Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I would say two things to my hon. Friend. First, money is provided to local authorities as part of their normal funding, and it is a matter for the local authority to decide on priorities. In his own case, if he is dissatisfied with how the electoral registration officer is conducting himself, I suggest that he speaks to the chief executive of his local authority and makes those strong representations. Secondly, given our proposals to move to individual voter registration in 2014, we will be improving the registration system and making it much more difficult for people who are not entitled to be on the register to be on it. I have written to local authority chief executives to ask them to take part in data-matching pilots in which we can, first, identify those who are more likely not to be on the register who should be, enabling authorities to target their resources on them and, secondly, target voters who should not be on the electoral register, to enable authorities to ensure that the register is not just complete but accurate. So there are two avenues there that my hon. Friend can pursue. I want to address the argument made by the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), whose amendment 332 would extend the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds. As I said, our approach has been that the people voting in the referendum should be those entitled to vote in a Westminster election. She, perfectly reasonably, is continuing her long-running campaign, supported by a number of hon. Members, to lower the voting age. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West, I do not think that experimenting with the franchise in this Bill is the right way to go. Many hon. Members will know my views on lowering the voting age, but—on a note of agreement—my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams) is right. He is a firm advocate of lowering the voting age in elections in general, but he acknowledges that trying to do that in this Bill, for one specific referendum, is not the right thing to do.