Electoral Register

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, it is up to all of us, not just the Government, to make sure. I was with the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, at UCL the other week. We all three made the point that it was extremely important that students both register and vote, and we should all be repeating that message each time we go to a college, university or school. The noble Lord will have seen the Electoral Commission’s announcement of its pre-election campaign earlier this week. That is another dimension of this. There will be advertising online and in the media. The Government are very happy that in February a million new applications came in to register. We expect there to be a similar surge in the last few weeks before the closing date, as there was in 2010. We are not at all complacent, but as the election gets closer, we expect interest to rise and we expect the 2.7 million applications which have come in since last December to be added to by, we hope, another million.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, as there are penalties for not registering, can my noble friend explain to me—he has failed to do so in the past—why we do not move towards compulsory registration?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, has also asked me this question on a number of occasions. We would be moving towards a different relationship between the citizen and the state. In Denmark, Finland and Germany, there is a national population register. If you are on a national population register, you are automatically also on a voting register. It is also used for welfare, taxation and a range of other questions. That takes us down the road towards national identification numbers and national identity cards. We will have to have that debate in the next Parliament. It is not the tradition in this country.