Voter Registration: Students

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Storey

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Government have no plans to legislate to require electoral registration officers or schools and colleges to provide for pupils to register to vote at school. EROs are free to arrange registration sessions in their local education establishments, and many already do. The Government have recently provided additional funding to encourage activities which promote the registration of young people among other target groups.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I note what my noble friend says, but, given the success of the initiative in Northern Ireland, is there not a case for having an independent evaluation to see whether it is worth using that scheme in the rest of the UK? The fact that 189,000 17 year-olds in college will turn 18 before the deadline shows even more clearly how we need to get the message across.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we have, of course, evaluated the Northern Ireland experience. We were dealing with paper transactions then and we are now moving to online transactions. Since the beginning of February, there have been nearly 500,000 online registrations, so we are very much achieving what we want, and we look forward to seeing more coming. The Northern Ireland experience was useful at the time. However, it was not a great success in maintaining registration: that there was a very substantial drop-off after the first year of registration for 17 year-olds to the level of registration of 18 to 19 year-olds.

Electoral Registration

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Storey

Wednesday 4th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I have been in active conversation with electoral registration officers over the last year and more. The Government have just provided another £6.8 million for electoral registration officers, targeted on particular areas which have low registration, by and large in the cities. I also stress that the provision of online registration, which has been going now for a year and through which 3.33 million people have already registered, is very much one of the ways we get at young people. Knowing young people, including my own children, I think this is something that young people are likely to register on at the last minute.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My noble friend may be aware of an electoral registration app that can be downloaded on to smartphones, which was launched in Dundee. Have the Government any plans to use smartphone technology to increase voter registration?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, you can register online on smartphones. The Government are also using social and other media to add links to the registration website and to remind people as they use social media that now is the time to register to vote.

National Voter Registration Day

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Storey

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to encourage educational establishments to take part in National Voter Registration Day 2015.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Government welcome all initiatives that promote democratic engagement and increase electoral registration, such as National Voter Registration Day. The Government are keen to work with organisations that encourage young people to register to vote and look forward to hearing further details of next year’s event in due course.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I thank my noble friend for that standardised reply. I wonder if he might not consider actually giving a bit more substance to what he said. Given that we had a debate last week about British values, one of which is democracy, would it not be a good idea to do what has happened in Northern Ireland with the school initiative, where electoral registration officers go into schools, talk about democracy and its importance, and encourage young people to register to vote? Could we not consider a pilot scheme in the rest of the UK?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, with the approach of the general election next year, it is a bit late for pilot schemes. The Government have given £4 million to local authorities to promote registration among vulnerable groups. I am aware of three local authorities, Dumfries and Galloway, Ceredigion, and Redcar and Cleveland, that have specifically allocated some of this to looking at how to register young voters. In Ceredigion’s case, it has an explicit partnership with Bite the Ballot while doing this. We encourage all those activities. I remind the noble Lord that electoral registration is managed at the local level, which as a former local councillor he will well know.

Voting: Young People

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Storey

Monday 7th April 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, in the most recent visit by representatives of Bite the Ballot to the Cabinet Office they presented it with a draft voter mobilisation Bill that would indeed mean that when young people interacted with the state they would be reminded on each occasion to register. There are a number of quite tricky questions about government and the citizen, and how many things that you pull together in each interaction between government and the citizen, and we may be producing a Green Paper on this next year. We are conscious that the ICT revolution makes all this much easier, but the privacy lobby is not entirely keen on us making it as easy as we would like.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My noble friend will be aware that the schools initiative in Northern Ireland saw a 50% increase of the entire young people’s population. Why are we not running such a scheme in the rest of the UK?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are looking at the Northern Ireland Schools initiative that took electoral registration officers and others into schools, with forms, and that is one of the things that we will need to consider. We are also talking with teachers from the Association for Citizenship Teaching and others about how to energise students in schools and in further education colleges, to make sure that they are reminded that they have the opportunity and the duty to register to vote.