National Voter Registration Day

Lord Wills Excerpts

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we need a range of activities by a range of different organisations, including political parties, of course. We touched on citizenship education yesterday. The activities in schools—I hope that Peers and others will help in that by going into schools—are all part of the effort we need to make to engage young people in the registration process.

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

My Lords, why do the Government not send registration forms with every student loan?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

It is partly because we want people to register to vote online. It is more efficient and cheaper. A number of efforts are going on with universities to ensure that students are also encouraged to vote. There will be various activities during Freshers’ Week. I will take that back as a suggestion but we feel that we are covering this in another, more effective way.