Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Lord Shutt of Greetland Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 8th October 2020 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Shutt of Greetland]

16: After Clause 6, insert the following new Clause—
“Improving completeness of electoral registers for purposes of boundary reviews etc.
(1) Within a year of this Act coming into force, the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament proposals for improving the completeness of electoral registers for purposes of boundary reviews.(2) The proposals in subsection (1) may include requirements for either—(a) the Department for Work and Pensions to provide every registration officer with the name, address, date of birth and nationality of each individual in their district to whom they issue a National Insurance number ahead of their 16th birthday, and for registration officers to add to the full electoral registers those electors who they are satisfied are eligible for inclusion; or(b) the Department for Work and Pensions to notify individuals of the criteria for eligibility to vote and of the process for making an application to join the register when they are issued with a new National Insurance number.”Member’s explanatory statement
16 and 17 year olds are added to electoral registers for the purposes of boundary reviews, but many of them are not known to the registration officers. The amendment would require the Secretary of State to make proposals for improving the completeness of electoral registers and suggests two possible ways in which the issue of a National Insurance number could trigger the inclusion of 16 and 17 year olds.

[Lord Shutt of Greetland (LD)]

My Lords, I beg to move Amendment 16 as an important enhancement of the Bill, which would improve the accuracy and completeness of the electoral registers for future reviews.

The amendment has at its core the work of the Select Committee on the Electoral Registration and Administration Act, which I chaired and which reported in July. We learned, in our extensive deliberations, that though electoral registers are primarily prepared for use at elections for voting purposes, they have other uses, such as enabling juries to be enlisted and providing proof of residence by credit agencies. Importantly, they are also used as a series of building blocks for constituencies and their boundaries.

Sadly, registers are far from perfect, but it must be right to get them as accurate and complete as possible. The committee made a series of proposals for improvement. The most glaring omission from registers is that 75% of young people known as attainers—people aged 16 or 17 who may be added to the register so that they are able to vote when they attain the age of 18—are not registered. They are very relevant to this Bill—hence the reason for this amendment. I am delighted that four Members subscribing to the amendment are former members of the Select Committee and cover the four corners of the House of Lords.

There is, too, precedence for this action, in that it follows on from the work of the House three years ago in its consideration of the Higher Education and Research Bill in 2017. The House approved an amendment, moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, to enable higher education students to be easily registered, through collaboration between the Office for Students and electoral registration officers. A Department for Education guidance leaflet on facilitating registration shows that in one university, De Montfort in Leicester, of those students qualified to register, 98.5% provided details for registration. The amendment seeks to put all young people in the position of the De Montfort students, so that the present 25% registration rate comes more into line with that of their elders. The Electoral Commission paper, Completeness in Great Britain, indicates that the highest rate for completeness is for the over 65s, at 94%, whereas the lowest level is that of attainers—the 16 to 17 year-olds—which has declined from 45% in 2015 to 25% in 2019.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

My Lords, I have received no request to speak after the Minister, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Shutt.

[Lord Shutt of Greetland (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lords who spoke in favour of this amendment, which is everybody bar the Minister. It is important that this is an all-party affair and that registration is seen as beyond party. I am very disappointed in the Minister’s response, but not surprised. I do not understand how registration is a voluntary act, yet you can be fined if you do not register. That is a very strange form of volunteering.

The Minister has said a great deal about what the Government are doing. We heard about it in Committee and it is all commendable stuff. However, she has not said, for example, how it can be that in 2015 45% of attainers were on the registers and it is now down to 25%. That seems to me failure; it is not success.

I do not think this is good enough. It is not good enough for our young people, so I would like to test the opinion of the House.