Individual Electoral Registration

Henry Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Lady would not seriously expect me to comment on individual cases, particularly when I do not have the details of them. On her second point, people are not legally obliged to register to vote. If they receive inquiries from the local authority—the household registration form or some other inquiry—they are legally obliged to respond to them accurately, but there is no obligation on individuals to register at all. When registration is a household matter, and a person is responsible for registering other people, it is right that that should be obligatory, but when individuals take responsibility for their own registration, it is perfectly reasonable to say that it is up to them whether they choose to register— [Interruption.] We live in a free society, and people are entitled to decide whether they wish to be registered to vote and to cast their vote. That is the position today, and it will remain unchanged.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I very much welcome the Minister’s statement today. He mentioned the checking of national insurance numbers. These are of course available to people who are not citizens of this country or other eligible countries. What sort of citizenship or nationality checks will be carried out on those people?

[Mr Harper]

Electoral registration officers already have to undertake a number of checks to confirm that people are eligible to vote, particularly in different sets of elections. My hon. Friend will know that, for example, in order to vote in a general election, a person has to be a citizen of the United Kingdom or a qualifying citizen of the Irish Republic or the Commonwealth. Those checks will remain as they are now. The checking of the date of birth, signature and national insurance number will enable the registration officers to be confident about someone’s identity, which will enable those other checks to be more accurate.