Political Parties and Elections Bill

I am afraid that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has failed to convince me on this subject. It seems to me that he has stacked up his whole argument on some rather tentative agreement between himself and my noble friend Lord Henley that there was no election fraud in Cumbria. With all due respect, neither of them knows whether there is electoral fraud in Cumbria. All we know about the convictions for electoral fraud is that they are probably the tip of a very big iceberg. Therefore, I do not think that anyone can say, "There is electoral fraud in this area but not in that area", because no one is in a position to know. I congratulate the Government on this legislation. Addressing the issues of identifying people in terms of their registration as voters is long overdue. If there is a Labour advantage in the status quo, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, then he is saying that many of his colleagues in another place were voted in on fraudulent votes, and I do not think he would be comfortable with that. Let us consider the date. I very much support the Liberal Democrat Amendment 125CA. It is quite incomprehensible to me why we have to put a fixed date of 2014 on the enactment of this legislation. We do not know what the outcome of the next election in 2010 will be. One party or another may win by a relatively small majority and may copy the Labour Government of 1964 and go to the country two years later. That means that they may well be re-elected in 2012 and might serve the full five years, so we would be talking about 2017 before this legislation comes into force. I do not understand what the point is. I have great sympathy with the view of my noble friend Lord Henley that it looks a little suspicious that the Government are digging in on this when it may well be possible for this legislation to be brought in earlier. Why do we need a fixed date? The onus is on the Government to explain their thinking. It seems to me that it could be brought in earlier and, if so, it would be much to the benefit of everyone in this country.