like Cumbria, where we are already short of money in terms of local authority block grant. Why spend millions on administration? Why place electoral registration staff at risk in inner-city areas where there is violence? Parts of inner cities in the United Kingdom are no-go areas. On the electoral registration Bill, I interviewed EROs in various parts of the country and I was told about no-go areas where they have trouble sending in people to canvass. In the minutes of evidence given to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee when it dealt with the matter in 2004, a witness from, I think, the Northern Ireland Office, referred to the problem of getting people to go into areas of Belfast to gather the information required, although they managed to resolve the problem after a period of time. What does my Amendment 126 do? It places a responsibility on local authorities where there is a problem to apply to the Secretary of State for the power under an order to introduce a scheme which would then operate within the local authority area. It would target the problem where it exists.