Draft Electoral Registration Pilot Scheme (England) Order 2016

Cat Smith Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 General Committees

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Percy. I welcome this opportunity to discuss a pilot scheme that aims to improve the electoral registration process.

Sadly, the Government’s record on this area to date is poor. As a result of the Government’s rushed move to individual voter registration, 1.5 million people went missing from the electoral register from 2014. That is on top of an estimated 7.5 million people who were missing from the register prior to that date. The fact that so many of our citizens are disfranchised is a national scandal.

This debate is particularly timely, given the chaotic scenes we saw last month. In the hours leading up to the voter registration deadline for the EU referendum, so many people attempted to register that they crashed the Government’s website. There could not be a clearer indication of the need to improve the completeness of our electoral registers as a matter of routine. The Government must ensure that in future elections or referendums, individuals are not forced into a last-minute scramble to register.

I note that the Electoral Commission has given the pilot schemes a cautious welcome, with certain conditions. It states:

“The aims and objectives of the schemes must be well-defined and clearly stated, and include clear evaluation criteria to enable a proper assessment of their impact on the completeness and accuracy of the electoral register; the convenience of electoral registration for electors; and the costs of the electoral registration process.”

I am aware that Ministers do not always listen to the advice of the Electoral Commission, particularly when they want to push through individual voter registration ahead of the boundary review, but I hope that they will do so on this occasion. It would be useful if the Minister could provide further information on how he plans to evaluate the effectiveness of these schemes.

In particular, the proposal in article 5 to give electoral registration officers more discretion over how they contact households as part of the annual canvass is interesting. Will the Minister clarify how he will monitor whether the most appropriate method of canvassing a household is chosen by EROs over simply the cheapest? For example, an email or telephone call may end up being more cost-effective than a letter or a visit to an address. However, if the call is made while everyone in a household is at work, or if an email is sent to a defunct email address or simply ends up in a junk folder, some individuals may, in effect, receive no contact at all encouraging them to register.

In addition, how does the Minister plan to evaluate the effectiveness of the pilots in registering groups who we know are particularly poorly represented on the electoral register? Prior to the EU referendum, Bite the Ballot estimated that about 30% of young people aged 18 to 24 are not on the register. Certain black and minority ethnic groups are also woefully under-represented on it. According to the Electoral Commission, the registration rate for black people is only 76%, and for people of mixed ethnicity the rate is 73.4%. In 2014 the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee found that

“turnout for people from BME groups once they are registered to vote does not differ significantly from turnout for White British residents who are registered to vote.”

Although this is clearly a complex issue, that suggests that if we can find a way of improving registration rates among these BME groups, it would go a long way towards increasing the percentage of people who cast their vote at elections.

The Opposition look forward to monitoring the pilots and will work with the Government in supporting measures that are effective in improving the accuracy and completeness of the annual canvass.