Electoral Status: Online Access

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

The noble Lord makes a good, practical point. I have had conversations with other agencies across government about precisely that, and we are actively considering how we can use the regular communications that government undertakes with individuals. However, I am told that, where this has been piloted in the past, there has been a problem with mixed messages—in other words, a call to action to do one thing can be confused with a call to action to do another. But the noble Lord is absolutely right and it is a matter that I continue to look at.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I return yet again to the subject of compulsory registration. There are penalties for not registering. What conceivable logic is there in not having compulsory registration? It is not the same as compulsory voting, even though some of us might think that there is merit in that. Can we please look at this again?

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

I am sure that we will continue to discuss and debate this matter, but the Government believe that active engagement on registering to vote is preferable. The success of the new individual electoral registration system shows that it is making it easier to register to vote. Between the unfortunate downtime at 10 pm last Tuesday and the close of the registration period on Thursday night, for example, there were more than 453,000 applications.