I am sure everyone, on all sides of the House, is very grateful to the Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department for trying to explain what is very largely inexplicable—the election arrangements that take place in Northern Ireland.

I feel that, before the House deals with this particular Regulation—because, after all, it is our responsibility to decide whether we should pass this matter or not—we ought to look a little more closely at the provisions of the Elections and Franchise (Northern Ireland) Act, 1946, to which the Joint Under-Secretary has alluded, because whether or not we compile these lists in this way depends on which names go on which list.

Though I spent a little time in studying this matter, I speak subject to be corrected by hon. Gentlemen who represent Northern Ireland constituencies, and I am glad to welcome them in actual debate in the House. We know that they enter the Lobbies, but we seldom have an opportunity of seeing them here. It is a pleasure and a privilege to have them with us in the House, and I hope we shall have some contribution from them.

Subject, therefore, to any correction from the other side of the House, the difficulty in this matter is that there are three quite different systems of the right to vote in Northern Ireland. There is the first, which, without offence, I might call the democratic system, which is that enforced on Northern Ireland by this Parliament, and there is the other system which is enforced on Northern Ireland by the Conservative Administration which, unfortunately, they have had in that country for a considerable period of time.

When we come to the question of how to compile these lists, we must remember very carefully—and I say this without any party spirit—the typically Conservative system of elections. If I take, first, the local government register, one of the difficulties with which one is concerned in the matter of local government elections is to know how many times an individual name should be entered. For example, the Lord Mayor of Londonderry—I speak in the presence of the hon. Member for Londonderry (Mr. Wellwood), who will correct me if I am wrong——