Electoral Status: Online Access

Debate between Lord Rennard and Lord Bridges of Headley

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the recent technical difficulties regarding online applications to register to vote, what plans they have to enable all eligible electors to check their electoral status electronically.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Lord Bridges of Headley) (Con)]

My Lords, we are conducting an investigation into what went wrong with the website last week. In the light of the findings, we will carefully consider the potential benefits of an online registration checking tool, but there may be other, possibly better, answers, such as filtering out duplicates with electoral management software, to consider as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, after the 2015 general election the Electoral Commission reported that there should be a system whereby people can check online whether they are already registered. Will the Government endeavour to make sure that such a system is in place by the May 2017 elections? In the meantime, will greater efforts be made to ensure that young people who are perhaps still at school are registered in the same way across Great Britain as they are in Northern Ireland, and that students are registered as part of the enrolment process at university, as successfully piloted in places such as Sheffield this year?

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

The noble Lord makes some very good points. My answer is yes to the second two regarding encouraging enrolment. As regards the first, I would like to wait for the findings of the investigation before I commit to a timeframe. Clearly, however, there is a need to look at the issue of duplicates, as raised by the Electoral Commission and as the Government have made clear on many occasions. I thank the noble Lord for his constructive comments to me privately about this.

EU Referendum: Voter Registration

Debate between Lord Rennard and Lord Bridges of Headley

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

My Lords, it is impossible to tell at this stage who was unable to register when the site had crashed.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that part of the problem is that many people think the system is automatically registering them when it is not and it should be? A significant part of the recent problem is that people cannot tell immediately whether they are registered. We urgently need an online system by which people can check whether they are registered. Only then will they know whether they need to complete the process.

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

The noble Lord speaks with a lot of experience on these things and makes a good point. I agree wholeheartedly with the principle that reducing the number of duplicate applications would certainly ease the burden on citizens and electoral administrators. We are open to all options for reducing duplicate applications. That said, we must guard against any solution which results in whole swathes of data unnecessarily being held centrally.