Political and Constitutional Reform

Andrew Percy Excerpts

Monday 5th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I accept, of course, that we must all make efforts—as individual Members and, as I said earlier, in co-operation with local authorities—to encourage people to register to vote if they are not already registered. However, I cannot escape the fact that we are having to operate with tools which we inherited from the last Government, and which allowed the wholly unacceptable circumstances in which 3.5 million people are not on the electoral register to occur in the first place. We will do whatever we can in trying to remedy that, but I ask the hon. Lady and other Opposition Members what on earth they were doing for 13 years if they feel so strongly about the problem now.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

If we move forward on House of Lords reform to an elected House, which I would support, will we then subject the poor voters of Brigg and Goole and other constituencies to a referendum on the electoral system for that House too?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

In the Bill that we will publish before the end of the year, we will also propose the electoral system by which Members of the other place would be elected.