Automatic Registration: UK Elections

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Owen Thompson (Midlothian) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered automatic registration in UK elections.

This issue came to my attention during the run-up to the EU referendum, when an appalling situation left many voters unregistered when the Government’s registration website failed. However, that is not the only source of my frustration. The introduction of individual electoral registration saw hundreds of thousands of people in Scotland wiped off the electoral register without their knowledge. The UK Government failed to properly engage with the public to explain the transition, which led to the EU referendum voter registration deadline becoming a total shambles.

In light of that chaos and the consequences of the transition to IER, the UK Government should consider introducing automatic registration for voters. I intend to show not only that automatic registration is a worthwhile consideration with many benefits, but that it is supported by key organisations from across the country. The system is widely used in various parts of the world; some of the best examples come from our very good friends in Europe and beyond, and they are far richer for it.

Following our most recent referendum, the EU and Europe might be a useful starting point. Although this debate is not about the result as such, one point is perhaps bittersweet in its relevance. If the EU referendum has taught us anything, it is that people’s votes matter. Voting and engaging in elections and referendums can have radical consequences that alter the policies and direction of Governments both at home and abroad. There are many lessons to be learned from the recent referendum, most notably that we should be careful what we vote for.

There are many reasons for people to be disappointed, and not just by the vote to leave the EU. For election geeks like me, the demographics make for interesting reading. It was clear throughout the referendum campaign that different societal groups had different opinions, with a particularly notable variation in voting intentions between different age groups. It was in a similar vein to the Scottish independence referendum—the 16 to 24-year-old bracket, at least on average, is pro-European and pro-independence. Voters in older age groups are more likely to be pro-Brexit and pro-UK, which has led to disappointment and frustration among young people, at least for the 26% who turned up to vote in the EU referendum.

It is disappointing that young people did not turn out in the EU referendum, with many being bombarded with negative messages and others feeling disfranchised by out-of-touch politicians. For many, registering to vote was a barrier in itself. There will be many vigorous debates about engaging young people to vote, and organisations such as the National Union of Students have been pursuing the issue with a view to understanding it. The NUS is campaigning heavily to ensure that its members are informed of why they should vote.

The NUS, among many others organisations, has led a number of fantastic campaigns to encourage young people to vote. However, according to Ipsos MORI, only 43% of 18 to 24-year-olds turned out at the 2015 general election, compared with 78% of over-65s. The issue of young people and students not turning out can be attributed to their mobile lifestyles, with many moving home every year. The challenges for transient young people in particular present a strong case for voter registration to be integrated into the university and college academic enrolment process. Such a system was successfully developed by Sheffield University for the 2015 general election and has been used by a number of other institutions. The model could easily be further developed and rolled out across other institutions.

Additionally, the change to individual electoral registration has had dramatic effects on young people’s ability to vote. Groups such as Bite the Ballot raised concern about that at the time, rightly warning that there would be a decline in voter registration among young people. The change to the system led to a reduction of nearly 190,000 14 to 17-year-olds who will reach voting age during the time in which the register is used. That equates to a 40% reduction in the number of young people registered to vote. Given the implications of referendums, it is critical that everyone’s say is heard, particularly that of young people. They are the future of our countries, and we must make sure they have a voice.

It is quite a conundrum that Government policies often affect the people who are least likely to vote. Although a number of organisations are leading the charge to encourage engagement, we as parliamentarians must take the lead and be bold where we need to be.

There is a similar story to tell about other marginalised groups. Women continue to turn out to vote in lesser numbers than men. Between 1992 and 2010, there was an 18% shortfall of women voters. The inclusion of women in politics has been proven to enhance the turnout of women in general—interestingly, in constituencies where women are elected as MPs, the average turnout of women tends to be about 4% higher than the average turnout of men.

That shows the importance of encouraging women to participate in politics and become engaged with the political system, which begins with women being registered to vote. We need only look outside today to see just how much women care about politics. Political decisions can have huge implications for women and their families, and I applaud and support the actions of the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign outside Parliament this afternoon.

The views of people with disabilities are also not represented sufficiently. Scope, the disability rights charity, found that 67% of disabled voters who attempted to vote encountered one or more barriers when they tried to exercise their democratic right. That is simply unacceptable and demonstrates the barriers that thousands of people could experience in simply registering to vote in the first place.

Mencap, another charity dedicated to promoting the rights of people with disabilities, established a helpline for people with learning disabilities for the 2015 general election, which was a fantastic move to help those who were already registered to vote. I am most grateful to Mencap, but we need to do more.

Voting turnout among black and minority ethnic people in 2015 was just 56%, in contrast to the 68% of people identifying themselves as white who voted. Just 56% of men from socially and economically deprived social classes turned out to vote, with the figure for women from that group only slightly higher at 57%. Automatic voter registration would cut many of the bureaucratic ties that hold back the participation of all those people, whose voices are much needed in our House, which is too white, too male, too old, too non-disabled and too exclusive.

In Scotland, we do elections well. In the Scottish independence referendum, turnout and registration reached unprecedented levels; more voters than ever before registered to have their say. However, the UK Government’s implementation of the individual electoral registration system undermined the Scottish Government’s efforts to ensure that there was maximum voter registration. There was a period of transition to the new system, beginning in June 2014. It was due to end in December 2016, but instead the UK Government brought the end date forward by a year to December 2015. That move was condemned by the Electoral Commission, which said there was

“a risk to the completeness of the register and to participation”.

The Scottish Government were absolutely opposed to shortening the transition period, which left electoral registration officers trying to minimise the loss of franchise.

A similar problem ensued across the UK. Essentially, a situation was created in which voters were effectively disfranchised. Combined with widespread voter disillusionment with politics in general, that was a disaster for democratic mobilisation and political engagement. The Government failed to engage properly with the public to explain the transition. They must start to mend the damage that has been done by the mistakes that have been made, and more than ever we need to re-engage people.

It will be incredibly difficult for voters to feel enthusiastic about politics again, having endured a remain campaign characterised by “Project Fear” scaremongering and a Leave campaign that used xenophobic rhetoric, such as the UK Independence party’s despicable “Breaking Point” advert.

In Scotland, the SNP ran a measured and positive campaign on the EU and focused on encouraging turnout. I am incredibly proud of my colleagues and of my own constituency of Midlothian, which overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU; I hope that it will indeed do so.

In short, there is much to learn from Scotland’s politics. With registration at 98% and an 85% turnout in the independence referendum, it is fair to assume that higher registration and higher turnout have at least some correlation. Our friends in Europe and beyond seem to be on the same page. Most European countries have ensured that their citizens are automatically able to vote using various forms of automatic registration. Other countries have been able to achieve far higher and more democratic levels of participation through such schemes. They remove a major hurdle in the election process and make elections as accessible as possible.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent case for improved voter registration. Does he agree that automatic registration would reduce the number of errors in the registration process, such as when multiple people are registered at a house but only one voter actually still lives there?

[Owen Thompson]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. We could see many benefits, and the system could be greatly simplified if we introduced automatic voter registration.

Countries such as France, Sweden, Australia, Greece, Austria, Brazil and Uruguay, to name but a few, ensure that as many of their citizens as possible can exercise their free democratic right to vote without barriers. In the UK, many people think that they are already on the register because they pay their council tax and expect those running elections to know about them, but at the last election two thirds of polling stations turned voters away. People thought they were on the register, but they were not.

The last-minute rush for registration puts huge strain on devolved council registration offices, of which there are about 400 throughout the UK. The database is so fragmented that even the Electoral Commission does not know the extent of the problem. At nearly every election we see the same thing: a huge rush to register to vote in the day or two before the deadline. The day before the EU referendum deadline, 186,000 people applied to register to vote online, and at least 27,000 we still using the Government website when it crashed. On an ordinary day, the figure would have been about 10,000. Such an erratic and outdated approach to the right to vote is unique in the developed world.

If people have a passport, are registered for council tax and already have a national insurance number, surely there is enough information about them in the system to allow them to be automatically entered in a voter database. We do not have register to pay tax, so why should we have to register to vote? Many others agree. Earlier this year, the all-party group on democratic participation, of which I am a co-convenor, published the “Missing Millions” report, which presented tried and tested solutions that would keep the register up to date all year round.

The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in the previous Parliament also agreed. On 14 November 2014, it published an interim report on voter engagement and invited the public to respond to several draft conclusions and recommendations. Following an extensive consultation, with more than 5,000 responses received, the Committee published a follow-up report based on the views of the public. That report recommended that the Government consider improvements to electoral registration, including by making registration automatic, prompting people to register to vote when they access other public services, and registering young people in schools, colleges and universities. The report also recommended that the Government introduce plans to target the groups that are currently least likely to be registered to vote, and that changes to electoral management be looked into and piloted, such as online voting, allowing people to register closer to or on election day, and holding elections at the weekend.

I note that the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) agrees with me. I was disappointed that her ten-minute rule Bill on automatic electoral registration did not go further. I share her frustration, having also had a ten-minute rule Bill that failed to proceed further. I know that she and others are continuing to work on this issue to find out what other steps can be taken.

Whenever automatic registration has been proposed previously, the message from the Government has consistently been that it is a person’s own responsibility to register to vote, but now that we have seen catalogues of failures of the kind we saw in the run-up to a vote that will change lives forever, it is clear that we must ensure that such failures can never happen again. We must have a robust system, and we must break down barriers to voter registration. The Government must use common sense and take heed not just of my voice but those of the many expert organisations and groups that are calling for change—I hear that we are now listening to experts again.

Automatic registration would ensure that the enrolment system was more efficient and effective, while making voting easier for people and more democratic. It would remove the barriers faced by minority groups and others who are less likely to engage in the enrolment process, and it would mean that we could reach more old, young, disabled and disadvantaged people, regardless of their gender, background or race. That would promote inclusive and forward-thinking democracy for all. This is not about taking away from politicians the responsibility to engage young people. Voting is a fundamental right, and automatic voter registration would enable many disfranchised people from across our society to participate in a system that needs their voice.

Voting is a fundamental right, and automatic voter registration would enable so many disfranchised people from across our society to participate in a system that needs their voice.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

It is an unexpected pleasure to serve under your chairmanship quite so soon, Mr Howarth, but I see that the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) also has speaking notes. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson) on securing the debate. I will offer a few reflections that are similar to his, and emphasise some points he made.

The debate is taking place in a political scenario where everything has “changed, changed utterly”—words written by W.B. Yeats 100 years ago about a slightly different kind of political upheaval, but political upheaval none the less. That is what we are undergoing here. The debate comes at the end of, unfortunately, a shambles of a referendum process.

The Government had the opportunity throughout the passage of the European Union Referendum Bill to take on board constructive proposals made by the Scottish National party and others, not least to extend to the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds and to put in place a four-nation lock so that no part of the UK would be taken out of the EU against its will. Now we face the prospect of Scotland, Northern Ireland, Gibraltar and London being taken out of the EU against their will.

The refusal to give ground when the Bill was passing through Parliament seemed to carry on throughout the dreadfully negative campaign—on both sides—south of the border, despite the best efforts of those of us in Scotland to raise the tone and raise the positive aspects. Perhaps that culminated in the website crash on 7 June, which led to this debate. There are lessons to be learnt from the referendum campaign in the round, but the difficulties that were faced by people trying to register to vote and to have their say gives us the opportunity to reflect on that particular bourach.

I will look in a little bit more detail at the problems with individual electoral registration and the case for automatic registration, and I will perhaps give some brief reflections on how that fits in with wider electoral reform to improve turnout and voter engagement.

Individual election is not necessarily a bad thing in itself. In fact, we could probably argue that a system of automatic registration is just an automated or enhanced version of that. We probably all agree that that is preferable to the household registration where everyone in a household is vouched for by one elector under the previous canvass system. The idea of individuals being registered is not necessarily at stake; it is the process by which they end up on the register.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian clearly demonstrated, the roll-out of the process has been botched massively by the Government, leading to significant confusion for many voters in the Scottish and European referendums about whether they were registered in the first place. The Minister admitted, during the emergency legislation and the statements after the website crash, that a lot of the registrations that came in at the last minute were duplicates because people were already on the electoral register but feared somehow that they were not because of the confusion and misunderstanding. That was undoubtedly compounded by the decision to bring forward the transition deadline to December 2015.

Of course, that may well have had an effect—[Interruption.] The Minister is asking me how. Well, not giving people enough time to consider and double check their registration status might have had the effect of making it more difficult for poorer and younger people to vote.

The Smith Institute reckons that up to 10 million people—perhaps 2.5 million dropping off the register and 7.5 million absent from any register at all—are not on the electoral register. That might have seemed like a good idea when the Conservative Government were worried about the mayoral and local government elections, but was perhaps less of a good idea when we look at the Brexit result, especially given that younger people, who will have to live with the decision much longer than any of us here, voted overwhelmingly to remain.

The Government really should have seen the website crash coming. As my hon. Friend mentioned, we had exactly the same situation in Scotland—it was just in a slightly more analogue form. On the day that voter registration closed before the European referendum, there were queues outside local authority registration offices until midnight. In fact, there was a wonderful party atmosphere as people wanted to ensure that they could have their say in that great exercise in democracy. Sadly, that once again stands in contrast with the way in which things were handled south of the border.

That brings us on to the case for auto-registration, which means a method that is simple and consistent. That does not conflict with the idea that people have the right not to vote—of course people have that right, and they could easily opt out if they were automatically registered—but it provides a level playing field at the one moment when we are all genuinely equal: when we cast our single ballot in the ballot box. That is a great social leveller, and a level playing field should therefore be provided for registration.

My hon. Friend looked at a whole range of different pilots and options. In preparation for the debate I read about motor voting in Oregon—when someone applies for a driving licence, they register to vote. The point is well made that the vast numbers of people who are on the council tax register think that they are therefore on the register to vote, and it stands to reason that there should be no taxation without representation. That is another possibility. Of course, in Scotland in days gone by people took themselves off the electoral register in order to avoid the unjust and punitive poll tax implemented by Thatcher and her Government—another democratic deficit that Scotland had to live with for so long.

[Alison Thewliss]

I am sure my hon. Friend shared my experience during the independence referendum that people were afraid to go and register because they thought that that would catch up with them and tax would be found from them. That did dissuade a lot of people. We need to look at the reasons why people are declining to register as well.

[Patrick Grady]

That is a well-made point. Of course, the Scottish Government moved to reassure people that they would not be hounded for their poll tax because they were registering to vote in the Scottish independence referendum.

The case for auto-registration is well made. It must be placed in the context of wider and further electoral reform and the need to find a range of ways that can improve voter turnout and engagement, and younger people’s engagement in particular. Voting early leads to voting often, which has been borne out in the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish experience now that the franchise has been extended to 16 and 17-year-olds. Of course, 16-year-olds who voted in the Scottish election in May were denied a vote in the European referendum, but they will have another vote in a year’s time in the Scottish local authority elections. They might be 18 by the time of the next general election—who knows?

That also relates to the introduction of proportional representation, especially as it is clear that we have a five-party—at least—system here in the Houses of Parliament. We have the pro-Brexit and anti-Brexit Conservatives, the pro-Corbyn and anti-Corbyn Labour people and then the SNP as a voice of consistency, unity and leadership. We are possibly bigger than some of those groups, so we may or may not be the official Government or Opposition by the end of the week.

On the dates of elections, and the referendum in particular, one of the experiences of the Scottish independence referendum was that, because it took place in the autumn, we had the entire, glorious summer of 2014—admittedly rare in terms of the weather—with long days and good weather when people could really get out on to the streets and knock on the doors. That is something we ought to consider both north and south of the border. Rather than elections in May, which means that campaigns take place in damp, cold winter months, an autumn election cycle could help increase participation. Those are my reflections. I am trying to stick as closely as possible to voter auto-registration and the time available, so I will leave my remarks at that.