Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Angela Smith Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend.

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

I have not yet finished answering my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest, but of course I will give way before I ask the Opposition to withdraw their amendments.

On pace, I should say that we have hardly rushed this matter. In September 2010, I made an announcement at this Dispatch Box about our proposals. We then published draft legislation. We have conducted pre-legislative scrutiny, which I think even the hon. Member for Caerphilly admitted has gone at a reasonably leisurely pace. We have hardly been bounding through. Unlike the previous Government, we have not at the drop of a hat introduced Bills that no one had ever seen and then rammed them through the House. We have conducted ourselves in a thoughtful way, and we have hardly been rushing.

[Angela Smith]

In 2009, the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) said:

“That is one of the reasons why we will not oppose the timetable the Minister has suggested this evening…the Electoral Commission…and others who will be involved in the implementation of the Government’s current plans are concerned that this should not be rushed, but taken step by step to ensure that the integrity of the system is protected—and not only protected, but seen to be protected”—[Official Report, 13 July 2009; Vol. 496, c. 108.]

Will the Minister explain the change in point of view?

[Mr Harper]

There has not been a change in point of view. I did not want to bother the Committee with this again, but I am going to have to now. On Second Reading of the previous legislation in 2009, my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr Maude) made it clear that we approved of the decision to proceed with individual registration, but we thought that it could be accomplished earlier. We said at the time that it could be done earlier, and on page 47 of our 2010 manifesto we made a commitment to implement it swiftly. This is not new news.

As I said, when the Bill for which the Labour party was responsible left the House, it contained no provisions about individual electoral registration; they were inserted in the other place. When the Bill came back, it seemed to me that, having got the Government at least to move on that issue, it would have been churlish to have started cavilling about it.

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[Mr Harper]

Thank you, Ms Clark.

The danger for the hon. Member for Caerphilly is that, in his proposals, he urges us to deal with completeness, but, if we accept his argument that they would increase completeness, and I am not sure that they would, we find that they may do so at the expense of accuracy. They would leave on the register people who were not likely to be at the address in question any more, because they would not have responded to an electoral registration officer for some time.

[Angela Smith]

If accuracy is more important than completeness, why is the Minister allowing the register to be used for the general election in 2015? If it is good enough for the election, it is good enough for the boundary review.

[Mr Harper]

There is a very clear answer: the register’s use in the election will be its first use, and we know that at the time of a general election people will be very focused on it. By the time of the publication of the registers in 2015, individuals who have not been confirmed automatically at the start of the transition will have had more than one year to register individually, had more than two canvasses, been contacted a number of times by the electoral registration officer and between canvasses had a general election, a time when awareness of politics and voting is at its highest.

Our intention remains that EROs will write to individuals who have neither registered nor been confirmed towards the end of the 2015 canvass to inform them that they will be removed and to offer them one further chance to apply. It seems to me that, for somebody to be eligible to be registered, at their property and not to have registered individually for the 2015 register, they will almost have had to go out of their way to avoid being contacted by an ERO, and almost deliberately have not registered. The steps that we have put in place are very robust.

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[Angela Smith]

I beg to move amendment 5, page 18, line 27, at end insert—

‘(4A) In section 53 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 (power to make regulations as to registration, etc), after subsection (1) insert—

( ) Provisions shall be made by regulations requiring local authorities to share data with a registration officer in Great Britain for the purpose of—

(a) verifying information relating to a person who is registered in a register maintained by the officer or who is named in an application for registration in, or alteration of, a register,

(b) ascertaining the names and addresses of people who are not registered but who are entitled to be registered, or

(c) identifying those people who are registered but who are not entitled to be registered.

( ) Registration officers in Great Britain are to be under an obligation to utilise such information for these purposes.”.’.

[The Temporary Chair (Mr David Amess)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment 9, in clause 4, page 4, line 13, at end insert—

‘(5A) All higher and further education institutions must cooperate with local officers in providing a comprehensive list of students in all forms of residential accommodation.

(5B) Such lists must be provided at the start of each academic year.

(5C) Local authority officers must write individually to all students with an electoral registration form.’.

Amendment 10, page 4, line 13, at end insert—

‘(5D) In all forms of sheltered accommodation the person with responsibility for managing an individual premises must provide a list on an annual basis of individual residents to the local authority officer.

(5E) The local authority officer must write individually to all residents whose names have been provided on such lists.’.

Amendment 11, page 4, line 13, at end insert—

‘(5F) All private landlords must provide the relevant local authority on an annual basis with a list of all individuals to whom they rent residential accommodation. The local authority officer must write individually to all residents whose names have been provided on such lists.’.

[Angela Smith]

Before I move to the amendments, I want to reiterate the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr David), when he said that the Opposition support the principle of individual registration—it is important to keep repeating that—but that we think it can be improved. To some extent, then, our amendments seek to test the Minister’s thinking on information sharing.

Schedule 2 deals with information sharing and checking, and provides a clearing-house approach, so to speak, to verifying applications to join the register and to ascertaining the correct information for those who have not applied or those who are registered but not entitled to be so. The schedule provides for an important role, allowing the Secretary of State to establish the boundaries of the process for collecting, processing and disposing of data once used for the purposes for which it was released.

The schedule also makes it clear that criminal penalties will be levied for disclosing information in breach of regulations yet to be laid. Paragraph 93 of the explanatory notes makes it clear that the Secretary of State may require the Electoral Commission, the Information Commissioner and any other person he or she thinks appropriate to play a part in establishing the provision, and

“may also require the Commission to prepare a report on how data sharing arrangements have worked by a specified date.”

Furthermore, if a report is provided, it must be published by the Secretary of State concerned.

We consider that the right arrangement. We have laws relating to data sharing, which obviously is a sensitive issue, and those laws are rightly the law of the land. Nevertheless, we have some important questions. The Minister has committed in the legislation to funding the above provision. Will he commit to funding the provision properly, so that the work can be done efficiently and promptly? Will he share his thoughts about establishing the mechanism? Who will staff the new provision? Will it be another quango? Will it be another public body? If so, to whom would it be accountable? Who will oversee its work? And, importantly, will service-level standards be laid down in regulations? The last thing we want is for the right to register to be delayed unnecessarily because of backlogs or because data provided by applicants has not been verified by this new public body—if that is what it is.

Amendment 5, on data sharing, is slightly different: it is not about data sharing between one public body and another but about data sharing within a local authority. We want the Bill to oblige electoral registration officers, within local authorities, to use the data already available to him or her to verify as many applications as possible. We mostly know what those data are. The council tax database is one of the quickest and most effective means of verifying, in particular, the addresses of applicants. We also have council tenant lists and school rolls. All these databases, owned by every local authority in the land, can be used to help identify applicants.

There is no need, then, for the clearing-house mechanism in schedule 2 in relation to the data already held by a local authority. There is a clear distinction to make. A clearing-house mechanism is required, for example, when comparing Department for Work and Pensions data with the data supplied by applicants, but that is not the case within local authorities. That is an efficient use of public money. Many good electoral registration officers already follow this practice and make use of council tax databases to identify those who fail to register, but we need to strengthen that practice by obliging them to do it as a matter of routine.

Amendments 9 to 11 relate to clause 4 but have been grouped under schedule 2. We will come to clause 4 later in proceedings, but suffice it to say that the amendments relate to data sharing. A relatively superficial level of data could be shared by organisations such as universities, sheltered housing providers and private landlords.

[Jonathan Edwards]

Is there not a problem for sheltered accommodation, which has such a quick resident turnaround that the hon. Lady’s suggestion might prove difficult to implement?

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[Angela Smith]

Not necessarily, if we believe in the principle of the annual canvass, which covers whoever is in the accommodation at a given point in time. That is the key point.

Amendments 9 to 11 would be a common-sense approach to maximising the completeness of the electoral register under individual registration. They would require institutions such as universities, sheltered housing providers and private landlords to share with the ERO information on those resident in their premises—in other words, university residential accommodation, sheltered housing and homes rented out by private landlords. In two of those cases, the data would be simple addresses. Those addresses should be available via the council tax database, but nevertheless it would be a useful addition to the many strings that EROs need to do their job properly.

Schedule 2 also deals with much more serious data-sharing issues relating to more sensitive information, such as dates of birth, national insurance numbers, possibly passport numbers and information, and so on. There is a clear distinction, then, between clause 4, to which we will come and under which amendments 9 to 11 fall, and clause 2.

As I have said, amendment 9 relates to a requirement, which we think ought to be laid on universities, to pass over information relating to the students in their residential accommodation. The key point relates to an issue that was raised on Second Reading, when some Members clearly thought it ridiculous to suggest that students are somehow incapable of getting themselves registered once they go to university. However, the key point is that many students often assume that their parents register them at their home address—in other words, where they have come from to study. As the Minister said a few moments ago, however, most students are entitled to register at both—their home address and their university address—so it is important to do what we can to enable and encourage them to make use of that entitlement, so that they can choose where they exercise their right to vote.

Indeed, the response that the Minister gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) earlier this year illustrates the point perfectly. She asked the Minister:

“what assessment he has made of the effect that the introduction of individual electoral registration will have on levels of student registration.”

His response was:

“Research is currently being undertaken into the barriers young people face in registering to vote. This research will inform the development of our proposals for individual electoral registration …and in particular our approach to making the transition for students as simple and accessible as possible. In addition, we are working with organisations which represent students to establish the most effective methods of engaging students throughout the transition to IER. The Government will also be conducting further work to explore the potential of data matching for encouraging students to register.”—[Official Report, 19 March 2012; Vol. 542, c. 530.]

I think we would all be interested to hear this evening what progress is being made on that work. It sounds to me as though the Minister is at least sympathetic to the principles behind our amendments, which would make it necessary for those involved with the enrolment of students in an institution to make it as easy as possible for them to register.

The importance of this issue cannot be overestimated. Constituencies such as Sheffield Central, which is my neighbouring constituency, have more than 30,000 students potentially eligible to register to vote. Indeed, constituencies up and down the country, in places such as Cambridge, York, Oxford and Manchester, will, I would have thought, have similar numbers of students potentially eligible to vote—they include Manchester, Withington and Leeds North West. I am absolutely convinced that the Members in most of those constituencies will be very exercised about ensuring that the maximum number of students register to vote in those areas. Indeed, I am sure that the students there will be determined to exercise their right to vote in 2015 and that the Members there will want to facilitate that.

The other key point to make before I move on is that students do not pay council tax. That means that the information about the residents of an area that is usually available to the local authority is not available for students, which perhaps makes amendment 9 more important than the other two amendments in this group, when it comes to the Government dealing with this issue and making it easier for students to register to vote.

Amendment 10 deals with sheltered housing. The point here is surely that, as things stand, the local authority will have to write to every unit—if Members will forgive my using that term—of housing within a scheme to establish who lives in those properties before issuing an invitation to apply to register. In a way, most of the residents of sheltered housing schemes will be living either on their own or, perhaps, as part of an elderly couple, so a great deal of duplication could be avoided by giving the provider of sheltered housing the responsibility for ensuring that the invitations to register are sent out accurately, by providing information on who is resident in the properties in the first place. The information is available on the council tax database, but all in all, amendment 10 would make the whole process easier to implement and should improve the accuracy of the scheme. The other point is that many elderly disabled people live in sheltered housing. For them, it is important that someone—either the warden of a scheme, where we have them nowadays, or the person in charge of it—should take responsibility for ensuring that the names of all the people in that accommodation are passed on to the ERO.

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[Mr Harper]

A number of points have been raised; let me go through them.

First, I shall respond to the hon. Lady’s questions about the IT service. Part of the point of developing the pilots, and particularly the set that we will be discussing in the delegated legislation Committee tomorrow—I do not know whether I shall have the pleasure of seeing the hon. Members for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) or for Caerphilly (Mr David) there—is to ensure, as I think I mentioned, that they are scalable. One of the things that came through in the original pilots was that they are quite resource-intensive. One of the things that we want to look at, in seeing how some of this data capture will work, is ensuring that the process is scalable. The final shape of how the IT service will operate is something that we will work on over the next period, although the service will definitely not be a quango, because, apart from anything else, we deliberately do not have the power to create quangos in this Bill. The final shape is yet to be decided, but we are not going to create another unaccountable non-governmental organisation that nobody will have any control over.

The hon. Lady’s amendments fall into two groups. Amendment 5 deals with local authorities, a point that divides into two parts. In two-tier areas, the ERO already has the ability to look at all the data that the local authority they were appointed by possesses. He or she can therefore look at council tax data and housing benefit data. The gap arises in two-tier areas where the ERO currently does not have the ability to look at the data held by the higher-tier authority. One of the things we will do—not in the pilots that we will debate tomorrow, but in a further set of pilots—is look specifically at how effective the sharing of data is between those tiers of local authorities. If the pilots show that it is effective, we would propose to enable it for local authorities through secondary legislation—that is, if it works, we enable it.

However, the specific pieces of data that the hon. Lady mentioned, such as council tax—I think she also mentioned housing benefit—are already available to the ERO. Interestingly, not all of them use those data to the extent that they are able to, but they absolutely have access to it. Clearly, it is more sensible to use those data, because they map quite considerably across the population and there is access to them. In fact, one of the factors determining registration is people moving. When people move, they generally get registered for council tax purposes. If the EROs are doing their job properly, they will use those data to ensure that their register is up to date.

The situation is slightly different in other circumstances, however. The hon. Lady mentioned further and higher education institutions. Under regulation 23 of the Representation of the People (England and Wales) Regulations 2001, registration officers already have the power to

“require any person to give information required for the purposes of that officer’s duties”.

They can, and do, use that power to require FE and HE institutions to provide such information. That is the legal basis on which it is provided to EROs by, for example, universities with student accommodation. Otherwise, the institutions would not have a legal basis on which to disclose it. So that amendment is unnecessary, as the power already exists.

The hon. Lady asked what we were doing specifically about students. We are working with groups that represent students, such as the National Union of Students. From memory, I think that I have a meeting in my diary this week to discuss this issue with the relevant NUS officer, who has written to me about it. We are also working with organisations that interact with students, such as the Student Loans Company, to look at ways of using the information to ensure that students are given every opportunity, and that it is made as easy as possible for them, to register to vote. It is worth remembering that the existing block registration applies only to university students in halls of residence. It does not apply to those living outside the halls, and the situation will obviously vary across universities. We are absolutely taking this issue seriously.

The question of sheltered accommodation has been raised by a number of organisations. EROs already have the power to require the managers of sheltered accommodation to provide the relevant information to them. Their duty then obliges them, once they have the information, to write to those people. We are also working with organisations that represent people who live in sheltered accommodation, to look at ways of simplifying the process and making it more straightforward. This information will be considered in our second round of data-matching pilots.

The hon. Lady’s final point related to private landlords. I do not think that her proposal adds a great deal, however. The main reason that those in private rented accommodation are less likely to be registered is not directly related to their being private tenants; it is related to the fact that they move more often.

[Angela Smith]

That is what I said.

[Mr Harper]

Yes, I know that the hon. Lady said that, but it is because they are likely to move more often that they are also likely to miss the annual canvass. She will know that relatively few people use rolling registration to register to vote. Also, asking those landlords to provide an annual update—assuming that local authorities had a full list of all their private landlords—would have exactly the same flaws as the annual canvass. It would be unlikely to add anything to the process, except a lot of bureaucracy.

The hon. Lady referred to the barriers to registration. The work that we are doing with under-represented groups in that regard is well under way, and I will be in a position to publish it before the summer recess. What we really want to do is develop some of these proposals with evidence. We want to look at the barriers that prevent the various groups from registering. We know who the groups are, from the quantitative research carried out by the Electoral Commission, but our qualitative research, which will tell us why they are not registered, will be ready in the not-too-distant future. At that point, we will be able to consider how to tackle those barriers in a systematic and co-ordinated way.

I hope, therefore, that the hon. Lady will see that the necessary legal powers for electoral registration officers in all those circumstances are already available. We are doing the research, which will be published before the summer recess, and we are already working with most of the organisations that work with the under-registered groups. To be fair, she acknowledged that. On that basis, I urge her to withdraw the amendment.

[Angela Smith]

I thank the Minister for his response. I acknowledge that any scheme to enable data-sharing—particularly when those data are sensitive—will be IT-based, but I have never yet heard of an IT system that works without having the necessary people to put in the data in the first place. The Minister did not give a response about the cost, or about the commitment to funding the scheme properly to ensure that the service runs smoothly and without unnecessary delays. That is the key point, but he did not respond to it. If data sharing is to be used to verify applications in this way, we need to ensure that it does not lead to unnecessary delays, particularly in the run-up to the general election in 2015.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Lady is quite right; I did not respond to that point. I had written down all her other points, but I simply omitted to mention that one. The transition to IER is fully funded by the Treasury for this comprehensive spending review period; we are confident about that. We did not inherit a budget for this, incidentally; this was a budget that we had to put in place. I am confident that that is covered and that there are not going to be any issues relating to it. As I said, part of our work in the data-matching pilots involves ensuring that the project is scalable and that it works. We are conscious that, particularly when there is high demand for registration in the run-up to an election, we need to ensure that it all works. One element that will help EROs, particularly at high turn-out elections, is the fact that we know when the next general election is going to be, so it will not be sprung on them at short notice. That should help them with their planning and preparation.

[Angela Smith]

I thank the Minister for that very full response. I think that there was also an acknowledgment that the Government are relying on the data-testing pilots to ensure that the system runs properly. There is also, however, a refusal on the Government’s part to acknowledge the need to complete that testing work before we stop using the carry-over data for the boundary review in December 2015. There is therefore a potential problem, as we discussed earlier, in relation to the amendments. I am sure that we will come back to that matter.

On amendment 5, I entirely take the Minister’s point about the two-tier authorities; he is absolutely right. Nevertheless, he will be well aware that a large number of authorities are now unitary or metropolitan authorities. I said that a degree of data-sharing was already taking place internally within local authorities, but it remains the case that not all EROs are making use of that facility or using those data effectively to raise levels of completeness in their electoral registers. The amendment is about placing an obligation on EROs to use those data to make life easier not only for people wishing to register but for the EROs themselves in the long run.

On amendment 9, the Minister made the point that the power already exists to require higher and further education institutions to supply the relevant information to EROs. Again, that power is not necessarily being used. Now that we are introducing a radical new way of registering people to vote—namely, individual registration —it is even more important that that power should be properly used. We shall not therefore allow that amendment to lapse; we will seek to press it later.

As for the amendments relating to sheltered housing and private landlords, we believe that amendment 9, which deals with the provisions for universities, is a test of the Committee’s feeling on this key point about the sensible and common-sense sharing of data and the placing of obligations directly in the Bill to maximise the use of data-sharing practice without requiring complicated IT provisions or the verifications of the more sensitive data referred to in the schedule.

Opposition Members are receptive to the Minister’s point about barriers. Our deepest concern is that we might end up with an electoral registration system that effectively discourages and discriminates against those parts of the population that are the least likely to register. That is a great concern to us. That is why we believe we need a belt and braces approach to maximising registration and that that approach should be placed as much as possible on the face of the Bill.

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[Mr Harper]

I will not go into the issues in quite as much detail as the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), but I will make a couple of points.

The mandating of the data standards that local authorities use for their individual electoral registers is a matter for them. We have been clear about the fact that theirs are local databases, and that we are not trying to recreate a national database. However, the hon. Gentleman made a good point about interoperability and the exchange of data. In terms of data matching, existing national databases such as the DWP database have a consistent format. We are working with all the electoral management service suppliers who are contracted to local authorities in Great Britain as part of the process in order to optimise the working of the system.

Given that the hon. Gentleman has raised a number of issues, the best thing for me to do is reflect on them and then either write to him or, if it is not appropriate to do just that—given that he mentioned a specific company in his constituency—arrange a meeting with him, which might be more helpful, to make sure that I have addressed his points.

One of the things that we are doing in the pilot—I alluded to this in relation to confirmation—is making sure that the process whereby electoral registration officers send data to the DWP, and vice versa, is scalable. The hon. Gentleman referred to issues in the first set of pilots whereby a lot of EROs found the process resource-intensive. That is one of the things we want to focus on in the second round of pilots, in order to make sure that the process is scalable and does not generate lots of resource issues. Some of that may be about having open standards and making it easier to transmit the data. Let me reflect on the issue further, however. I will then write to the hon. Gentleman and, if necessary, we can have a meeting. I hope that that is a satisfactory response.

Question put and agreed to.

Schedule 2 accordingly agreed to.

Clause 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 4

Annual canvass

[Angela Smith]

I beg to move amendment 6, page 3, line 39, leave out from ‘canvass’ to end of line and insert—

‘(1A) The annual canvass must be held during the month of October every year in relation to the area for which the officer acts.’.

[The Temporary Chair (Mr David Amess)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment 8, page 4, line 6, at end insert—

‘(3A) Each local authority must write once a year to each address in their Local Land and Property Gazetteer (in Scotland the local addresses in the One Scotland Gazetteer).

(3B) Local authorities must also write to those properties not listed in the Gazetteer but which the local authority believes have been built in the previous two years.

(3C) In addition, the local authority should write to every property from which an electoral registration form has been returned within the past 10 years, except where the officer has good reason to believe that the property is no longer residential or has been demolished, and

(3D) The local authority should write to each property to which it has served a notice for charges or taxes within the previous five years.’.

Amendment 7, page 4, line 9, leave out ‘may’ and insert ‘must’.

[Angela Smith]

Clause 4 is important because it restates the requirement for an annual canvass, which we feel strongly about. It acts as a safeguard against potential long-term deterioration in the accuracy of the electoral register. Indeed, during an evidence session of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) made the point that in two constituencies that she had looked at—neither of them her own—the number of electors in 2011 was

“approximately 3,000 fewer than in 2010 when the general election took place.”

Her conclusion was that many people do not bother to re-register once a general election has come and gone. That encapsulates, for me and other Opposition Members, why we still need the annual canvass.

It is also a proactive approach, rather than one based on council officers chasing the gaps—for want of a better phrase—looking at and trying to resolve the apparent anomalies, and dealing with absences in the register via data-sharing and pursuance of the individuals concerned. That latter approach takes place behind the scenes and suggests that we need permanently to coerce people to go on the register. Although it cannot be denied that some people in this country refuse to register—many such cases, unfortunately, date back to the days of the poll tax fiasco, when many voters deliberately fell off the register in order to avoid being detected and paying fines—we believe that the best approach is a proactive one that gives people the opportunity, on an annual basis, willingly to apply to be on the register. That is what democracy is about; it is about saying to the citizens of any city, town or village, “We want you to exercise your right to vote, and to come forward with the information we need to put you on the register.” The annual canvass is a good and effective way of doing that.

As I have said, the clause restates the importance of the annual canvass, but it also deletes the current requirement that it be conducted on an annual basis every October. The key point is that it is 38 years since a general election took place in autumn or winter—that was the crisis election of October 1974. The one previous to that was another crisis election, that of February 1974. As we will all remember, that was triggered by a Prime Minister who wanted to call the miners’ bluff and asked who ran the country. Before that we had the March 1970 general election, which I am just old enough to remember. Prior to that were the elections in 1950 and 1951, which, of course, I am not old enough to recall—I thank God for that. The annual canvass should take place at a time of the year when we are least likely to have elections, and the EROs have the time and space to the job properly. They do not need to feel the pressure of an election coming in six or seven weeks’ time, and to be chasing their tails and worrying about the consumption of resources involved in ensuring that the electoral register that they are responsible for is as accurate and complete as possible.

[Mr Mark Williams]

I agree entirely with the hon. Lady about the huge importance of the annual canvass—she is quite right. I wonder whether she has had the time to consider the Electoral Commission’s comments about the timing of the annual canvass. It has complimented the Government’s measures removing the 15 October date as an opportunity for greater flexibility and greater completeness, because the gap between the canvass and the election could be reduced. I appreciate what she says about the rarity of those elections, but the Electoral Commission seems to be saying something different from what she is saying.

[Angela Smith]

I appreciate that point, and I have read what the Electoral Commission has said about it. However, the key point is the one I made a few moments ago, which is about the importance of getting it right. Secondly, the Electoral Commission has a certain perspective on this. A different perspective would understand the importance of stability at a time of radical change in the registration process. It has to be said that for as long as most of us can remember the culture of this country has seen us running an annual canvass in October every year. That is what people have come to understand, and under the new system there will still be a requirement for the head of the household, or someone in the household, to supply the information to the ERO to enable the sending out of the invitations to register. We will still have that culture of a form being filled in for every property, completed for every residence and returned to the ERO. Opposition Members feel it is important to continue the culture of running that exercise every October, not least because it is the time of year when further and higher education colleges enrol their new students.

In what is often a five or six month gap between the completion of the canvass and the establishment of the new register and the election, the chances of that register being grossly inaccurate are reasonably small. The risk of that is smaller than the risk of a drop-off—a fall—in the number of registrations because we have messed about with the time of year when people will register. I do not think that any hon. Member feels that an annual canvass should be run in July, Easter or post-Christmas. Is there any point in the year, other than October, that makes sense? There is a reason why October is the date, and we think we should stick with it. Amendment 6 would reinstate the requirement that EROs run an annual canvass in October of every year.

Amendment 8 seeks to strengthen and improve the process; this is the belt and braces approach that I talked about earlier in relation to amendments 9, 10 and 11. The gazetteer is a very complete and up-to-date list of any property in a local area. We believe that EROs should write once a year to every property listed in the gazetteer, supplemented by those properties that they know to have been built in the past two years, when registration forms have been returned in the past 10 years and when a property has been involved in the charging of taxes by the local authority in the past five years. In all those circumstances, we believe that the ERO should send a form to the property concerned to ensure that we do everything we can to guarantee the highest possible level of completion of each new register.

Earlier we argued for the need to glean information from university institutions, sheltered housing providers and private landlords in order to aid the process of building a high quality and highly complete register. We also believe, however, that such an approach should be supplemented by our using the soundest possible sources of information about which properties are occupied in any area when the local authority qualifies as an electoral registration authority. If the House agrees to those requirements, that will mean that we have done our best to guarantee that the new individual registration process succeeds rather than fails. That is the key point that Opposition Members are trying to make.

Amendment 7 deals with house-to-house inquiries on which, in our view, the Bill is far too weak. It gives EROs the power possibly to conduct a few house-to-house inquiries, stating that they “may” do so, but in our view they must carry out house-to-house inquiries, particularly when citizens have constantly and repeatedly refused to register to vote. Given that we have included a penalty in the Bill and reinstated the principle of enforcing the requirement on citizens of this country to register to vote, it makes sense that we should require EROs to do their utmost to ensure that the law on electoral registration is complied with. “May” is only one word, but it is very important and saying to EROs that they may, rather than must, conduct house-to-house inquiries represents a watering down of the commitment in the Representation of the People Act 1983.

I am convinced that not only Opposition Members but Government Members are fundamentally democrats at heart who believe in people’s right to vote and in the importance of their registering to vote. Let me make a plea to the Minister, who I know to be a man of logic and reason. The replacement of the single word “may” with the word “must” is a small concession to make for the sake of this House doing its best to ensure that democracy in this country is properly served and is as legitimate as it possibly can be. I call on the Minister to concede this amendment and to put hon. Members’ minds at rest on this point.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Amess, for the opportunity to comment, particularly on amendment 6 on the annual canvass, and the issues that it raises in relation to young people’s engagement in politics, and that of students in particular. I recognise that not all students are young people, but the vast majority are. Sadly, according to a million+ report produced recently, there are declining numbers of mature students as a result of the Government’s policies on higher education.

I represent a city where, as Members are aware, voters were turned away in large numbers at the general election. It is an issue which new clause 4 deals with later. Those voters were largely students or others who were affected by a surge in student voting, and those students were whipped up to vote by the fairly relentless campaigning of the Deputy Prime Minister on both our campuses, which are both in my constituency. Members will remember the “trust me, we’re different” initiative during the general election—the promise that

“We will resist, vote against, campaign against, any lifting”

of the cap on tuition fees, with a plan to abolish tuition fees within six years. I notice Members on the Liberal Democrat Benches looking a little bit embarrassed, and understandably so. That was no subscript in the manifesto. In constituencies such as mine, it was at the very heart of their party’s campaign, as the president of the Hallam university union, Caroline Dowd, said at the time:

“We could not get”

the Deputy Prime Minister

“out of our union before the general election.”

Afterwards, when she was being held to account, she pointed out that they could not get him in.

The broken pledge on tuition fees has not simply damaged the Liberal Democrats’ party; it has damaged trust in politics for a whole generation of young people. All the people who were persuaded to vote, queuing in Sheffield Hallam because they believed the pledge, they believed in a fresh approach, they believed that when people signed a solemn promise, they would keep it, feel betrayed by the trust that they put in politics. So many of them whom I have spoken to are now saying, “Why should we vote?” I have knocked on many student doors during subsequent local elections. This is precisely the time when we should be making extra efforts to engage students, not reduce their participation. Amendment 6 and the annual canvass in October specifically address that issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Heath]

Nothing is being superseded. The arrangements that we are putting in place will strengthen the requirement. I do not accept that changing the word “may” to “must” would make the slightest difference to those recalcitrant councils that simply do not do their job properly, and those are the ones that we and the Electoral Commission need to address. We will do so, and I am confident that at the end of the process we will have a better registration process than we have at the moment, and it will be much more inclusive of those who should be registered.

I heard the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) explain the numbering system in Edinburgh on Second Reading and I heard her again this evening, and I am afraid that I am still no more confident that I could understand how to deliver anything there. That is a matter that the electoral registration officer in Edinburgh needs to take very seriously.

I invite the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge to withdraw the amendment and to work with us to ensure that the arrangements in the Bill work most effectively.

[Angela Smith]

It has been a long night. I have listened carefully to the contributions from my hon. Friends the Members for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), for Glasgow South (Mr Harris) and for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore). The points made about amendments 7 and 8 should be taken very seriously, but I will leave it to the other place to discuss them in greater detail. We intend to press amendment 6 to the vote, because we believe that it is crucial to have an annual canvass at the right time of the year—the time when people understand that it takes place by tradition.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

The Committee proceeded to a Division.

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I ask the Serjeant at Arms to investigate the delay in the No Lobby.