Voter Registration

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

I can understand where the noble Lord is coming from, but as I said in my earlier answer, we feel that the best way is to work with civic groups to make sure they can make the young aware of how important it is to vote in all elections, not just the EU referendum. The grants we are giving to these civil society organisations are helping to make people aware of how important it is.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that some of the problems with the administration of the elections last week and with the general election showed the need to update and modernise our electoral laws, the language of which is often more relevant to the 19th century than the 21st? Will the Government take forward the recent Law Commissions’ report, which has said how that law should be modernised? In particular, will they accept that we need to clarify the difference between national election expenditure and local constituency election expenditure so as to avoid any potential ambiguity being exploited unfairly in elections?

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

IER certainly reduces the risk of all that, and it is why we have these very clear plans to clean up the electoral register. That is certainly supported by the international election watchdog, the election judges and the Association of Electoral Administrators.