European Union Referendum: Young Voters

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Thursday 26th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, I must at once pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, for this debate on this most pressing issue, and for his tremendous, unremitting work to counter the grave underregistration of young people in our country today. Earlier this week the Evening Standard reported that some one in five young people in London were not registered. As president of Bite The Ballot, an organisation that is greatly admired in this House as elsewhere, the noble Lord is playing a conspicuous part in a continuing campaign of the highest importance.

With the deadline for registering for the referendum rapidly approaching, Bite The Ballot, as we have heard, is working intensively to try to get 500,000 more young people registered and to produce simple, factual and neutral information to get those who are registered to cast their votes. That will make a pleasant and a welcome change after the deluge of exaggerated and tendentious claims that have come from both sides in this campaign so far. Everywhere there is an intense desire to have serious, well-informed and balanced material to assist voters in this crucial referendum. One suspects that the appetite for such material is especially strong among the young.

The Government, for their part, are making available substantial extra resources to help tackle our country’s serious problem of underregistration, and there are other initiatives, too. Last month, universities, further education colleges and sixth-form colleges received letters from Ministers, urging them to promote registration. Mr Nick Boles, Minister for Skills, wrote:

“I want all of us in the further education and sixth form community to do everything we can to encourage those eligible to register to vote”.

Words of greater eloquence more calculated to inspire the recipients of Mr Boles’s letter to take action might have been better, but the message was undeniably clear.

In his reply to this debate the Minister may perhaps be able to tell the House what indication universities and the “further education and sixth-form community” have given the Government as to the results of their endeavours so far. Has interest in the referendum been boosted by debates in student unions on Britain and the European Union, which would stimulate registration to vote? Academic institutions in the tertiary sector can do so much to draw young people fully into participation in the great national decision that will be made on 23 June.

Any discussion of underregistration leads ultimately to schools. I have with some frequency drawn attention to the excellent work done in Northern Ireland by its highly respected Electoral Office under what has come to be known as the Northern Ireland schools initiative— although budget cuts now threaten that office’s future work. Regular visits to schools by its staff in recent years have helped make Northern Ireland’s registration rate among 18 and 19 year-olds much higher than the Great Britain average.

The importance of the Northern Ireland schools initiative is underlined in the recent all-party report, Getting the Missing Millions Back on The Electoral Register, which I commended to the House earlier this month. The first of the 25 recommendations in the report calls on the Government to replicate the initiative in the rest of our country by issuing special guidance to electoral registration officers so that,

“registration may be incorporated into school life”.

As we consider the millions missing from the registers for the referendum, is not that recommendation of particular long-term importance?