Draft Representation of the People (Electoral Registers Publication Date) Regulations 2020

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Wednesday 16th September 2020 General Committees

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Representation of the People (Electoral Registers Publication Date) Regulations 2020.

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mrs Miller. I welcome you to your position on the Panel of Chairs.

The regulations follow on from my announcement in a written ministerial statement in June that, in the light of the many challenges posed by the covid-19 pandemic, we intended to introduce legislation to delay the deadline for the publication of this year’s revised parliamentary and English local government registers by two months, from 1 December to 1 February. I will briefly run through what we are doing and why before I take questions from the Committee.

The annual canvass, which is run by electoral registration officers in each local authority, is, as I am sure hon. Members know, an information-gathering exercise that ordinarily runs for five months from 1 July to 1 December. The aim is to ensure that the electoral registers are as complete and accurate as possible. The information gathered during the canvass is used to identify electors who should be deleted from the registers for reasons such as death, ineligibility, or moving address. It also identifies eligible citizens who are not on the register and should therefore be invited to register. The process of inviting to register involves a separate form to the canvass: a process with which I think hon. Members are familiar.

The revised register is then published on or before 1 December, normally with an exception if, for example, an election is held in the ERO’s area during that period. In that exceptional case, the final deadline is automatically delayed to 1 February the following year. Today’s legislation allows flexibility, but follows in some ways the shape of the December to February exceptional approach. The regulations give the EROs an additional two months to conduct their work should they need that due to the challenges caused by the pandemic. They will still be able to publish before 1 February if they want to, which is still in line with current legislation.

I want to touch on the impact of some other reforms that we have made to the annual canvass as a result of the secondary legislation that we introduced last autumn, as hon. Members will remember. Certainly the elections team in this room—we see a lot of each other—will be very familiar with what we are doing to reform the annual canvass so that it moves away from a cumbersome one-size-fits-all paper-based system to a more modern and adaptable model in which registration officers are able to focus their resources where they are most needed and use more modern communication methods, which is convenient for voters as well as a sensible use of resources.

Thanks to the reforms, this year’s annual canvass is already allowing EROs to conduct safer and more responsive canvasses than ever before. The canvass still involves a certain amount of paperwork and paper responses, and, where phone calls are impossible, door-knocking still applies if a household has not responded to previous attempts to contact them. The in-person contacts and paper elements are still important in ensuring the completeness and accuracy of our electoral registers and cannot be discounted.

In spite of the impact that covid-19 has had so far, the 2020 annual canvass under the reformed system is successfully and safely under way. The roll-out of the new data matching in the reformed system has been impressive and helpful. I want to put on the record my thanks to all the registration officers who have done that work, and I thank them for their continuing dedication and hard work, despite the challenges.

As I say, there are still in-person and paper elements that need to be considered, given the concerns about the impact of covid-19 on ways of working, so we have been speaking to electoral registration officers to see how they can best be met. A number of options were raised for overcoming that challenge: for example, arguments for cancelling the canvass entirely or for removing the in-person contact entirely could be envisaged. We think that the regulations are the better option, allowing for the completeness and accuracy of registers to continue to be prioritised, but also allowing registration officers the flexibility to complete the overall project as safely as they can, using the various methods that they think necessary, and with two months’ additional time in hand.

We have, of course, consulted with others for this, working in close co-operation with the public health agencies in England, Wales and Scotland. We have already issued guidance to electoral registration officers for carrying out a covid-19-secure canvass. My officials at the Cabinet Office are closely monitoring the situation across the country to provide any further non-legislative support that may be needed. Altogether, those actions—in concert with extending the deadline, as the regulations will—give EROs the flexibility and support to deliver the first-class public service that we ask of them for our local areas.

I put on the record that the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators, the Scottish Assessors Association—try saying that one too early in the morning, Mrs Miller—the Local Government Association and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives have all expressed their support for the legislation. I thank my counterparts in the Scottish and Welsh Governments for their proactive and positive engagement on the issue. They have each brough forward complementary legislation in their legislatures to apply the same delay to the deadline for publication of their local government registers. I think that is a good and welcome example of our Administrations working in partnership on a sensible measure.

To conclude, the instrument will provide the flexibility needed to run a secure canvass without compromising on completeness and accuracy, and will do so in what I hope will be a well-supported manner behind the scenes. I commend the regulations to the Committee.

[The Chair]

Before I call Cat Smith for the Opposition, I remind the Committee that these are very specific regulations, and speeches should reflect that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chloe Smith]

I thank my Front-Bench counterparts for their remarks. To deal with the simplest of the questions, the 1 February date was chosen instead of 1 March because, as I mentioned earlier, that timetable is already contained in the normal operation of this process. A delay to 1 February is sometimes already familiar to EROs, so we thought it would be most supportive to use a familiar pattern, rather than opting for 1 March. I ought to add that the elections that will occur in May next year will be larger than usual, because of the highly unusual and difficult precaution of delaying the 2020 elections to 2021 in large parts of the country. It is therefore all the more important to be ready for those elections, and I hope that this measure balances the need to be ready for them with the flexibility needed for this year.

I note that the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood echoed arguments made about canvass reform. I would encourage her to evolve those views, as her colleagues in the Welsh Government have done—they have been supportive of our proposals, and indeed worked with us on them for many years, as have counterparts in the Scottish Government. They are supportive because those canvass reform proposals allow precious public resources to be used precisely for those electors who might be least likely to be registered. They allow EROs to seek those people out more than they had been able to do using the previous, more cumbersome methods in the canvass. That is a good thing, and fundamentally answers some of the hon. Lady’s other concerns about those who might currently be missing from the electoral register and ought to be welcomed on to it. Canvass reform helps with that, rather than hinders it, and I hope she will be able to recognise that in due course.

None the less, though, I thank the hon. Lady for her support of this morning’s measure. I think we are all agreed that this is a pragmatic measure that commands support, and I therefore commend it to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.