Electoral Registration

Lord Rix Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That is a very good question on a very difficult and complex area. It raises questions of privacy as well as convenience. The DWP database has been used for data matching, but in one direction and with very careful procedures so that we were not transferring data, just checking their existence. There are a number of other local and national databases that have been used. It has been discovered, for example, that you can raise quite significantly your confidence that people are there if you use local databases, such as benefit boxes and council tax, as well as national databases.

[Lord Rix (CB)]

My Lords, what can the Government do to ensure that people with a learning disability receive voter registration forms in the easy-read format so that they can participate in the 2015 elections?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, one of the five organisations that I was able to announce yesterday that the Government are funding to deal with target groups and vulnerable groups is Mencap. We ask Mencap in particular to have regard to that.