DRAFT Representation of the People (England and Wales) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2015 Draft Representation of The People (Scotland) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2015

John Penrose Excerpts

Monday 2nd November 2015 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (John Penrose)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Representation of the People (England and Wales) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2015.

[The Chair]

With this it will be convenient to consider the draft Representation of the People (Scotland) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2015. I will ask the Minister to speak to both the instruments. At the end of the debate, I will put the question on the first motion and ask the Minister to move the remaining motion formally.

[The Chair]

I am advised that the changes have not had any effect on delegated legislation Committees thus far, so every Member is entitled to vote on every delegated legislation Committee for the time being—and, of course, we are debating an amendment for Scotland as well.

[John Penrose]

It is a pleasure to have you looking after us today, Mr Hamilton. I reassure the hon. Member for Edinburgh East that he is not only welcome but entitled to speak and vote on this secondary legislation.

The Committee will be aware that individual electoral registration, or IER, was successfully introduced last year, enabling for the first time people in Great Britain to apply online to register to vote. Since then, nearly 12 million people have applied to register under IER, three quarters of whom have applied online. I recently spoke at Policy Exchange about the vision for future electoral registration, maximising opportunities for a complete and accurate register, and ensuring that as many of our citizens as possible can participate in our democracy. People rightly expect digital services to be built around them, and we want to do that, making the system as efficient as possible while driving down costs. The regulations are a modest step towards that future.

The regulations will remove the requirement on applicants for electoral registration to provide their previous name if it has changed in the past 12 months. Instead, they allow applicants to provide their most recent previous name if they wish; it is no longer mandatory. The Electoral Commission is required, when designing the application form, to provide a space for non-mandatory provision of the most recent previous name, and an explanation of the fact that if previous name details are not provided, additional personal information may be required to verify the application.

Secondly, the instruments make changes to the correspondence required to be sent by electoral registration officers to electors and applicants for electoral registration. Thirdly, the regulations update the electoral register application form and the annual canvass form to bring them in line with changes made by the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 to the jury summoning age in England and Wales, to ensure that the correct information for jury summoning is collected on the electoral register. They also authorise electoral registration officers in England and Wales to inspect marriage records in order to improve the accuracy and completeness of the electoral register. Finally, the regulations make a minor, consequential amendment relating to the provision of personal identifiers for postal voting.

The changes are relatively minor and technical and, I hope, are therefore relatively straightforward. I do not propose going into huge amounts of detail at this stage, although I am obviously happy to answer any questions that Committee members have. I commend the regulations to the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Penrose]

I will endeavour to respond to the points raised by my shadow counterpart, beginning with the question about previous names. He is absolutely right that a number of organisations representing the transgender community were concerned about the impact on transgender people’s willingness or ability to register successfully. We listened carefully to those concerns. There was not unanimous agreement that the accommodation should be made—there were some dissenting voices against it from outside the transgender community—but we decided to go with it, and it has been widely welcomed in the transgender community; I have a long list of organisations with which we consulted in the run-up to the regulations, and broadly speaking, everyone within that community has been pleased. I therefore hope that it will result in higher levels of registration in one of the more difficult-to-reach and less well represented groups on the electoral register.

My shadow counterpart also mentioned that the Electoral Commission provided us with useful advice. He is right that we do not always agree with the Electoral Commission, but we always pay close attention to what it says. In particular, he mentioned its reaction to correspondence on registration. Some Scottish and various other bodies commented as well. The regulations make changes regarding the correspondence that must be sent between electoral registration officers and electors or applicants to be registered. The changes are designed to help reduce the administrative burden on electoral registration officers; the potential for confusion among members of the public, by avoiding multiple pieces of correspondence; and the overall costs of the process of electoral registration.

The regulations amend how EROs can send confirmation of registration to successful applicants, and what information that confirmation must contain. When EROs have conducted a review of an individual’s entitlement to registration, they will require the ERO to notify the individual in writing of the outcome and to provide information about the appeal process. They also require the ERO to send the individual notice in writing of the outcome of a review hearing, and to provide information about any appeal process.

The regulations amend the categories of case in which the ERO does not need to send a letter to any person affected by an alteration to the electoral register. The Government are also taking the opportunity to correct an error in the 2001 regulations about personal identifiers for absent voters. I hope that that clarifies where we have gone in the regulations. It is all relatively detailed, but I hope that it shows that we have been paying attention to many of the comments made and responses to the consultation.

Finally, my shadow counterpart asked about the Sewel convention. I am informed that it does not apply specifically in this case. However, as I hope he would expect, we have consulted with the devolved Governments, and Scotland has certainly indicated that it is happy with the regulations, so we have proceeded on that basis. I hope that that answers the hon. Gentleman’s questions, and that we can move to what I hope is a widely supported approval of the measures.

Question put and agreed to.

DRAFT REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE (SCOTLAND) (AMENDMENT) (No. 2) REGULATIONS 2015

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft Representation of the People (Scotland) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2015.—(John Penrose.)