[Relevant documents: First Joint Report from the Constitutional Affairs and ODPM: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions Committees, Session 2004-05, HC 243, on Electoral Registration; and the Government's response thereto, Cm 6647. Oral and Written Evidence, taken by the Constitutional Affairs Committee, Session 2005-06, on Electoral Administration, HC 640-i and 640-ii, and on Party Funding, HC 1060-i.]

Lords amendments considered.

New Clause

Lords amendment: No. 7, before clause 13, to insert a new clause— Absent voting: personal identifiers.

I beg to move, That this House
agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

With this it will be convenient to take Lords amendment No. 8 and the Government motion to disagree thereto, and Lords amendments Nos. 9 to 15, 47 to 49, 59, 60, 79 to 81, 89 to 93, 95, 102 and 131.

I have placed in the Vote Office an explanatory note on these Lords amendments that, I hope, will help hon. Members to wade through the 130-odd Lords amendments before us this evening. They simply explain what the amendments will do, rather than give any detailed background to them, but I hope that they will help us to move through the course of the debate.

I ask the House to agree with the Lords in amendments Nos. 7, 9 to 15, 47 to 49, 59, 60, 79 to 81, 89 to 93, 95, 102, and 131, but to disagree with the Lords in amendment No. 8.

Lords amendment No. 7 was tabled by Lord Elder and built upon by the Government. Taken together, the series of Lords amendments are designed to enhance the security of postal voting by establishing a scheme that provides for the use of identifiers by postal voters at elections. The amendments had support from all sides in the other place. They provide for the collection of personal identifiers from persons applying to vote by post or proxy. Postal and proxy vote applicants will be required to provide their date of birth and signature on application forms. The amendments provide for the retention of identifiers by electoral registration officers and set out the purposes for which they may be used.

At elections, postal voters will be required to provide their signature and date of birth on the postal voting statement that they must complete and return with their postal vote ballot paper. All postal voters, including proxy postal voters, will be subject to that requirement. A postal ballot paper will not be deemed valid if the postal voting statement does not include both a signature and a date of birth. Furthermore, returning officers will be required to take steps to verify the signature and date of birth on that statement, which will involve checking that the identifiers provided on the postal voting statement correspond with those previously provided on the postal vote application. If they do not correspond, the ballot paper will be rejected. The detailed arrangements for checking postal voting statements will be set out in regulations. Under the amendments, there will be no change to the current voter registration arrangements. The amendments therefore remove from the Bill the provisions that would have allowed personal identifiers to be piloted and rolled out as part of the voter registration system.

On Lords amendment No. 8, we have said previously that we accept the principle behind individual registration. We have also accepted the practical value that the use of personal identifiers might have in combating fraud. However, it is also an important principle that everyone who is entitled to register to vote is registered. Under-registration disfranchises individuals and skews the map of political representation. Northern Ireland is often cited on both sides of the debate. The main Opposition party has frequently called for us to introduce into Great Britain the tried and tested system of individual registration. Individual registration in Northern Ireland has had some benefits, especially for the perceived security of the process, but it is not true that the experience in Northern Ireland is an argument for that system to be extended to the rest of the United Kingdom.

When individual registration was first introduced in Northern Ireland, 120,000 entries dropped off the register—a decrease of some 10 per cent. in those on the register. The 1,192,136 entries in August 2002 had decreased to 1,072,425 by December of that year. At the next canvass, the total number of entries fell slightly further to 1,069,160. The Government have taken steps to address that decline, first by reintroducing a period of one year's grace before entries are removed from the register, and secondly by introducing new primary legislation.

If the hon. Lady went to Northern Ireland and talked the matter through with its electoral registration officer, she would find that, as she says, there was a dip. However, as a result of active canvassing, within a matter of months, 92 per cent. of those on the census were registered to vote in Northern Ireland, which was described by the Northern Ireland Office at the time as an outstanding success. How can she try to wriggle out of what is the obvious solution?

The rigorous canvassing did increase registration, which had suffered an extreme dip, but has not increased it to anything near the original figure of 1,190,000. As I said, new primary legislation has been required to try to rectify some of those issues. Therefore, we believe that individual registration is not yet ready to be extended to the rest of the United Kingdom.

With regard to the Northern Ireland statistics showing that registration dipped as low as 82 per cent. and then increased to 92 per cent., a registration rate of 92 per cent. on the UK mainland would not be acceptable. We want 100 per cent. registration. Anything that decreases registration should not go ahead.

My hon. Friend makes an important point, which he has raised with me and with other Ministers. It is essential for us to do all we can to ensure that everyone who is entitled to vote is on the register and we should therefore not introduce unnecessary blocks to prevent that. Such action would constitute as much of an insult to democracy as some of the other actions that we are discussing.

Will my hon. Friend remind the House of the Electoral Commission's stance on individual voter registration?

The commission supports individual voter registration. We in Government disagree with the commission, as I have explained. We have said that we agree with the principle and we are implementing it in relation to postal votes because of the particular problems that have arisen in that regard.

If the hon. Lady leaves all the bogus entries on the register, such as Hooty McBoob, Michael Mouse and Gus Troubev, which is an anagram of "bogus voter", and there is active canvassing of new people who should be on the register, registration could be as high as 110 per cent.

As I think the hon. Gentleman knows, although that is an amusing suggestion, we shall not be implementing it. We have included a variety of processes for the canvass. Electoral registration officers can take a number of strong measures to ensure that the register is accurate, ensuring that those who should not be on the register are not on it and that those who should be on it are.

The Minister appears complacent. Is she aware of the position in my part of the world? In Bradford, election results have been called into question because of concern about voter fraud. There has also been concern about the police time taken up in investigation of all the fraud accusations. Does she accept that the amendments provide a simple way of addressing many of the worries in Bradford and in the country as a whole?

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman intervened. The amendments that I am asking the House to support will indeed address the points that he raised in relation to Bradford and elsewhere.

I mentioned the Northern Ireland example. We are also concerned about the drafting of Lords amendment No. 8. It makes several references to the role to be played by the Chief Electoral Officer. Outside Northern Ireland, there is no such officer; the role is played by local electoral registration officers. That would create a serious flaw in the operation of the proposed scheme.

Individual registration has potential benefits for the security of postal voting, particularly through the collection of personal identifiers such as signature and date of birth. That is why we included it in the Bill. We wanted to test the use of personal identifiers. Because the provisions have not yet gained the confidence of Parliament, we have adopted the alternative compromise proposed by my noble Friend Lord Elder. As I have explained, the proposal targets the use of personal identifiers primarily at postal voting. It meets the security concerns about postal ballots, and deals with concerns about the impact of personal registration on the number of people registered to vote.

In the interests of absolute clarity, is the Government's reason for resisting the Lords amendment based solely on the perceived likely reduction in the level of registration? If it can be demonstrated that individual registration is far and away the best means of protecting against fraud, will the Government reconsider whether there are alternatives for tackling the slightly lower levels of registration that might result?

I said at the outset that, in principle, we accept individual registration; we do not have a principled objection to it. However, it is clear that there are two issues that should be considered, the first of which is that the term of punishment for any offence relating to false registration will be increased from six months to 51 weeks. Some 3 million people are not on the register who should be on it, and if there were a 10 per cent. drop in registration in Great Britain, that would add another 4 million people to that figure. A register that has up to 7.5 per cent. of its eligible electors missing does not make a good register.

The Bill includes a number of important changes to the way in which registration and elections will be run, and the Government are confident that they will meet our objectives. However, we will keep the impact of this legislation under review and share the results of our evaluation with the House. This may also be an appropriate issue for the Constitutional Affairs Committee to consider, and we would welcome any such further scrutiny from it.

We will also consider whether further evaluation may be appropriate once the Law Commission has concluded its report on the use of a formal process of post-legislative scrutiny. The Government believe that this is the appropriate way forward, and I therefore hope that Members will reject the amendment.

We in this House must do everything that we can to tackle electoral fraud. Faith in our democratic process has been undermined by recent allegations. A judge has said that our system is wide open to fraud and similar to that of a "banana republic". Only last week, election results in Coventry were questioned when it was found that people who were in Pakistan on the day of the vote somehow managed to vote in person at the polling station. I understand that there are currently no fewer than eight petitions in the High Court alleging electoral fraud in the recent local elections.

Parliament cannot ignore this problem, especially as we have always taken great pride in our democracy. We used to lecture the world about parliamentary democracy; now, we are in the dock, accused of complacency. Our system is criticised not only by the Electoral Commission—that is an important fact—and by judges; it was also criticised by international election observers at the last general election, including those from Ukraine and Serbia. A few years ago, we would not have expected to have to take lectures from such countries about our system. That says a lot about how our stock has fallen.

My hon. Friend mentioned that there are eight outstanding electoral petitions. Does he accept that, if the hurdle to tabling electoral petitions was not set so high in financial terms and in other ways, there would be many more of them? A number of petitions that barristers said would certainly have succeeded have not gone forward because of those financial and other barriers. The House should act to remove them.

It is an expensive, time-consuming and difficult process, and the fact that there are as many as eight petitions says something, because that is a substantial number.

Every authority that has examined this question has called for individual voter registration and personal identifiers. I strongly support Lords amendment No. 8, and I pay tribute to my noble Friend Baroness Hanham. The amendment simply requires a signature and a date of birth for everyone going on to the voting register. I am disappointed that the Government continue to drag their feet on this issue. I have always said that I prefer the system used in Northern Ireland, where national insurance numbers are used to verify registration. That is an excellent example to follow, and the Government have crowed about that system as an outstanding success story. A consensus must be reached, and it could be reached around Lords amendment No. 8.

The Government have already accepted that voters who apply for postal votes should have to give their date of birth and signature. That was a welcome concession, made in Lords amendment No. 7. However, if that is all right for postal votes, why cannot it be done more generally? Given that it is already accepted that two forms of identification are required for a postal ballot, why is not that an acceptable approach that could be used for identifying voters more widely? The amendment would require a signature and date of birth to be included in all voters' registration, not only in that of postal voters. I would still like to see national insurance numbers added as a personal identifier for voter registration—indeed, I have argued myself into the ground about it—but in the interests of trying to achieve a consensus, I am prepared to leave it until another opportunity arises to get it on the statute book. I hope that that will not be as a result of another scandal of the sort that we have seen in recent months. We have to secure personal identifiers for voter registration generally.

Hon. Members will be aware of the Electoral Commission's campaign for individual voter registration and personal identifiers. From the outset of proceedings on the Bill, it has called for personal identifiers. The Government have gone some way towards that, and we all welcome Lords amendment No. 7. However, in the commission's briefing for this debate it says:

"The Commission is delighted that the House of Lords has voted to accept an amendment tabled by Baroness Hanham requiring applicants to provide signatures and dates of birth when registering to vote."

The amendment introducing personal identifiers for postal voting was introduced by the Lord Elder, a Labour peer, and it had the support of my noble Friend Baroness Hanham and of Lord Rennard, so we managed to reach agreement across the parties, which all—apart from Labour—wanted to make further progress. The recent alleged fraud in Coventry was the background to the debate in the other place and spurred them on. They did not want to see such things happening again. The Coventry example is just one in a long line of cases where identity has allegedly been impersonated at the polling station. The use of personal identifiers would go a long way towards protecting individuals from that kind of fraud.

The Minister in the other place spoke in support of the principle time and time again. In Committee, she stated:

"collecting personal identifiers has the potential to improve security and integrity in the electoral process".—[ Official Report, House of Lords, 16 March 2006; Vol. 679, c. GC593.]

At that stage she also expressed her strong views about making sure that forms requesting information from people should be simple and straightforward.

Schedule 1 requires voters to sign for their ballot paper at the polling station. The amendment would therefore introduce a useful check against fraud. Those registering to vote would provide a signature that would go on the register, which would then provide a check of whether the person signing for the vote was the same person who had registered. In circumstances such as those that allegedly occurred in Coventry, that would be extremely useful. I do not see how the provision of a signature at the polling station will be much use if there is no register of the original signature in the first place. What is more, our amendment would save voters the worry of finding a legitimate counterfoil to prove their signature in any fraud investigation.

There can be few legal forms that entitle one to do something but do not involve a signature and the provision of simple details, such as date of birth. It is suggested by some that it would be so difficult that it would put people off registering to vote. However, those of us who take a close interest in these matters know that people fill in forms for almost every activity in life and that they almost always have to sign their name and give their date of birth. How difficult is it for people to sign their names? That question shows how pathetic it is that this important change is not being made by all-party agreement.

During the Bill's passage through the House, the Government accepted that a person's signature and date of birth should be used for postal voting, so how can it be said that the same requirement is too hard to be used elsewhere? My voter registration form from the London borough of Lambeth says that any change of details must be backed up by a signature and a date of birth. Lord Rennard made the same point in the other place. Lambeth is an example of a Labour council already doing something that I am calling for.

Under the current system, people do not have to give their signature. Last September's Electoral Commission report on under-registration found that between 4 million and 4.5 million people were not registered to vote. Any requirement to supply a signature and therefore make filling in the form more difficult would cause the under-registration figure to increase to 5 million people.

I do not see why the hon. Gentleman should think that that would happen. For how many things in life are people required to sign their names? The answer is that they have to do so for almost anything. People have learned how to sign their names, even under the Labour education system. Even under Labour, they know when they were born. It is not too much to ask for such simple information.

Personally, I do not think that there is much harm in asking for a national insurance number, but I have given way on that because I want to achieve consensus. What Chris Ruane said is old-fashioned. Not only does he clearly believe in the patrician system, with the head of the household filling in the form for everyone else, but he fails to realise what the real problem is. What happens when a registration form goes out to a flat or a house in multiple occupation? The person whose name appears on the form may well throw it in the bin. What happens if it goes to a father who thinks that the women in the house should not vote? The form may not even have those women listed.

The range of possibilities is wide because the current process works against the grain of modern society. People see themselves as individuals with rights. It is true that our society is consumerist in its thinking, but people do not believe that the head of a household should organise how that household's members should vote. This is the 21st century, when we believe in one person, one vote.

It is about time that the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd came up to date. Individual voter registration is proposed by the Electoral Commission, the body of independent experts set up by his Labour Government to advise on this very matter. Yet the Government have such utter contempt for its recommendations that they say that they are going to pick and choose between them. What a disgrace.

At present, between 4 million and 4.5 million people are not registered to vote. Last September's report from the Electoral Commission found that, in the main, they were unemployed, on low pay and living in council or social housing. They also included a lot of young people and people from the black and ethnic minorities. Is the hon. Gentleman so unconcerned about under-registration simply because people from those groups do not vote Conservative? If they lived in Acacia gardens as opposed to Corporation close, would he pay more attention to under-registration?

I am worried that the hon. Gentleman is letting his blind political prejudices get in the way of the obvious facts. People are not obliged to vote in our society if they do not want to, but getting them to register to vote requires a lot of hard work. People need to go out and canvass those homes, door to door. We used to do that in the old days, but we have made cutbacks and stopped doing that. That is what is needed—active campaigning to get people to register to vote.

We need to bear it in mind that people live in households as individuals and not necessarily with a —[ Interruption. ] The hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd is harking back to a patrician world where the head of the household—the father of the family—filled the form in for everyone. The world is not like that any more. He needs to get up to date.

The hon. Gentleman talks about campaigning to get people to register, but his political party did not deliver a single leaflet in my constituency during the local elections. Does he accept that a large percentage of the 4 million to 4.5 million people who are not registered are young people? It is an interesting fact that, among young people, the rate of registration decreases as they enter their 20s, primarily because when they live at home the head of the household registers them, whereas when they move out they tend not to register. There is a real problem and until we sort it out, the effect of his amendment—although I have some sympathy with it in principle—will be to increase under-registration among young people.

The hon. Gentleman misunderstands my point. I was not talking about political parties canvassing, although I think that that is vital to our system. I was talking about council officers—the electoral registration officer and his team—canvassing door to door to encourage registration. He might not have come across that, but it used to happen: large numbers of people were employed to go out and canvass for registration. I did it myself before becoming politically active.

As for the hon. Gentleman's other point, part of the reason why people living in student accommodation and others in that age group do not register is that we—or the Government—stubbornly, or perhaps blindly, insist that the head of the household should be responsible for registration, so the authorities send the form only to the first person of whom they are aware living at that address. It may well be that, when the form arrives, it is simply tossed and four of the five people who are sharing the flat never hear anything about it. That is a problem that active canvassing—really going after those people and encouraging registration—could help to solve. That is why I welcome later amendments in which we insist that electoral registration officers make a real effort.

We have to think laterally. Why can we not positively reward people for going on the electoral register? We could adjust the tax code of people in work, adjust the state pension of retired people, or tweak the benefits of people who receive them. We could give people a lottery ticket for registering. Why can we not do that to encourage people to register?

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should work out the details of that suggestion and propose a scheme. We should consider all reasonable options to encourage people to register to vote. I am not sure how the lottery ticket idea would work, but incentivising people to register might be possible.

We should make a serious effort to get those who are not currently registered on to the register, but we should always bear it in mind that it is wrong to deal with matters such as the size of constituencies based on some back-of-the-envelope calculation of how many people may be entitled to vote in a certain area. The registration system must be what we rely on and I would like it to be much better in our country than it is now. The Government have accepted a requirement for a signature and date of birth for postal voting and it seems to me illogical that they will not go the whole way, especially given that the Bill requires people to sign for their vote at the polling station.

Door-to-door canvassing is an important part of electoral registration practice, and we need to improve what we do in that respect. I believe that a reason for the decline in the quality of our electoral registration system over the past 20 years is that local authorities have cut back in that respect. Certainly, they have felt squeezed and obliged to deal with other matters. Local authorities need to be able actively to canvass to achieve the best possible result. There is a great deal of disquiet about the potential for electoral fraud. It has grown significantly over the last few years. The Electoral Commission was set up to give independent advice on that issue. The House of Lords—the other place; not the democratic Chamber—has said that this measure is necessary in the interests of democracy. The Government should not contemptuously ignore the Lords.

I agree with an awful lot of that. There are dozens of MPs in the Commons who have majorities in three figures. I wonder about the integrity of the ballot and I have done for years. I think that there is a huge amount of fiddling and cheating going on. I am disappointed that the Government are resisting Lords amendment No. 8. The Minister drew our attention to some flaws in the amendment: there is no chief electoral officer in Great Britain, although there is in Northern Ireland. It is unfortunate that the Lords did not pick up on that point. I am heartened that she accepts the principle behind individual voter registration. It is clearly just the practicalities that the Government are concerned about, not the principle, which she has conceded. We have an Electoral Commission and its job is to police the electoral system. If it thinks that there is fraud and malpractice, it should blow the whistle and the rest of us should stand to attention when we hear it.

I thought that I would sit here and agree with everything that the hon. Gentleman said, but I disagree with what he said about the Electoral Commission. The Electoral Commission is not there to police; it is there to advise and to set out what the law is. It will not get involved in any way in policing accusations of fraud or questions that have been raised. That is for individual returning officers. The system falls down because there is no way of controlling the actions of an errant, or even corrupt, electoral returning officer. That is where we need to strengthen matters.

I hear what the hon. Gentleman says. I am not an expert in these matters.

I just wanted to get that point on the record.

I understand that.

The Electoral Commission takes a view on the electoral system. As I said a few moments ago, if it believes that the system needs improving in some way, it will make recommendations. It made specific recommendations in the case of individual voter registration. The Government have moved towards that in part, but not entirely. I was left reflecting on what the response of the Electoral Commission should be. The Electoral Commission has been turned over by the Government before, when its recommendations have been put to one side. My view is that if the Electoral Commission thinks that this matter is important enough, its members ought to resign—or Sam Younger ought to resign. That would make us all pay attention. If members of the Electoral Commission were to resign en masse, there would not be a dozen or two dozen people in the Chamber; it would be packed to the gunnels to discuss the issue.

The Government's position turns on the whole business of increasing voter turnout. I believe, as I said a few moments ago, that we need to think laterally about that. I would reward people. There is an alternative, put forward by our colleague, Lord Kinnock: compulsory voting. I am not in favour of compulsory voting, but that is one way forward. I prefer to reward people for going on the electoral register and to recognise that they are participating in a civic process, which should be rewarded in some way by the state. That has never been done here, and a lot of people probably think that the idea is zany and a bit eccentric. However, we must consider such solutions if we are to address the point that my friend Chris Ruane constantly makes about the number of young people and people from ethnic minorities and other groups who are not represented on the electoral register.

I take the point made by the Conservative Front Bench spokesman about international observers. I want international observers to police—if I may use that word—our domestic elections in the United Kingdom, but it is a sad state of affairs that I think that that is necessary.

While the hon. Gentleman is on the subject of international observers, those from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe advised that we should have individual voter registration in this country.

If the Electoral Commission and international observers are recommending that, and given that the Government accept the principle, but will not embrace the system for practical reasons, the argument is made.

I rely on my own experiences on this matter, as I do on many other issues. At the time of the last general election, my Liberal Democrat opponent, Shazad Anwar, had two sisters and a brother registered at his home in Pendle, although the election literature referred to only Shazad Anwar and his wife, Raisa. We checked the electoral registers for Pendle and next-door Burnley, where Shazad Anwar's father lived. The same two sisters and the brother were also registered in Burnley. Exactly the same thing had happened the year before: two sisters and a brother were registered at Kibble grove in Brierfield and the same two sisters and a brother were registered in Burnley.

When the matter was drawn to the attention of my Liberal Democrat opponent, he told the Nelson Leader, just a few days before the general election on 29 April 2005:

"It was a mistake. My father must have returned the Burnley forms without omitting their names. My two sisters and brother live with my wife and I."

How one can send off a registration form without realising that it records people who do not actually live in a house beats me.

That situation brings me back to a point made by Mr. Heald with which I agree 100 per cent. In the 21st century, we should not be relying on the quaint 19th-century concept of heads of household. It is absolutely absurd in this day and age that we expect one person who is designated as the head of household to certify that other people in the house should be on the electoral register. I am disappointed that the Government and the Minister have taken such a view on Lords amendment No. 8, because we are missing a great opportunity to clean up our electoral system.

We are having an important debate that has carried on up and down the corridors of this building since the Bill was introduced. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend Mr. Heath, who is in the Chamber. He started looking after the Bill on behalf of the Liberal Democrats and will continue to help me today as part of his other responsibilities. He and our colleagues at the other end of the building have been extremely diligent in working with Members of other parties to try to ensure that we get this matter and—as far as possible—electoral law right.

Although I picked up the baton on the Bill, I had an interest in it before and kept a watching brief. I pay tribute to the three Ministers involved in the passage of the Bill, who have been assiduous in ensuring that we all at least understand what we are trying to achieve, even if we sometimes disagree: the Under-Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, Bridget Prentice, who is in the Chamber; the Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs, Ms Harman, who is my neighbour; and Baroness Ashton of Upholland, who looked after the Bill in the Lords.

The controversial aspect of the group of amendments is the fact that the Government wish to persuade the House to disagree with the Lords in Lords amendment No. 8. I will set down our position immediately. We will vote with those on the Conservative Front Bench and, I anticipate, some Labour Members to uphold what the Lords did when they voted by a majority of 23 for the principle of individual voter registration not just for postal votes, but for other votes as well. My noble Friend Lord Rennard set out why we would do that. We have adopted that as a party policy position and it would be impossible not to support it when it comes before us as a proposition in law. So we will vote to keep the Bill as the Lords amended it and will vote against the Government.

I understand the issue acutely. I want the hon. Member for Ruabon—

Vale of Clwyd.

Somewhere beautiful up in north Wales, which we all know well.

You are supposed to be Welsh.

I am indeed, and I have been there often. I just could not remember the latest title of the hon. Gentleman's important constituency.

I understand the issue that exercises the hon. Gentleman, as it exercised the Minister of State and as it exercises me. There is still something rotten—not functioning—in the state of electoral registration in Britain and in the state of our democracy. One option is compulsory registration. Mr. Prentice alluded to it, and it is an argument that people have made. I have resisted it. I do not agree with it, and nor do my colleagues. However, even that would not be perfect because we could have compulsory registration in theory, but not everyone who was meant to register would do so. Let us not delude ourselves. It would not mean that every person who was entitled to a vote was registered, let alone voted. In theory, however, we would get a bigger turnout.

Part of the reason why compulsory registration is not a good system is that it conceals the positive or negative response to the electoral process. Turnout goes up in close or important elections, and we can see that. If politicians are not responding to the electorate well, turnout goes down. In the local elections in our borough of Southwark last month, the turnout varied from something in the order of 25 per cent. in one ward to more than 50 per cent. in another. It depends on local circumstances.

The hon. Gentleman mentions the local elections last month. He has an enlightened view on maximising electoral registration. What would he say to the leading Liberal Democrat on Islington council who, when asked for his group's support for an electoral registration drive before those elections, said that it would not support it, and that is how it wins elections?

I do not know the quote and would want to check it, out of loyalty to my friend. If that is what he said, it is not my view. I am on the record as saying to the Minister of State, across the Floor of the House, that we need much more effective ways of getting people on to the list. I will suggest two.

I share the view of the hon. Member for Pendle. There is serious merit in considering the idea that we might give somebody a discount on their council tax for being on the electoral register. I take the view, as hon. Members would expect me to, that we have moved on from the patrician days when somebody registers on behalf of the household. We need individual responsibility, with people registering at the age of 18. However, we need to do many other things to get people on the list. First, as people cross the threshold into voting age—my party takes the view that that should be 16, not 18—they should be automatically registered from the beginning by the institution, college or school that they attend.

Secondly, from the moment that they are on the register, there could be an incentive of a discount on council tax. It would be small, but worth having, like the vouchers for computers for schools. Vouchers for small amounts are worth having and we redeem them. I got some in the paper the other day to give me free editions of World cup posters, supplements and so on. It is 40p off and worth having.

Thirdly, and most importantly, as I have told Ministers before, the only way in which we can achieve a significant increase in annual registration is to conduct an annual campaign. In February, which is usually 28 days long, but is 29 days long every fourth year, we should count down through newspaper, radio and television adverts to "democracy day" on 1 March. During that period, campaigners sign up voters at bus stops, and outside railway stations, supermarkets, pubs and football grounds in a huge effort to increase registration. Such a campaign should happen regularly because, with the best will in the world, canvassers are never entirely successful in their efforts at registration. When I was in the Minister's constituency on the day of the marathon, canvassers were struggling to find addresses in Blackheath. I remember canvassing in the Northfield by-election and trying hard to find addresses—it took me 20 minutes to go round the back of a block of flats, up a ladder and over a roof before I found Nos. 63 to 92 Bristol road south. It is sometimes difficult to find addresses but, when one does so, lots of people are not in, as more and more individuals do not keep conventional hours.

They are working, under a Labour Government.

Or they are travelling on EasyJet. They are certainly not in, even if they are not working. They may be in bed and not answering the door, because they think that the caller is someone else.

Trying to encourage people to register is a serious issue. In my constituency, there is a serious problem of under-registration. Chris Ruane is right, as is the Minister of State, that the poor and less well educated, the young and people from black and minority ethnic communities are usually significantly under-represented.

The hon. Gentleman could add to those under-registered groups people who live in houses in multiple occupation, which are common in my constituency, many other seaside towns and inner-city areas. How will a proposal for individual registration assist efforts to put such people on the register?

The hon. Gentleman is quite right. Blackpool is an obvious example, as are many student towns and cities. Hon. Members may not be aware of the fact, but every year in my constituency, which is a couple of miles from the House, a quarter of the electorate move house. They do not all move out of the constituency—

They are trying to get away from the hon. Gentleman.

In case that is reported in Hansard, I must explain that they are not doing that—usually, they want to stay and upgrade. About 25 per cent. of people in my constituency move because they want a bigger place or choose to live somewhere else. We must therefore make it easier for them to re-register, and we should not rely on a canvass officer bumping into them on their doorstep, as that does not usually happen. The chance of their being in when the officer comes round so that they can fill in the form is very small indeed.

The hon. Gentleman appears to be speaking against the proposition that he supports. People are required to return their electoral registration form, but we do not implement that requirement, so compulsion is not the answer. However, to take up the point that he has just made, people who canvass my constituency, where more than 9,000 people are missing from the register, say that, for various reasons, it is increasingly difficult to contact electors. My electoral registration officer says that if individual voter registration is introduced, it will decimate the register. Is the hon. Gentleman prepared to accept the fact that the 9,000 people missing from my register will increase to 18,000? I suspect that the increase will be even higher in his constituency.

I am sure the numbers are significant, but by definition one does not know what they are. Of course I do not want the number of registered voters reduced. I share the concern about what we should do, and I have suggested various ways of increasing registration.

The other side of the argument is how we avoid fraud and the abuse of the system. Every year when I look at my electoral register, I know for a fact that names are repeated and that the names of people who have moved or who have died still appear. It is not an up-to-date list that records the position at the beginning of the electoral year. Again, that is more often the case in urban than in rural areas.

On balance, the argument should be that people must take, and know that they have to take, personal responsibility. The starting point should be that they register either once or annually, and that they register in their own name. The question is whether the proposal that the Lords have passed into law and which is included in the Bill will have a significant downward effect on voting. The fact that the form goes in with the person's signature and date of birth substantially reduces the likelihood of that. If there were no other circumstances, my judgment is that voting would not be affected much, if at all, for the reason given by Mr. Heald and others.

On any official form people generally expect to sign their name and, although I am not in favour of data being collected unnecessarily, often give their date of birth. For people who have come from the developing world and may not know their date of birth, it is traditional that they give as their date of birth 1 January of the year in which they were born. That convention is generally accepted. There is no problem with people who do not know their specific date of birth, or who have come as refugees and do not have their birth certificates.

We need to watch closely what happens. The Northern Ireland experience is relevant, but not entirely parallel. We are trying to overcome all the shortcomings and defects with a single piece of legislation. We want a better campaign to recruit people on to the list. We want to give them incentives to go on the list. We want to make it easy for young voters to go on for the first time. We may also want to do one other thing, which is where the difficulty has arisen.

At present, electoral registration officers have the choice whether to keep somebody on the list at the end of the year or take them off if they cannot check their eligibility. We need a better system to ensure that people can confirm that they are where they used to be, without necessarily having to go through the rigmarole of filling in the form, signing it and providing their date of birth. Suppose someone is away when the form arrives. A business man in my constituency, for example, went to India the other day. He may want to vote, always votes, but was not at home at the time. He needs an easy way of checking whether he is on the list. There is a package of things that we need to do, but we must avoid what most brings the system into disrepute—fraud and abuse of the system.

The hon. Gentleman said that he supported the suggestion by my hon. Friend Mr. Prentice of worthwhile incentives for people to register, but he will not want to ignore the significant cost that would be associated with that. Even the worthwhile sum of, say, £10 per registration would mean £750,000 in a typical constituency, and £2 million in a London borough containing two and a half constituencies. Ought that not to be funded centrally, because it is in the national interest that we have the highest level of registration possible?

Indeed, or it would be unfair on local authorities with different needs. Areas with the more difficult, the more mobile and the more transient populations—student towns, university towns, seaside towns and inner cities—would suffer most.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. Has he not exposed the problem with individual registration in his remarks about electoral registration officers and how they deal with voters who cannot be contacted? He is right to say that some keep them on and some keep them off. We are entirely dependent on the degree of registration and participation, and on the commitment of individual electoral registration officers to the process. Unless the House is prepared to set minimum standards, that situation will be made even worse by individual registration.

My hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome has watched the Bill closely from the beginning, and he says that it will help with that matter. Nobody is pretending that we will get a perfect system after the Bill is enacted, but a lot of the proposals which come from the Electoral Commission, the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission and other places concern that process.

We should do much better in modern Britain, as the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire has said. For example, why do we not have lots of people out on the streets in towns such as Blackpool in February, which I have been told is the last month in which it is manageable to conduct such activities in time for a May election? We may not get people to fill in forms at midnight on a Friday, but it is possible to catch them at the bus stop on their way to work. We must try very hard by, for example, visiting FE colleges, guesthouses and businesses. We should also use technology by asking people for their e-mail addresses in order to check annually whether we have got their residential addresses right, which might be more convenient for them.

We also need to keep the system under review. After next year's local elections in England and the elections in Scotland and Wales, the local elections and London elections in the following year and the European elections across the United Kingdom in the year after that—there will probably be a general election in that period, too—we should be able to see whether the proposals have had the effect that we all want or whether we are still failing. If we are still failing, we may need to do other things, but we should start from the basis that people should have to start the ball rolling themselves by signing and submitting a form.

We need to agree a convenient system for keeping people on the register. The process should be led by the customer—the voter—rather than by bureaucracy.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that in countries in which the register is more accurate such as Australia and, indeed, Northern Ireland, it has not proved necessary to re-examine the register every year, because it is possible to maintain an accurate register by using the methods that he has discussed? Data matching is another way to use technology. A lot of councils have got plenty of information about the people who are not registered, and data matching across the council's information is a useful way to ensure that as many people as possible are registered.

There are some dangers down that road. I am always nervous about the Big Brother state collecting information for one purpose before passing it on for another, which is a point that applies to both central Government and local government.

The important point concerns avoiding fraud in order to maintain and rebuild public confidence in our precious electoral system and democracy. The hon. Gentleman speaks for the Liberal party, but there is cross-party support for the concept that all fraud, particularly where it involves a candidate or agent, should always be investigated by the police and referred to the courts by the Director of Public Prosecutions. That is the only way in which we can rebuild confidence in our electoral system in this country, which is sadly lacking at the moment.

That is one area in which zero tolerance is appropriate. People should know that if they abuse the system by which we run our democracy, they are at risk of prosecution, conviction and, potentially, serious and exemplary punishment. If the person involved is locally elected or holds office in the community, one would expect an exemplary punishment to be imposed.

There are currently eight petitions on that point, but that may be the tip of the iceberg, because it is difficult to launch an electoral petition. I am sure that there are many other places in which the electoral register and those who voted did not accurately reflect who turned out on election day.

There is as much concern about fraud among Labour Members as among any other Members, but certain balancing factors must be taken into account. I want to issue a health warning in relation to the siren voices that use Australia as a comparison, as it has compulsory voting. The situation in Northern Ireland is apposite, because it has a settled population, whereas London does not. If an equivalent decline in the number of people registered in Northern Ireland occurred in a non-settled population such as that of London, that would be catastrophic.

As the hon. Gentleman and all of us in urban constituencies well know, we must be realistic about who is sent out to do any of these jobs. I am sure he, like me, knows pretty well at what times the automatic door entry systems open and close, and where to find every address barring those that have just come on to the register. If a couple of people are recruited for a month to carry out the electoral canvass, there is only a small probability of their knowing where all the entrances are and what is the best time to find people in, even with the best advice in the world. We need people who are part of the community and really know what is going on, even though they may have other jobs at other times of the year.

Another group of people who come into the community with entitlements to vote comprises those who become citizens. We now have citizenship ceremonies. People who are Irish, Commonwealth or European Union citizens with the right to vote here, depending on which kind of election it is, should be given the forms at that moment. If they are not already on the electoral register, they should not leave the town hall until they have been asked to sign up to become part of the electorate. We have to consider every possible proactive way of ensuring that every adult from all our communities who is entitled to vote is on the list.

The Lords amendment is logical. It has some risks, but those can be compensated for by taking all the other necessary steps. We have a huge shared duty to ensure that we do much better than we have in the recent past.

I fully agree with my hon. Friend Mr. Love that Labour Members are as concerned as any others about electoral fraud, but we need to get things in perspective. When I tabled parliamentary questions on the number of cases of electoral fraud at local and parliamentary level, I was told that there were one or two a year out of an adult population of 45 million. That is one or two too many. On the other side of the balance, 4.5 million are currently not registered to vote. That is without having put in place any barriers whatsoever—no date of birth, no signature and no national insurance number. Every additional barrier that one puts in front of the registration process will result in additional people not being registered.

indicated dissent.

The hon. Gentleman shakes his head. It was proved in Northern Ireland that when barriers were put in place electoral registration dipped, and then it rose to 92 per cent.

As the hon. Gentleman knows, the Electoral Commission looked at this and found that he is completely wrong. In previous debates, Members from Northern Ireland have explained that the system was subject to fraud in Northern Ireland and that the effect of the changes was to clean up the registers. How can he go on, time after time, saying something that is incorrect?

It is correct. Registration in Northern Ireland dipped to a percentage in the low 80s, and after a registration drive it went up to 92 per cent.

In the UK, with 4.5 million people missing from the register, the figure is 92 per cent., so we are starting from the base that Northern Ireland is currently at. Any additional barriers put in place will reduce that percentage. In Northern Ireland, 92 per cent. is an average. In many of the Belfast seats, which probably include the poorest communities in the whole of the UK, registration is at 70 per cent. In my constituency, the poorest registration area is central Denbigh, at 76 per cent. Some wards in Aberystwyth have 50 per cent. registration. That is completely unacceptable. We need to get those people on to the register. If we start to introduce barriers such as signatures, dates of birth and national insurance numbers, we will keep on adding to the number of people who are unregistered. We might go from 4.5 million to 7.5 million unregistered people, who will be concentrated in the poorest communities in the UK. We do not have a fully functioning democracy if 7.5 million of the most dispossessed people are off the register.

We have already established that we all want maximum registration, but I am deeply worried by what Labour Back Benchers are saying. Yesterday, we were told by a Labour Back Bencher that people on council estates had a higher propensity to commit crime; now, the hon. Gentleman is making the deeply patronising assumption that because someone lives in a deprived area, they cannot sign their name in order to get a vote. I do not accept for one moment that that is a barrier, and if he insists that it is, he is basing his entire premise on a fiction.

They are not my opinions but those of the Electoral Commission, which is put on a pedestal by the hon. Gentleman. When it carried out detailed research on unregistered people—its findings were reported last September—it found that most unregistered people are unemployed, low-paid, in council housing, black or ethnic, or young. That matches my experience. When I ask for a breakdown of the electoral registration percentages in my wards, I find that the poorest wards are those most affected, and that the poorest streets in those wards have the greatest under-registration. We need to get those people back on to the register. It might suit the political advantage of the Conservatives, or indeed the Liberal Democrats, to keep 7.5 million people off the electoral register—

Hardly.

I refer the hon. Gentleman to the remark that I quoted earlier. When one of the leading Liberal councillors on Islington council was asked to support an electoral registration drive before this year's local elections, he said, "We will not support it—that's how we win elections."

I will not accept that until the hon. Gentleman provides proof. Undoubtedly, people in the most deprived areas are least liable to register, for a variety of reasons. For instance, they often move more frequently because they are more likely to live in houses in multiple occupation. That is a reason to target those areas for increased registration drives, but to say that such people would be inhibited by having to provide a signature is deeply patronising and frankly incorrect.

As I said, even without having to provide a signature, date of birth or national insurance number, 4.5 million are not registered, and any additional barrier will increase that number.

Does my hon. Friend accept that one of the core reasons why a substantial number of people are not registered is alienation from the political process, not difficulty in registering, which is simple? If parallel extra effort went into the registration process, would he be happier with the proposal from the other place about incorporating individual registration as an additional barrier?

No, I would not be happy with that. I revert to my original point that any additional barrier will lead to greater voter under-registration. It is great if we can have party unity about the Bill, but it is not essential. Our proposal for getting 4.5 million people back on the register should be viewed in the same light as male emancipation in the 19th century and female emancipation in the 20th century. The Bill is in the great tradition of emancipating people and getting them on the register. It should be perceived in that way.

Some political parties will not want 4.5 million poorer people on the register because it is not in their political interest. That is probably why a leading Liberal Democrat councillor in Islington said what he did. The leader of such a council is on £50,000 a year and cabinet members are on £17,000 to £20,000 a year. Is it in their interests to have 10,000 extra poor people on the register who may not vote Liberal Democrat or Conservative—

Who may not vote at all.

Indeed.

My hon. Friend, in his description of what happens in constituencies, has brought an air of practical, down-to-earth reality to the implications of the Lords proposal. Does he agree that, in the areas that he describes as deficient in voter registration, there has often not been a great push by local electoral registration officers and that, until we have the minimum standards that have been mentioned, it would be dangerous to follow a suck-it-and-see route only to find, too late, that 5 per cent. or 10 per cent. of an already small electorate had been lost?

I agree. Local authorities' allocation of resources needs to be examined carefully. I tabled a parliamentary question which asked for the amounts of money spent by each local authority in England on electoral registration to be specified. The answer stated that the figures are not collected centrally. I asked my Labour Assembly colleague in Wales to table the same question. The information is collected centrally in Wales and, of the 22 authorities, lo and behold, those that spent the most per capita on registration had the best registration rates and those that spent least had the worst rates.

The Bill allocates an extra £17 million of resources to electoral registration. I ask the Under-Secretary to consider the matter carefully, because that extra money has not been ring-fenced but will be given as part of a local government settlement. I believe that, if £17 million of a budget of, for example, £120 billion is not ring-fenced, local authorities, perhaps of a different political persuasion, that have no interest in electoral registration, could cream it off. I therefore ask the Under-Secretary to look into that because registration is not only for local government elections but for European and parliamentary elections. The money should be ring-fenced.

Some members of political parties throughout the country will try to preserve their positions—as council leaders, cabinet members and so on—in a local authority and will not want more poorer people on the register who may threaten their incomes and livelihoods. We need to deal with local authorities that are dogmatic about the matter. When we say, "These are our new standards," but they say, "We won't obey them," and when we say, "Here is the money," but they say, "We won't spend it," we need a last resort. We need to tell truculent, politically motivated authorities, "We've given you the resources. Here are the new guidelines. If you don't use them, we'll give you one of three options. Because electoral registration is so poor, we'll take the responsibility from you and give it either to a neighbouring authority or to the Electoral Commission, or we'll privatise it." We need to be as blunt as that with local authorities that refuse to implement the proposed legislation.

The hon. Gentleman's speech has been characterised so far by assertion without evidence. Will he identify those politically motivated local authorities to which he referred?

I am looking to the future. I have already mentioned one such authority—Islington, where a leading Liberal Democrat said that he would not support an electoral registration drive because of the way in which the party wins elections. I have therefore given one firm example—there will be others. However, I am also looking to the future. If we implement the Bill, introduce all the benchmarks and provide additional funding, and a politically motivated local authority pays them no heed because it is not in its political or financial interest to do so, there must be a last resort whereby we can say, "We've given you the tools to finish the job. You've refused, so we're taking that responsibility from you."

As somebody who represents a larger proportion of council tenants than any other Member of Parliament in England, who has campaigned for better registration, and who had a Labour council that did not do nearly enough but has done more in the past few years, let me say that we could all make party political points, but it is not helpful. A better, non-partisan point would be that local authorities should be given an incentive based on percentage of increase of validly registered electors. That could be reflected in some form of adjusted settlement so that, whatever the party and administration, an incentive exists to do a much better job.

Incentives are welcome but as well as a carrot, we need a stick to beat local authorities that refuse to obey legislation that the House has endorsed.

I oppose Lords amendment No. 8. The Bill is long overdue and will result in getting a good proportion of those 4.5 million citizens back on the electoral register and participating fully in democratic life in this country.

We have got on to a bit of a rollercoaster with postal voting. Like many hon. Members, when I first became involved in politics I found that we made a fetish of making it almost impossible for people to get a postal vote for an election, because by the time one had got around to trying to register someone, the date had passed.

I have therefore welcomed the general trend of making it easier for people to obtain postal votes. However, the Government clearly went too fast, in the teeth of opposition by the Electoral Commission. There have been several incidents of fraud, and public confidence has been knocked to the point where one or two people whom I know have been put off voting by post because they feel that the system is not as robust and trusted as it once was. I therefore welcome amendment No. 7 and the Government's acceptance of it, because it is sensible to move to a system whereby people have to give their date of birth and signature.

I wish to raise some technical points. Under our system, we always involve political parties. As we all know, at the count, several ballots are questionable, and at the end, the returning officer calls the agents or candidates over and they go through the 20, 30, 50 or 100 that are not entirely clear. Although the final decision rests with the returning officer, whether something is counted or not depends on nods and assent from the political parties. The Under-Secretary said in her opening remarks that returning officers would check the ballots against their records and that rejection of ballots would be up to them. I presume that the political parties will still be included in the process.

At the end of the process of verifying postal votes, the handwriting on some will raise questions,—we all receive things through the post that are not entirely clear, and they are put in a pile. If the returning officer intends to reject something, the political parties are included at that point. Of 8,000 postal votes, there may be a genuine concern about the accuracy of a signature on 200 of them. In such cases, I personally would like the agents or the candidates to be involved in the process so that they can see how the returning officer is making decisions. So if there were widespread fraud or concerns about a number of the ballots, the political parties could be very much part of the process of dealing with that, and would not then be surprised if someone jumped up at the end of it to say, "I've rejected 1,000 ballots." They would have been able to see the process taking place, which is important.

It is a pity that the Government will not accept Lords amendment No. 8, because individual registration is the way to go. We have talked in the debate about benefit, and there are benefits involved in being registered. Anyone who goes into Dixon's or Curry's and tries to get credit will know that one of the ways of judging whether they are worthy of getting credit to buy a hi-fi system or a TV is whether their name and address pop up in a search of the electoral register. However, I accept the argument that if we make the registration process more complicated, we might put people off. That is why, if we accepted Lords amendment No. 8, we should also have to have a package of measures to encourage people to register under the new system.

We have all had experience of electoral registration departments. They are usually underfunded and overworked. They have some very good-quality people working in them, but this issue is hardly the highest priority of most local authorities, which are struggling to deal with money and personnel and consequently have other priorities. One of the most productive things that we, as politicians across the House, could do would be to ensure that registration offices were better funded. Sometimes, when I look at the glossy brochures produced by the Electoral Commission, I think that some of that money would be better spent on registering voters at the sharp end.

I am attracted to the idea put forward by Mr. Prentice. Why not give people some benefit for registering, beyond the one that I have just mentioned with regard to obtaining credit? It could be a lottery ticket, premium bonds or whatever. That could form part of a successful national campaign. It is in the national interest to get people to register.

I have raised this issue with Sam Younger at the Electoral Commission—some colleagues present tonight were also at that meeting—and I think that he is minded to see whether it would be possible to have a pilot to test that idea.

That would be a useful way of proceeding.

The suggestions in the Lords amendments on postal votes are sensible, as are their suggestions on ordinary registration for voting. If those proposals were combined with a package of measures to provide people with an incentive to register, and if investment went into electoral registration, we could all support that.

Houses in multiple occupation were mentioned earlier, and we know that when polling cards are delivered to a building containing 40 or 50 flats and end up in the postal area in the basement, there are occasions on which they disappear. People then turn up at the polling station to discover that someone else has voted in their place.

I agree with Simon Hughes that these proposals are not a panacea, but they represent a small step forward. They will make those who want to commit fraud think again, because they will slightly increase the prospect of their getting caught and prosecuted. In particular, a system of registration for ordinary voters that involved the checking of a person's date of birth in the polling station would provide a much better chance of catching people who are voting when they should not be. That would add integrity to the process. It would be a step forward, and it is a pity that the Government are not going to accept Lords amendment No. 8. That proposal, combined with the package of measures that Members on both sides accept would be necessary to implement it, would create a better and more robust system.

The hon. Gentleman made the point that electoral registration officers need the necessary resources to do their job effectively, and that they must not be prey to the whims of their political masters in county or city halls. The Bill will achieve that objective by placing clear duties on electoral registration officers and providing a clear requirement for them to have the necessary funding to perform their duties. There are also reserve powers in the Bill to ensure that that requirement is consistently applied across the country. So we can be assured that the situation will improve if the Bill is passed into law.

We can all welcome that. We are making progress. There will be some votes this evening, as we do not agree on everything, but in electoral terms, we are going in the right direction. Lords amendment No. 7 would certainly help people to feel better about the integrity of the postal voting system. It is a pity that Lords amendment No. 8 will not be accepted, but I suspect that this argument will run and run.

In many senses, this amendment goes to the heart of a real dilemma. There is general agreement on both sides of the House about where we want to get to on these issues. In principle, everyone is in favour of a safer and more secure voting system and, they say, of a higher level of voter registration. The fundamental problem is how we achieve that. I am not accusing Conservative Members of wanting under-registration. Equally, I hope that they will not accuse Labour Members who vote with the Government on this issue of being complacent or of wanting to see voter fraud continue.

We need to identify the fundamental problem with our electoral registration system. From all the data that we have—thanks to the efforts of my hon. Friend Chris Ruane—we can conclude that the scale of under-registration is the fundamental problem. There are 4.5 million people who ought to be on our electoral registers but who are not. Given that attempts to improve that situation are at the heart of the Bill, we must think very carefully about any proposals that would make it worse, and probably draw back from them at this stage.

Everyone agrees with the hon. Gentleman and Chris Ruane that there should be no question of bringing in measures that would result in real people disappearing from a register. Does the hon. Gentleman accept, however, that although the introduction of certain measures to cut out fraud would result in a reduction of the number of people on a register, they would not be real people? They would be bogus people, and bogus people cannot make up for real people who are not registering.

Obviously, I am not in favour of bogus people being on any register. However, I am concerned that the present system allows for a massive amount of under-registration of real people, and that even more people might not register if we pursue the issue of personal identifiers and personal individual registration in the present circumstances. I want to see the most secure voting system possible, and I am in favour in principle of individual registration. I want us to get there in due course, but I want that to happen at a time when the level of registration is much higher, when more of the real people who are currently missing from the register are on it.

We can all go out and see, sometimes in local authorities of our own political persuasion, that the effort put into electoral registration amounts only to sending out two forms to households. In many cases, the forms do not get returned, but the system then gives up on those individuals. There are local authorities across the country that do not think that this is a priority. They do not put money into it, and most councillors are not awfully interested. All right, they have other things to do—they have education and social services systems to run and the environment to look after. Those are very big issues. The councillors concerned get lots of letters from their constituents about them, and they quite rightly respond to them.

Electoral registration often comes quite far down the list and, provided that there is no specific requirement for it to be put on the agenda and for electoral registration officers to carry out specific duties that can be monitored and scrutinised by the local council and the Electoral Commission, we shall continue to have the system that we have today. I accept that the Bill takes us forward in regard to trying to get the levels of registration up.

I hope that the Minister will give us reassurance on a point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd. If we are putting extra money into the system, how can we be sure that it will be spent on the system? Some local authorities will take the grant and use it for other purposes. How can we be sure that the £17 million—and there will be questions as to whether that is enough—is spent on improving the system?

Hon. Members on both sides of the House have expressed their concern whether, even if we improve the level of canvassing, it will really catch the people whom we are worried about, who do not fill in or send back the forms. It is that much harder when we are dealing with people living in houses in multiple occupation.

On targeting people who are the most difficult to get to register, will my hon. Friend reflect on a suggestion from Wales? Public or voluntary bodies that target socially excluded people on council estates, such as black and ethnic minorities or people on low pay, could ask, "And how about registration?" while carrying out their other work. Different bodies that are already active and have gained the trust of people in the community could also help with registration.

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. Electoral registration officers should be imaginative in how they go about encouraging registration. Let us increase the canvass as well, although that will not do anything like 100 per cent. of the job. We have to deal with trying to get data and information from other sources, and that is in the Bill. When the data protection people gave evidence to the Select Committee hearings, they were not worried about cross-matching data provided that it was clear from the initial collection what purpose it would be used for—that is the issue.

There is a genuine concern not only that electoral registration officers are not currently cross-matching data to which they have access within the local authority, but that they may need to access data outside the authority. In some cases, local authorities wanting to obtain data on young people becoming 18 can go to their own schools. In my constituency, most young people becoming 18 are based in the college, which is outside the local authority, rather than a school within it. How can we stop the problem of bias in the system, which means that data can be captured in some authorities but not in others?

Stock transfers of houses are another problem. Local authorities can access data on their own council tenants before such a transfer, but I am not sure whether they can afterwards. I do not know, but the question has to be answered. Housing associations are sometimes set up to take over stock transfer properties and they take over documentation and data about tenants with them. Those are the sort of problems that have to be dealt with. How can we ensure that access to data and cross-matching goes wider than the local authority, into the rest of the public sector and probably outside it into organisations such as the utilities and the Post Office?

I now come to the crucial point. I believe that the Bill is a halfway house in a number of senses. Eventually, we want to get to individual registration, but we want to do so with a much fuller registration system in which we can be certain of getting the registration percentage into the higher 90s just like the Australians, who reach 98 per cent. They do not rely on canvassing as the primary means of drawing up the register; rather, they rely on data from a range of sources. They rely on the utilities, postal services, local authorities and other bodies to give information to electoral registration officers—in Australia there is an electoral commission for each state. All the information from those bodies is used to establish when people have moved in or out of properties, when people have become 18 or died and so forth. They check whether the information is correct and draw up the data on that basis.

The Australians ask why, in this country, we bother with annual registration when we get forms back, by and large, from people who have lived in a property for 20 years, rather than capturing data from people who change their property regularly, sometimes annually, particularly in the private rented sector. The Australians concentrate on households where the information has changed from one year to the next. They follow that up closely and ensure that it benefits the registration process. Better use is made of registration officers' time because their efforts are spread throughout the year rather than for three or four months with little concentration of effort for the rest of the year.

We have a lopsided system that, to use the currently in-vogue jargon, is not fit for purpose. The Bill is a great step forward in giving more powers and responsibilities to electoral registration officers, but it takes us only part of the way there. I would like us to think about consulting on a new Bill, perhaps in three or four years' time, which deals with how best to move towards the Australian system, while tightening up the security of the voting system by taking individual registration into account.

The hon. Gentleman has outlined some very good ideas, but I hope that he accepts that there are good things that electoral officers and their teams could do now. Forms could be placed with estate agents or solicitors who do the conveyancing or sent out with Inland Revenue or social security material, or sent with all the other items delivered through our letterboxes. It just requires some lateral thinking about how to reach people as they move, arrive or connect in various ways with the authorities.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman on that point. I am all in favour of every imaginative way possible to try to improve registration and put registration forms in front of people, but we must consider the fact that we are trying to improve a system that is not the best fundamental system for registration purposes.

Will my hon. Friend consider the situation in my constituency, where 6,000 voters in purpose-built student accommodation are block registered by their landlords, who never consult the students concerned? This year, the registrar of the university of Newcastle refused, on data protection grounds, to register 3,000 students in their own accommodation. The electoral registration officers, seeing 3,000 voters disappearing off the register, prevailed on him to block register the students again. At no stage in the process was a single student consulted about whether he or she wanted to be on the register.

The reality is, of course, that there is a legal requirement for people to register, so I am not sure whether consulting people on whether they want to register is the legal position. I am in favour of universities co-operating in the business of registration. In some cities, one university co-operates and another does not. That creates an imbalance in the figures. I am in favour of electoral registration officers being able to gain access to information from universities. Co-operating in a process that involves a legal requirement to register should be encouraged. Electoral registration officers should have access to that information, and universities and others ought to have a responsibility to provide it.

I am sure that my final point will not receive any agreement from Opposition Members. We can make improvements with the Bill, but not necessarily reach the ideal position. When we come to the further Bill, which I hope will come about in three or four years' time, we will be developing a form of registration that will be ideal for the purpose—it goes with the creation of the identity card scheme. That will eventually provide the basis on which we can create an accurate register— [ Interruption. ] If Opposition Members are concerned about voter fraud and people trying to register twice or three times, they should consider the fact that a national identity card register, with only one identity for every individual, is a sure-fire way to get 99.9 per cent. registration on the most secure basis possible. I hope that Opposition Members will eventually understand that point.

Mr. Betts latterly proposed, perhaps not wholly seriously, a rather imaginative idea for advancing his cause. I agreed with much of his speech, frankly, especially on the need to improve our data, and he has some imaginative ideas about how to do so. Chris Ruane made similar points in saying that many people are not on the electoral register.

I understand where Labour Members are coming from, but do they not recognise that, in effect, we politicians are bound, to some extent, to be biased on this issue one way or another. My hon. Friends and I are perhaps more concerned about fraud; Labour Members are perhaps more concerned about under-representation. However, the fact is that the Government contracted out such things to the Electoral Commission, which is an independent body, and it came up with a view of how we should look at our electoral system. It made suggestions and recommendations—for example, on individual registration and using personal identifiers on a larger scale—and the Government were willing to accept them.

The Government found a way out of such problems by using an independently established body, which can take an objective view. That body has existed for five or six years. The problem with the proposals from the hon. Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe is that, once again, they kick things further and further into the future. Do we want to go on for ever trying to improve or change what we have got? Are we no longer prepared to listen to a perfectly respectable independent body, which the Government set up? It seems a great pity that the Government are not prepared to accept its advice and suggestions.

This has been an excellent debate, which, as expected, has reflected the strong views held on both sides of the House.

On the question of fraud, Mr. Heald mentioned yet again the judge who referred to our system as being like that of a banana republic. I remind him that that unfortunate and terrible phrase was used about the situation before 2004, and a number of measures have been put in place since then. On the whole, therefore, the elections this year reflect that we have tightened up on the abuses that took place in Birmingham.

I hope that every Member of the House believes in zero tolerance in response to anyone who abuses the system through fraudulent registration or voting. That is why the Bill increases the penalties for such behaviour. Several Members referred earlier to the registration form being sent to the head of household. In fact, it is not sent to the head of household—we do not use such Victorian terms—but to the occupier.

On the issue of fraud versus the register, which seemed to be a theme throughout the debate, my hon. Friend Chris Ruane referred to petitions. At present, eight petitions are before the courts, four of which are about election fraud, while the other four are about other election issues. The Coventry petition relates to about 10 electors, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd rightly pointed out, should be compared with the 3.5 million to 4 million people who are not on the register. Therefore, while we all agree that fraud is bad and dangerous, we should look at it from the perspective of the number of elections that took place this year, the number of people involved in those elections, and the fact that a huge number of people are not yet on the register. That is why we have approached the issue as we have done. We have tried to be proportionate and to strike a balance, which is why we have accepted the Lords amendments on identifiers for postal votes.

I agreed with virtually everything that Simon Hughes said, apart from his comments about personal identifiers. As he and I represent inner-London seats, we know exactly the problems that people face in getting on the register. It is not a case, as his hon. Friend Mr. Heath said, of being patronising about those living on council estates or in houses in multiple occupation, the unemployed, young people and black and ethnic minorities. Their disfranchisement, as we know, relates not just to the register but to a variety of issues, and their disfranchisement from the register arises in a sense from all of those. It is therefore important that we try to get those people on to the register, as well as doing all the other things on the Government's social exclusion agenda.

To correct the record, I made it absolutely plain that it was not remotely patronising to point out that such groups are under-registered and that there is a real need to address that under-registration. I said that it was patronising to suggest that asking those particular people for a signature would significantly deter them from voting, whereas it would not deter the rest of the population. I hold to that view.

The hon. Gentleman is, of course, entitled to his view, and I think that he is wrong.

The hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey made several positive points about the variety of ways in which we can and should encourage people to vote. I agree with the idea of a democracy day. I hope that after the Bill is passed by the House and the other place, we can engage in some cross-party lateral thinking about the creative methods that can be used to get people to register and to participate actively in citizenship.

On data sharing, my hon. Friend Mr. Betts is right that returning officers already have at their disposal a huge variety of ways of using that. Sadly, a number of them do not take advantage of those. Perhaps obstacles are put in their way by other organisations that could be more positive. The hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey alluded to a possible role for estate agents, solicitors' offices and so on. Of course, when people move into an area and register for council tax, there is no reason whatever why the local authority should not send out a registration form with its council tax bill.

On the issue of the canvass, the Bill includes measures on physical canvassing. I suspect that I am no different from many Members in that when the canvasser comes around, I am not in—I might be out canvassing myself. In the 15 years that I have lived in my current house, I have only been in once when a canvasser has knocked on the door, on a Sunday afternoon. My local authority allows me to register by telephone, which is another way in which people can ensure that they are on the register.

On funding, I had a lot of sympathy with what several colleagues said. We have been relatively generous in relation to funding—around £21 million will be provided to cover the costs of the Bill. All the returning officers and electoral administrators with whom I have had conversations feel that that money, if it reaches them, would cover their costs. The funding is not ring-fenced, however, and they are aware, like a number of my colleagues, that local authorities sometimes use the money for other items. As has been pointed out, the Bill also introduces performance standards that will be overseen by the Electoral Commission. We will also ask for accounts showing the amount of money spent on the election process. I hope that those measures will help to counter any temptation by local authorities to spend the money on something other than electoral registration and so on.

Bob Spink was concerned about errant returning officers. The Representation of the People Acts include provisions to prosecute returning officers if they breach their duty. As I said, the Bill also includes performance standards, which will be set by the Electoral Commission. That will help to improve the standard of electoral administration.

Mr. Syms, who made a thoughtful speech, asked about the verification of postal votes. I assure him that candidates can be present at the checking of disputed postal votes. Details of that will be included in the regulations. He also welcomed the fact that the Government are moving in the right direction, as did a number of other colleagues. That is true—the Bill moves us forward both by tightening up the system to counter any possibility of fraud and by tackling under-representation in this country. I hope that Members will support the Bill in that respect.

I realise that the Minister is approaching the end of her speech, but may I ask her to consult on another matter? People become very frustrated when, having turned up at a polling station, they discover that they are not on the register. At that moment, they ought to be given a form and asked to fill it in and leave it there, or at least given a form to take away. If we could make people's bad experiences at polling stations far less frequent, gradually over the years there would be a more positive response from those who currently feel that they are not wanted.

Again, the hon. Gentleman has made an important point. I hope that, in further discussions with the Electoral Commission and in cross-party discussions, we shall be able to consider the practicality of some of his proposals. I believe that we should make it as easy as possible for people who should be on the register to be on it. That means—in the words of my hon. Friend Mr. Prentice—thinking laterally. Perhaps there should be incentives; who knows?

I reiterate that the Government do not feel ready, at this stage, to accept personal identifiers across the board. We do think that they are appropriate for postal votes, and I therefore commend the Lords amendments on postal vote identifiers, which received cross-party consensus. I hope that we can make progress on the rest of the Bill in a consensual way, but I ask Members to reject Lords amendment No 8 when it is put to the House.

Lords amendment agreed to.

Lords amendment: No. 8.

Motion made, and Question put, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment.— [Bridget Prentice.]

The House divided: Ayes 281, Noes 202.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Lords amendment disagreed to.

Lords amendments Nos. 9 to 15 agreed to.