EU Referendum: Voter Registration

Baroness Smith of Basildon Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for repeating the Statement and for updating the House on more recent developments.

I understand that the Minister has a good memory, so I ask him to cast his mind back to 27 October last year—the date on which, against the advice of the Electoral Commission, the Government forged ahead with individual electoral registration. On that day, nearly nine months ago, he assured your Lordships’ House that,

“people have been given ample opportunity to register on the new system”.

He added:

“The Government believe that we are past the tipping point. Remember, 96 out of every 100 electors have successfully registered”.—[Official Report, 27/10/15; cols. 1123-27.]

Clearly, that is not the case because, as the Minister has just said, there were 1 million such people in the past week and 4.5 million over the past few months. We had the chaos last night of the Government’s own website being unable to cope. Does the Minister now regret persuading your Lordships’ House, despite all warnings to the contrary, to rush the introduction of individual electoral registration, on which the new constituency boundaries will be redrawn?

The deadline of midnight last night was made for a reason—and we welcome the extension. Is the Minister now satisfied that the system is robust enough to cope with any applications made between now and midnight tomorrow? Can he assure your Lordships’ House that support and resources will be provided to local government to ensure that they can process all those applications, so that nobody loses the right to vote?

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

First, I begin by thanking the major parties in both Houses for their support on where we are now. The Government are extremely grateful for that. I understand the considerable passions raised in this House last year about the move to IER and our removal of carry-forwards. I remind your Lordships why we did so. Those removed from the register in 2015 had failed to respond to nine contacts from their electoral registration officer encouraging them to register individually before 2015. Not removing them would have led to an inaccurate register, which would have distorted the boundary review, this May’s elections and, potentially, the referendum. The register used for the boundary review was, as set out in the legislation agreed by both Houses, the register as at 1 December 2015. That was following a full annual canvass, and in a general election year. It is necessarily a snapshot, and the register has always continued to change while the review is taking place.

As to whether the system is robust enough, that is a fair point. We are looking urgently to ensure that it is because, clearly, we want to avoid what happened last night. Forgive me—I have forgotten the noble Baroness’s final question.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

My final question was whether there were resources and support for local government to process the applications.

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

That is another fair point. We are indeed going to ensure that we cover reasonable costs for the EROs.