Diolch. I welcome this statement. I think it's very positive, very forward looking. I, for a long time, have been part of a campaign to get votes for 16 and 17-year-olds. I had a private Member's Bill in the House of Commons in 2008 that ran out of time, but it certainly changed Labour Party policy. So, I'm really pleased today that we're actually making a move towards 16 and 17-year-olds voting, even if it is just in local government elections, because I hope this will follow very swiftly for Assembly elections. One of the main reasons I think that it will be so good to have 16 and 17-years-olds voting is that we will then listen to them, because what they have to say I think is so important.

I just have some few quick questions. I think automatic registration makes absolute sense, and I wondered if the Cabinet Secretary had considered the method of identifying young voters when they receive their national insurance numbers in order to get them automatically identified straight away. I'm concerned about the large numbers, the thousands of people, who are not registered and I'm particularly concerned about the fact that the black and minority ethnic communities are under-represented. The figures by the Electoral Reform Society show that 85.9 per cent of white people were registered to vote, but only 76 per cent of black and minority ethnic citizens were registered to vote. So, that inequality does exist, so how does the Minister think that we would be able to tackle that?

I support all the different ways he's suggested of trying to vote to try and increase participation. I welcome the idea of voting on different days. I wondered if he'd considered having a period of time to vote, like stretching over a weekend or over five days, as is done in some countries and some states in the United States. So, I wondered if that might be a way of increasing participation.

I support Siân Gwenllian's points about trying to get women more involved and I think—. I just want to finish, really, with the point that the Minister made, that you have to make people feel that there is something worth voting for if you vote, and that's absolutely crucial. My constituency of Cardiff North has consistently had the highest turnout in the Assembly elections and also in the Westminster elections. The reason it has that highest turnout is that you never know what's going to happen there; you never know who's going to win, and so people feel they have a real reason to vote. But, going beyond that, I think it is beholden on us as politicians to try to make politics relevant to people's lives because politics is exciting, but people don't always realise that.