I will not quarrel with my hon. Friend about the words we use to describe this. He is on one side of the case and I am on the other. I did not say that it was a slight flaw. I said that it was a legal and technical flaw. He says that it was a major omission. We shall not fall out about this. I do not mind what words are used. This is what happened.

My submission to the House is that regrettable as this drafting error may be, it made no difference in fact to the 1961 register or to the result of the 1962 election which was fought upon that register.

My hon. Friend said that the important issue of Gambia's future, in union with or federated to Senegal should not be decided by a Government which had been improperly elected. If that were the position, I would, of course, fully agree with him, because that is an immensely important issue for the Gambia and one on which there is, I think, some element of controversy between the Gambia Government and the Opposition party there. If I thought that there was any substance whatever in the allegation, expressed or implied, that the present Government of the Gambia did not, owing to the1961 register, reflect the democratic wishes of the Gambian people, I assure the House that I would be the first to press for a new register, new elections and, if it so resulted, a new Government. Indeed, it would be my duty and the duty of Her Majesty's Government to insist upon these things.

But that is not the position. The use of the 1961 as opposed to the 1959 register had no effect on the result of the 1962 elections. I will show why I say that. In the Protectorate, the P.P.P., that is, the Government party, quite apart from one unopposed candidate, polled 54,600 votes, while the United Party, the opposition party, and the independents polled together 27,200 votes, only half as many. It was a sweeping victory. In not a single Constituency were the votes so close that the errors, if there were errors, in the 1961 register could possibly or conceivably have made any difference to the result. Indeed, except in one constituency large majorities prevailed, I think, throughout the Protectorate. Nor has there been any change in the popular will since the election. In fact, the Gambia's government's party Majority has actually increased, because several opposition members have crossed the Floor since the General Election.

If new registers were compiled and new elections were held, I am sure that there would not be a result different from the position at present, so what is the point of doing so? Of course we considered doing it, but it would have been very difficult since the validity of the present membership of the legislature would be in question and the law to establish a new register could not have been passed by the present Gambia House. We should have had to do it here by an Order in Council. We could have done it perfectly well and we could have ordered the compilation of a new register and the holding of new elections upon it. But as there is nothing to suggest that there is anything wrong with the 1961 register, that would have been a very time-taking, inconvenient and expensive procedure, and it would have produced a result which would not have been different from the Gambia which now exists.

My hon. Friend made one criticism. He referred to the fact that some registration clerks stood as candidates at the subsequent elections. Registration clerks did stand as candidates, but there was nothing improper in this. They were not candidates when they were appointed registration clerks, nor were they registration clerks when they became candidates. I am informed, I think reliably, that some registration clerks became U.P. candidates and others P.P.P. candidates, so that this cancels itself out.

I should remind the House that the 1961 Ordinance provided for appeals against any mistakes in the register of electors. Therefore, if there had been any criticisms of the register, they should have been made and presumably would have been made at the time under the proper appeal machinery. I understand that what happened was this. About three months after the 1962 elections had been held, one of the defeated candidates discovered, rather brightly, the legal and technical flaw in the 1961 Ordinance to which I have referred. He used it to go to court and eventually to get a legal verdict from the Appeal Court of invalidation of the register on a technicality. That is really all it is.

That is the position. There is no great issue of principle here and there is certainly no infringement whatever of democracy. There is a drafting error in a Gambia Ordinance, which we have sought to put right with the minimum inconvenience and the minimum delay to the people concerned. I hope that the House will accept this really perfectly innocent explanation of this drafting error, which has in some people's minds, quite genuinely—I am not complaining—been blown up into a great constitutional issue. It is not that at all.

There is one other point to which I should briefly refer, because it has been mentioned not only by my hon. Friend the Member for Kirkdale but also my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Reigate (Sir J. Vaughan-Morgan). They have both pointed out that Mr. N'Jei was not responsible, when in office at the time, for the 1961 Ordinance or for the 1961 register. That is perfectly true. No local Minister was constitutionally responsible at that time. The Commissioner for Local Government was responsible. But it is equally true to say that the decision to compile a new register was taken at an Executive Council meeting at which Mr. N'Jei was present. He therefore knew of the decision and agreed to it, even though he may not fully have understood it. I cannot say that I blame him; it is an extremely complicated matter. But he was cognisant of it in theory, because he was present, and so, although I do not in any way attach responsibility to him, because he was not responsible at the time, he did not object, nor did either of the political parties object, to what was being done. It was the intention that this should be done.

Even though it is a complicated matter there is no substance in all this. I ask my hon. Friend to accept that whatever method had been adopted to put it right—whatever method we could have used, other than the one we chose—the practical result, in the membership of the House of Representatives, would have been no different at all from what it is today. That is the point from a democratic point of view, and the point of importance so far as the Gambia is concerned.

Nevertheless, having said that, I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the matter in the House, because it has enabled me to try—in so far as it is comprehensible to anyone who has not studied it—to correct the impression that might have gained currency in the Gambia that some injustice had somehow been perpetrated, or some democratic principle somehow flouted. That is not the case, and I very much hope that my hon. Friend will accept my explanation of the position.