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House of Commons

Friday 12 February 1993

The House met at half-past Nine o'clock

PRAYERS

[Madam Speaker-- in the Chair ]

PETITIONS

Galina and Angelina Brew

9.34 am

Mr. John Austin-Walker (Woolwich) : I wish to present a petition that has been signed by almost 1,000 residents in the area of Thamesmead and beyond. It has been supported by several right hon. and hon. Members of this place and of the other place, including a former Law Lord, a former Solicitor-General, several former Cabinet Ministers and a former Minister who had responsibility for immigration.

The petition stems from the fact that the Secretary of State for the Home Department has refused permission to Mrs. Galina Brew and her daughter, Angelina, to remain in the United Kingdom. Their application to remain was submitted out of time due to the professional negligence of Mrs. Brew's solicitor, who has since been struck off the roll of solicitors.

Angelina is approaching the age of 11 years and has been educated in this country since the age of seven. She

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has special education needs. She is happily settled in the Bishop John Robinson Church of England primary school in Thamesmead. Galina's Ghanaian husband, Angelina's father, has abandoned them. They have no home or other relatives either in Ghana or in Galina's native Ukraine, which she left 24 years ago. The petition states : "Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House do urge the Right Honourable Kenneth Clarke QC MP, Secretary of State for the Home Department, to intervene in the proposal to remove Angelina and Galina Brew and allow them leave to remain in the United Kingdom. And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray." I present the petition in the hope of averting a tragedy in the life of a young girl who is in the Public Gallery.

To lie upon the Table.

Disabled People

9.36 am

Mr. Robert Maclennan (Caithness and Sutherland) : I wish to present a petition from residents of the communities of Wick, Keiss, Halkirk, Spittal, Watten, Lyth, Dunnet, Castletown, Reay and Thurso in Caithness. Their concern is that disabled people must have the right to the same equality of opportunity in all aspects of their daily life as non-disabled people. The petition states :

"people who are disabled or perceived to be disabled (for whatever reason) are continually having to face widespread unjustifiable discrimination legislation is necessary to outlaw this discrimination.

Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your honourable House introduce legislation to outlaw unjustifiable discrimination against people with actual or perceived disabilities as soon as possible. And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray."

To lie upon the Table.

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Orders of the Day

Representation of the People (Amendment) Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

9.37 am

Mr. Harry Barnes (Derbyshire, North-East) : I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second Time.

The Bill has two main parts ; the first deals with electoral registration and the second relates to physical access to polling stations. There is a third part and two schedules, but they are consequential to the material contained in the first two parts. I shall deal with the provisions in respect of electoral registers, but I wish to talk, first, about the problem that the Bill seeks to address. I shall then analyse the consequences of the problem and look towards a remedy. The Bill is part of the remedy, but other measures may also need to be taken in conjunction with this proposed legislation.

The problem with electoral registration is that there is a considerable shortfall in the number of people who are on registers, compared with the numbers who are entitled to be on them. It is clear from official figures that have been published that there is a shortfall of more than 1.9 million. That is the gap between the eligible population and the numbers who are on registers. In 1987, and in preceding years, there was a rough and ready balance between the numbers entitled to be on registers and the numbers on them. The problem has grown considerably since 1987. At present, there is a rough and ready balance in Northern Ireland, where there is no great problem. One difference between Northern Ireland and Britain is that Northern Ireland did not have the poll tax. It is reasonable to assume that the poll tax had some impact on electoral registration.

Certainly the shortfall in Britain coincided with the introduction of poll tax. It developed first in Scotland and then moved to England and Wales, and is particularly noticeable among those known as attainers, who appear on a register for the first time because they could not be checked with any previous register. I believe that the Home Office now acknowledges that the poll tax had an impact on electoral registration.

I do not rest my case on the poll tax alone. There are many other reasons for the shortfall. There is increasing rootlessness in society, with people moving around--getting on their bikes to look for work, and others living in bedsit land who move from place to place. Homelessness is increasing, and it is difficult to get on an electoral register if one is homeless or moving around the country. There is considerable alienation and deprivation in society, which does not add to registration.

There is also a new complexity in life, in that masses of material arrives through people's letter boxes, and many forms have to be filled in. Some are completed, but others are ignored because they are included with a host of material that is of no great significance. It may be that some people filled in a poll tax form thinking that they would automatically be included on the electoral register and failed to complete the separate registration form.

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Inadequacies in standard spending assessments also have an impact on local government and on the services that it can provide. Many electoral returning officers try valiantly to do a good job, but find that they do not have sufficient funds.

Mr. Roy Thomason (Bromsgrove) : Does the hon. Gentleman agree that a principal cause of the problem to which he refers is inefficiency in certain local authorities?

Mr. Barnes : There was certainly inefficiency in Brent, where legal action was threatened against the electoral returning officer to ensure the level of canvassing required under existing legislation. The result was that an extra 15,000 people or more were added to registers. There are excellent examples of electoral returning officers using imaginative techniques in the run-up to the last election, especially in Leeds and Plymouth. I encourage other returning officers to follow those examples, to which I shall refer again later.

Mr. Graham Allen (Nottingham, North) : I am sure that my hon. Friend would not want the moment to pass without pointing out to the hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Mr. Thomason) that Brent is a Conservative-controlled authority and that the action that he mentioned was initiated by Labour councillors, to allow people the right to exercise their vote.

Mr. Paul Boateng (Brent, South) : I remind my hon. Friend that the councillor mainly involved was Mrs. Peggy Quirke.

Mr. Allen : She deserves commendation from all parts of the House and I am sure that many hon. Members will sign an early-day motion that would do that.

Mr. Barnes : Best practice by electoral returning officers should be encouraged and the Bill makes provision for a code of practice that would enable that. Many returning officers are keen to be efficient, but discover that they do not have the resources to ensure the efficiency of the past.

The problem is not limited to the 1.9 million people missing from electoral registers in Britain. Another factor is hidden from view--masked by the fact that the names of many people are no longer entitled to be on a particular register. I refer to those who have died or moved to other areas. It is reasonable to assume that the latter will not exercise a postal vote or return to their previous area to vote. If they have registered in their new areas, that means that their names will appear on two registers, when one is allowed to vote only once. Redundant names must be removed.

That situation hides from view also the other 1.9 million people who are missing from registers. I am sure that many hon. and right hon. Members are aware of that situation from their own canvassing activities.

Mr. Peter L. Pike (Burnley) : Is not the practice of including non- eligible names on registers encouraged by local authorities whose grants depend on the size of their population, in respect of the distribution of business rates grant?

Mr. Barnes : That could certainly be true. Also, in some areas the shortfall of the 1.9 million people that I mentioned can have a serious impact on the funding available in some areas, because it is linked, for example, to calculations for standard spending assessments.

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There is also an imbalance in the number of missing voters. The problem is serious in some areas, but is of less significance in others. Nevertheless, the impact of funding can be dramatic. The masking problem was illustrated by a survey by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys in 1981. It showed that at the end of a register's life it was, on average, 16 per cent. out of date. There is no way of knowing how many people are missing from electoral registers beyond the figure of 1.9 million that I mentioned, but it is reasonable to assume that if 5 per cent. are missing as a result of developments in recent years --including the poll tax--at least as many were traditionally missing and are still missing now. Electoral registers, therefore, are short by as much as 10 per cent. That seems a reasonable assumption, but if any hon. Members want to make alternative assumptions or arguments, I shall be interested to have them added to the debate.

One consequence of that serious shortfall is a democratic deficit, which should worry us all. Even if the missing voters are a replica of those having the franchise and would vote in exactly the same way, the fact that they are missing is still of significance. They should have the right to vote--and often they want that right and are disturbed to discover that their names do not appear on the register.

Mr. Michael Stern (Bristol, North-West) : Has the hon. Gentleman considered that it may be a matter of democratic choice not to register? In a free society, people are entitled to decide that they do not want to take part in any of its democratic processes. We must surely retain for those people the right to express their opinions in that way.

Mr. Barnes : That is not the position in current law, which expects people to register. Action can be taken if an individual fails to complete a form or refuses to give the appropriate information to a canvasser who comes to the door. The hon. Gentleman's notion is very dangerous. It would lead to voluntary registration and to the type of situation that exists in the United States and which we had way in the past. We could end up with registration of only 60 per cent. of the franchise. We know where the biggest missing groups would be found--among the deprived and those living in depressed areas.

Mr. Boateng : I thank my Friend for giving way and for initiating today's important debate. The hon. Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Stern) made a novel--and sinister and dangerous--proposition when he suggested that a democratic contribution could be made by breaking the law. That is especially true coming from a Conservative Government and a Conservative Member, when there are signs that Conservative council members are happy for registration to become a voluntary activity. That happened in the London borough of Brent and, as a result, 15,000 people dropped off the register. Had it not been for Councillor Peggy Quirke and her heroic action, 15,000 people would never have been recovered and there would have been a truly democratic deficit--however convenient that might have been for Conservative Members.

Mr. Barnes : A voluntary register would be detrimental to the democratic process. I am not in favour of compulsory voting ; I favour people having a choice of whether they vote. Someone may decide not to register and

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later, during the election, may change his mind about what he wants to do. He may want to vote or may decide to abstain.

Registration should be a duty on people and electoral returning officers should work hard to ensure that they obtain all the necessary details. At elections, people can choose how and whether they vote. The alternative is dangerous.

Mr. Stephen Milligan (Eastleigh) : The hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng) argued powerfully against voluntary registration. However, is not the problem with the Bill that, by setting up a rolling register, it makes part of the registration process voluntary? It will, to some extent, be a voluntary register, as those people who want to get on the register in the intervening period will be able to do so. That will have the disadvantages that the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes) has just outlined.

Mr. Barnes : I shall later explain what the Bill contains. I think that it will be seen that it contains a duty and reqirement to register, and that all sorts of action can be taken against those who do not.

Lady Olga Maitland (Sutton and Cheam) rose --

Mr. Barnes : I shall take one more intervention and then I must make some progress.

Lady Olga Maitland : Am I not right in thinking that it is an offence, carrying a fine of up to £1,000, if a man or woman fails to register on the electoral roll?

Mr. Barnes : The fine is up to £400, but it is not an offence not to register--it is an offence not to respond to the inquiries made by the electoral returning officer. I am not keen that such action should frequently be taken against people, but it should provide a backdrop to encourage people to register.

Under-registration has various consequences. People who do not appear on the register do not constitute a random sample of society, but come from specific groups. That means that opinion poll surveys--which matter a great deal at elections in this country--are way out. Opinion pollsters investigate the population generally ; they knock on doors and ask whether people are on the register, but they do not check the register. Therefore, opinion polls in this country are persistently out by a few per cent. Under -registration also causes boundary review problems. The maldistribution of the numbers of people missing causes a serious problem in some districts and means that the constituencies that are drawn up are much larger than they would otherwise be.

Under-registration is also likely to produce an electoral bias. I hope that I would make the same argument for full enfranchisement if the electoral bias were in another direction. I do not know whether I would, but it is fortunate for me that both the principle of the extension of democracy and the interests of those who do not support the Government begin to fall in line with each other.

A Warwick university survey done by Jeremy Smith and Professor Maclean found that Labour lost eight to 11 seats at the last general election because of the poll tax factor and the numbers missing from the register. The Conservatives took 22 seats at the last election with a majority of 1,000 or less in districts where the Conservatives would have been in danger had there been

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a full franchise. That could have made a dramatic difference to the make-up of the House. Therefore, I hope that Conservative Members will also be interested in that subject.

Mr. Stern rose --

Mr. Barnes : I shall not give way now.

If hon. Members look at the list of sponsors of my Bill they will see that it has cross-party support. The list includes a Conservative, a Liberal Democrat, a Scottish Nationalist and a Plaid Cymru Member. One Conservative Member is sufficiently altruistic to support my Bill.

What remedies are there for the electoral shortfall? We should encourage electoral returning officers to engage in best practice, and my Bill contains a code of practice. What happens in Leeds and Plymouth should provide the example, not Brent. The electoral officers in Plymouth found that the Home Office material advertising the register was woefully inadequate, so they printed their own material and undertook imaginative campaigns to gain publicity, using local figures on the radio. In that way they greatly increased the numbers on the register. I hope that such an example will be followed by all electoral returning officers.

Political parties should also canvass ; they should be alive. The Labour party should be active, carry out door knocking at all times, and check to see whether its supporters have registered. The same should be done by other political parties. After the Reform Act 1832, Sir Robert Peel said that the Tories must "register, register, register." When the fledgling Labour party was established, Keir Hardie said that the party should look to the electoral register to bring Labour to victory. We must take positive action, but legal improvements can assist the process.

The Home Office is conducting five surveys that follow the last election. One covers electoral registration and the political parties are involved in discussions with the Home Office. My Bill will assist the process and the results of the Home Office surveys could be used in Committee.

The Bill does not deal with referendums, the ending of expatriate votes and the banning of sales of electoral registers--all of which I favour and should like to have included in the measure--because they would make it much easier to defeat the Bill and would direct us away from the issues that I want to consider.

The Bill is not about fancy franchises and proportional representation. Those who believe in proportional representation base their belief on the principle of one person, one vote, one value. We cannot have one value for everyone unless we have one vote for everyone, so my Bill provides a logical first step towards any provision to reform the electoral system. I hope that that will be recognised by Liberal Democrats.

Mr. Bob Dunn (Dartford) : I am interested in what the hon. Gentleman has said. He talked about one-for-one value and the fact that there should be equity. How about the equity or inequity of constituencies such as the Isle of Wight, with 110,000 electors and Glasgow, Central, with about 40,000 electors? Is that not inequitable and should not that issue form part of the hon. Gentleman's brief?

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Mr. Barnes : It follows on from the principle of one person, one vote that electoral districts should be as equal as possible. However, we have to remember that Scotland is a separate nation under the Act of Union and that different considerations might apply to Scotland. If hon. Members wish to tackle those problems, they must try to introduce a Bill to overcome them.

These provisions are not set in concrete. They ought to be considered seriously in Committee and developed within the framework of the Bill and the long title. Drafting inadequacies could be dealt with in Committee. It is impossible for me to introduce a Bill that is of constitutional significance and get it right in one fell swoop.

Under the provisions of the Bill, on 15 February 1995 or before, by order of the Home Office, the existing registers will be turned into rolling registers. Those registers will become the registers for the future. From then onwards, additions and deletions to the register can take place continuously. That is the rolling nature of the registers. In order to obtain additions and deletions, a duty will be placed on citizens to register and, when they move home, to tell the electoral registration officer that they are leaving the area and to inform the electoral registration officer into whose area they are moving. No great penalties are involved, apart from the serious penalty that if they refuse to provide full information to the electoral registration officer, he will enter the details in any case.

The electoral registration officers will still have certain duties to perform. Annual registration will continue, but that will be used to check the rolling register. Other information will be fed to the electoral registration officers. The registrar of births, deaths and marriages will supply information about deaths in the area. At the last election the Labour party in my constituency looked through the newspapers in advance for notices of deaths so that the names of those people were removed from the register. No leaflets canvassing for votes were therefore sent to the addresses of people who had died.

In addition, those with details of people's movements would be expected to send that information to the electoral registration officers. By that, I mean councils, housing associations and solicitors involved in conveyancing. Furthermore, if electoral registration officers believed that they needed to do so, they could seek information from public utilities that hold information about people.

Some would argue that worrying civil liberties considerations are involved. Therefore, the Bill provides for the protection of confidentiality. Any information that is sought by electoral registration officers will not be able to be used for any purpose other than the electoral register. Furthermore, they will only be able to pass that information to any other electoral registration officer to enable him to obtain fully up-to-date information. The Committee will have to consider carefully the protection of civil liberties and make sure that it has got it right.

The register will then roll on until an election is announced. After an election has been announced, the rolling register will be published within two days. There will also be annual publication of the register. However, it will be no more than a snapshot of the register at that time, because it will continue to roll. After the announcement of an election, those people in the area who are missing from the register can be added to it up to a week before the election. A supplementary list will be published of those names. However, no one will be able to be drafted on to

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the register by having come into the area from outside during an election period. We do not intend to have masses of people coming from outside into bedsit territory so that their names can be added to the register. That was one of the concerns of the Liberal Democrats. They put that concern to me. I was more than pleased to make sure that their concern was met by the provisions of the Bill. Once an election is over, the register will continue to roll. The names on the supplementary list will be incorporated on the register. No name will be deleted during an election period, in case the wrong name is deleted.

How will people know that their names are missing from the electoral register? Polling cards will be issued two days after the announcement of the election. There will be publicity, urging people to check their polling cards. They will not need to take their polling card with them when they go to vote. However, they will be urged to check their polling card to make sure that their names are on the register. If they are not, those people will have the opportunity, up to seven days before the election, to get their names on the register. No one, however, will be able to get on to the register, unless they qualify to be on it when the election is announced.

Money will be needed for these purposes. There will not be just local newspaper publicity. There will be Home Office publicity and television publicity. If we are to get hold of the people who are missing from the registers, the best time to do it is when an election takes place. Everything should be done in advance, of course, to get the electoral register right. The more we get it right, the smaller will be the number of people who will need to be on the supplementary list.

Mr. Stern : I am trying to follow the hon. Gentleman's proposals. Has he considered what will happen in those areas, often just outside towns, where there are few local papers and where the circulation is very restricted? How does he propose to deal with the need for individual notification, particularly of absence from the register? If only one local paper comes out on a Friday and that has a restricted circulation, most of the people in that area rely solely on national media for their news.

Mr. Barnes : Reliance on the national media is something which the Home Office is expected to pick up under the provisions of the Bill. Therefore, there would be national publicity. Local publicity is not limited, however, to advertisements in local newspapers. Electoral registration officers will be encouraged to look at other means of publicity. They should consider using local radio and other means. The code of practice should include these means. However, we shall have to work out our ideas. I hope that the Home Office review will be valuable.

None of my proposals is problem-free. We must be careful to protect civil liberties. We must also remember by-elections. Although the Bill prevents people from being drafted into an area for a general election, it is often known well in advance that there is to be a by-election and we must try to ensure that we can handle the bedsit problem, to which I referred earlier. Furthermore, the Bill does not include provision for women's refuges. They were put on a second register for poll tax purposes and information about them was not available generally. We

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shall have to consider the need to protect those people and perhaps others. I shall be more than happy if those issues are dealt with in Committee.

Mr. Thomason : I seek some clarification. I do not understand how clause 2(3) and clause 8(1) will work together. I understood the hon. Member to say that the register would include people who had registered more than seven days before a general election. From my reading of those clauses, it seems that people cannot be registered for seven days after they have applied and it therefore follows that, to be able to vote, they would have to register more than 14 days before an election. Can the hon. Gentleman explain?

Mr. Barnes : I hope that the Bill is technically correct. If I have not got it right, it will have to be changed in Committee. I intend that people who are entitled to be on the register should be able to register during an election campaign. However, their registration will not become operational for seven days. Therefore, people who registered during the final seven days before an election would not be able to vote, although their names would be placed on the register. One must register before the last week.

The details need to be hammered out in Committee. The system is not perfect, but it is as rigorous as I have been able to achieve in the time available. Other hon. Members who have promoted private Member's Bills have claimed tht it has taken too long to reach this stage, but I would have found another few months helpful, as the issue is so complex.

On physical access to polling stations, it is not enough for a person with disabilities to be on the register, as they also want to be able to exercise their franchise rights. Many registered disabled or infirm people want to go to the polling station, rather than use proxy or postal votes. Many elderly people say that they have always voted in that way and should continue to do so. However, many of those people find it difficult to exercise their rights. Part II of the Bill deals with that problem. Returning officers must consult disabled organisations in their areas, designate accessible polling stations and publicise them.

An accessible polling station must have at least one polling booth that is accessible for people in wheelchairs and the ballot box must be placed at the correct level for them. Those are minimum requirements. Schedule 2 contains a host of provisions that should be taken into account by returning officers, together with disabled organisations, so that adequate facilities may be provided. The Bill states that there must be at least one designated accessible polling station in a constituency, which sounds rather meagre. However, the Bill contains that provision for logical reasons. If I had not included it, there might be no accessible stations in an area. I hope that, because of the Bill, pressure will increase to ensure that many accessible polling stations are designated.

If registered disabled people live in areas where there are no designated accessible polling stations, they can make arrangements with returning officers before the election to use the nearest accessible polling station to their homes, so that they may exercise their rights.

Many disabled organisations wanted access to be included in the Bill. The Spastics Society produced an

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excellent report during the last election which demonstrated the seriousness of the problem. I think that part II of the Bill is easier for Members to pursue. It is short and schedule 2 is associated with it.

Mr. Milligan : It is true that part II of the Bill is easier to pursue and it is a worthy cause. Hon. Members on both sides of the House will agree that it would be good if disabled people found it easier to vote. However, has the hon. Gentleman studied the cost of adapting polling stations? Might it not be better to spend the same money to provide postal votes more easily, as many people do not know about them or do not find out until too late? If more money were spent on advertising postal votes, perhaps using television commercials, it might be a better use of the money. Many disabled people might prefer to vote postally rather than face the difficulties and inconvenience of getting into a polling station that was not built to accommodate them.

Mr. Barnes : Many disabled people wish to operate in society in the same way that able-bodied people do and they want the same avenues of access. Efforts should be made to put that right. We are not talking about serious expense. I believe that the Government already provide 50 per cent. of the cost of temporary ramps and other provisions. The measure extends such provisions and, with the agreement of the owners of polling stations, would provide for permanent access, which is sometimes less expensive than the temporary provisions.

I have been struggling for five years in the House over electoral registration. I first noticed the problem as a member of the Standing Committee, during the introduction of the poll tax. I envisaged that a problem would arise and have noticed evidence of it in many bits of legislation, Home Office circulars to electoral returning officers and finally in the statistics. When I was lucky in the draw for private Members' Bills, I was keen for the House to consider the matter seriously. It is a failing of many hon. Members that we forget the importance of the issue.

John Stuart Mill used to distinguish between what he called "living truths" and "dead dogmas". Some aspects of democracy have become dead dogmas. We all say that we are democrats and that the Government have a mandate, but the arguments over why we should have democracy and how it should operate died with the chartists and the suffragettes. The discussion has moved on to referendums, proportional representation and other fancy measures and we are not thinking about the basics and about who is entitled to be enfranchised. That is what the Reform Acts of 1832, 1867 and 1884 and later measures were about. There must not be any further degeneration of electoral registration and the Bill is an attempt to move in another direction.

I must thank a great many people who helped me with the Bill, such as electoral registration officers and the Association of London Authorities which organised a conference involving many academics. I am like the author of a book--I have received a great deal of information and many ideas from other people, but I have been responsible for drawing up the Bill.

People worry about different aspects of the Bill, but my general intention has widespread support and increasing

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support within political parties. I hope that the Government will accept the intention and that I shall be allowed to make progress with the measure today.

10.19 am

Mr. David Evans (Welwyn, Hatfield) : It gives me great pleasure to debate an issue of such fundamental importance to our democracy. Unfortunately, all too often, as Members of Parliament, we are caught up in examining the fine detail of policy and are not usually given the opportunity to stand back to view the larger picture. The Bill offers us the opportunity to do just that and, at least in that respect, it should be welcomed. However, that is the last good thing that I have to say about the Bill.

As is often the case, the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes) has grabbed the wrong end of the stick. In fact, he must have more splinters in his hands than a transatlantic oarsman. I am a charitable man and could forgive him the Bill were it not motivated by what I can describe only as sinister intentions.

The Bill seeks to undermine some of the values at the very heart of our democracy and should therefore be opposed in the strongest terms. It is divided into two parts. The first deals with improving electoral registration and the second with improving access to polling stations for voters with a physical disability.

Things do not change. For the previous century and a half it has been left to Conservatives to resist damage to electoral reform and to promote far- sighted but practical alternatives. The year 1867 is rightly regarded as the watershed of the 19th century. After 1867 the liberty achieved through the great Reform Act was slowly but increasingly used to bring about a new social order, a process which continued into the 20th century. The period also saw--thank God--the decline of the Liberal party.

The Reform Act 1867 was a triumph for Disraeli, one of the great Conservative leaders. It was the crucial step in the adaptation of British institutions to rise to democracy. In short, it was Disraeli who turned the Conservative party and the country in the direction of universal adult suffrage which gave all men and women the opportunity to be represented by a democratically elected Member of Parliament. The practice of representation in the United Kingdom is as old as the English Parliament itself. The great Tory Edmund Burke made the well-known distinction between representation and delegation : a delegate merely mirrors and records the views of his constituent, whereas a representative is elected to judge according to his own conscience. However, I am sure that everyone here will agree that if our conscience told us to disobey all petitions from constituents, we would not last long.

As representatives, we have a duty to listen to our constituents as well as a wider duty to obey the principles of this place and the constitution. In the same way, our constituents also have duties, and it is that aspect of our democracy which the Bill undermines. Let us consider the background to the current policy. We have never left it solely to the individual to register his or her interest in voting, unlike the United States of America where the turnout in presidential elections is substantially lower than the turnout here for general elections. The Government impose a duty on citizens to provide the information requested by electoral registration

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officers. In effect, registration is compulsory. Those who receive the annual canvassing document, form A, have a duty to return it with accurate information and can be fined £1,000 for not complying. There is a statutory duty on electoral registration officers to maximise registration and to publish an annual register of all those who appear to be eligible to vote. There are facilities for the public to check and correct the register.

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