asked the Home Secretary whether his attention has been drawn to the fact that some thousands of miners and other workers transferred from depressed industrial districts to employment, or absent in search of employment elsewhere, have been struck off the new voters' lists for their habitual homes and have thereby been disfranchised, as they have not been placed upon the new voters' lists anywhere else owing to being compelled to shift from lodging to lodging whilst in or seeking intermittent employment during the three months' qualifying period up to 1st December, 1923; and will he take the necessary steps to empower the registration officers to retain the names of all such persons as absent voters upon the incoming registers at the polling districts within which their habitual homes are situated so that they may preserve their right to exercise the Franchise at the forthcoming General Election?

I can only refer to the reply given on the 22nd November last to the question put by the hon. Member for Elland (Mr. Robinson).

Has the attention of the right hon. Gentleman been drawn to the position disclosed by the publication of the new voters' lists, and is he aware that a considerable number—a few thousand at any rate—of miners and other transferred workers have lost their right to register for their home place, and have not been put on for the places to which they have gone; and is it not rather serious that men transferred by the Government should be disfranchised in this way?

Really. the hon. Member must not say that. There is no difference at all between a man who is transferred, which is a voluntary operation on his part, under a Government scheme, and a man who goes from one part of the country to another to obtain fresh employment. The Acts are very wide and very democratic. A very short residence is required, but there must be some residence in order to get the voters' lists made up.

But is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, owing to the abnormal conditions of unemployment, there has been an abnormal reduction of the voters' register in the mining and distressed areas?

I admit the difficulty, but it occurs all over the country in regard to men who are transferred, and there is no power to get them on the register.