I shall be very brief indeed. The comments of the noble Baroness from the Liberal Democrat Benches hit the nail on the head.
We have introduced a scheme that worked in Cambridge prior to its introduction. With the introduction of individual registration, we have complicated the scheme. We need to go back to why it was introduced: there was electoral fraud in a very small number of local authorities in the United Kingdom. To be frank, they were areas of the country with high ethnic-minority populations, where for cultural reasons it was felt acceptable within some of those populations to conduct elections in a way which proved fraudulent under the law of this country.
It was a Labour Government who introduced this scheme and we spent tens of millions of pounds—it must be much more than that now—implementing it out of political correctness to deal with a problem that should have been dealt with in individual communities where a particular problem arose. Now, of course, it is too late and we are left to pick up the damage that was done. This amendment, in its simple way, seeks to remedy at least some of the damage. But the only way of dealing with the damage that has been done through individual registration is to abolish the scheme and do what the Electoral Commission seems to recommend in its most recent report, which refers to taking action in specific areas, particularly those areas of the United Kingdom where there is a problem with electoral fraud.