Electoral Register

Lord Kennedy of Southwark Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to maximise the number of people on the electoral register before the deadline of 20 April by which people must register to vote in the General Election on 7 May.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Government have invested £14 million over two financial years to support activities to maximise the number of people on the register. In 2014-15, this includes £6.8 million divided among electoral registration offices across Great Britain according to levels of underregistration. Up to £2.5 million will be used to fund wider activity, including working with national organisations to reach underrepresented groups, such as young people, students, Armed Forces personnel and overseas voters.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Voter Registration. I hope the noble Lord’s response to my Question will move beyond the “We’ve all got a role to play” response that I often get from him. My Question asks specifically what action the Government are going to take in the next month to address the 7 million of our fellow citizens who are not on the register. How can we get those people on so that they can actually vote in the general election?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, it is up to all of us, not just the Government, to make sure. I was with the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, at UCL the other week. We all three made the point that it was extremely important that students both register and vote, and we should all be repeating that message each time we go to a college, university or school. The noble Lord will have seen the Electoral Commission’s announcement of its pre-election campaign earlier this week. That is another dimension of this. There will be advertising online and in the media. The Government are very happy that in February a million new applications came in to register. We expect there to be a similar surge in the last few weeks before the closing date, as there was in 2010. We are not at all complacent, but as the election gets closer, we expect interest to rise and we expect the 2.7 million applications which have come in since last December to be added to by, we hope, another million.