asked the Secretary of State for Wales if he will make a statement about the assessment of the number of persons entitled to vote in the devolution referendum.

ELECTORAL REGISTER, FEBRUARY 1979, WALES ADVANCE FIGURES
County				Total electorate, including service voters, merchant seamen, peers, "Y" voters	"Y" voters (aged under 18) who will attain voting age on 2 March 1979 or later	Number of electors of voting age on 1 March
Clwyd	…	…	…	288,608	3,969	284,639
Dyfed	…	…	…	250,571	3,140	247,431
Gwent	…	…	…	324,044	4,657	19,387
Gwynedd	…	…	…	173,118	2,067	171,051
Mid-Glamorgan	…	…	…	399,332	5,068	394,264
Powys	…	…	…	81,823	1,006	80,817
South Glamorgan	…	…	…	286,908	4,001	282,907
West Glamorgan	…	…	…	279,393	3,540	275,853
Wales	…	…	…	2,083,797	27,448	2,056,349

In relation to entitlement to vote on 1 March, further deductions fall to be made for those whose names appear on the registers but who are dead, for those who are registered for more than one address and for those who are legally debarred from voting. On the basis of the information which I have obtained and which has been brought to my attention, the provisional estimate of the further deduction which needs to be made in order to determine the number entitled to vote for the purposes of section 80(2) of the Wales Act is:

Deaths	14,900
Convicted prisoners in prison	800
Students and nurses who are registered at more than one address	2,600

I would emphasise that I have no power to take account of probability of voting or physical capacity to register a vote, but only of entitlement to vote. The number of voters on the new registers but under the age of 18 on March 1 has been counted by the electoral registration officers.Deaths have been estimated by the Registrar General on the basis of extensive records. The deduction for convicted prisoners has been similarly assessed on the basis of records held by the Home Department. Deductions for students and nurses have been based on a

From advance returns provided by the electoral registration officers, I estimate the total electorate by county area on the new registers which came into operation on 16 February and the number of electors of voting age on 1 March 1979 to be as follows:carefully constructed sample survey. It may be that there are other duplications in the registers, but no authoritative estimate of these is available.I therefore estimate the total number entitled to vote on 1 March as 2,038,049.