Voting at 16 Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Lord Hayward
Main Page: Lord Hayward (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Hayward's debates with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
(3 days, 12 hours ago)
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Lord Hayward (Con)
My Lords, the Minister has addressed the issue of the registration of young people. May I encourage him and the department to give very serious consideration to encouraging online registration? It is simple. We are talking about a generation which is used to using computers and associated forms of social media, and many of them will find online registration to be the best and easiest way of registering for their future votes.
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, let me say first that I always welcome encouragement from the noble Lord, and I will take that back. To address his question directly, we intend to actively explore and test new and more automated methods of registration, including better use of data to identify people who are eligible and integration with other government services to make it easier for people to register. Online registration for voting has been a resounding success, particularly for postal voting. I will take that back and I hope that I can come back to the noble Lord with some meaningful outcomes as a result of our strategy.