Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Maxton Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Thornton and Lady Hayter, for the amendment, which, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, has indicated, commands support and consent across the House because of the sentiments and the importance of registering young people. However, the Boundary Commission would not be able to set about its review until a separate report, issued by the Secretary of State, confirmed that particular action had been taken to maximise the proportion of 17 to 24 year-olds on the electoral register, and that that had been approved by both Houses of Parliament.

I do not dispute that it is important for the electoral register to be as accurate and complete as possible. That is one reason why we are accelerating progress towards individual registration and introducing measures such as data-matching schemes to help local authorities gain as complete a picture as possible of eligible voters in their area, and particularly underregistered groups. The figures in the Electoral Commission’s report last March showed that the registration rate in the United Kingdom was more than 90 per cent, which compares well with other countries. While we, and everyone in your Lordships’ House, wish to see as complete and accurate a register as possible, boundaries have since the 1940s been based on the electoral register. To delay indefinitely any review of boundaries that are already 10 years out of date would not only be disproportionate, bearing in mind the overall picture of registration, but would make votes even more unequal than they already are.

It was important and instructive for the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, to talk about the surge in young voter registration in the previous general election campaign. As a result, those young people are now on the electoral register. They are likely to be on the register as at 1 December last year, which will be the basis of the Boundary Commission’s review for the report in 2013. It would be ironic if, as a result of carrying this amendment and with no possibility of the next general election being fought on new boundaries, we were still working from data from 2000 in England and that those who had registered as a result of the impetus in the previous general election were not taken into account. There is a distinction between the data for the review date and the important issue of trying to encourage registration, which has merit in its own right.

The Government are committed to taking steps to improve electoral registration as part of the move towards individual electoral registration. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, asked what the Government were doing. I thought that I had set that out in detail on Monday, and was encouraged by the fact that the noble Baroness, Lady McDonagh, said that she had been encouraged by what I had indicated. The Government will be trialling data matching later this year when the electoral register will be compared with other public databases to find people missing from the register, to see how effective it is in boosting the completeness of it. Based on the results of the trials, we will decide whether to roll it out more widely. The pilots will also tell us how effective the data matching is in improving registration among specific underregistered groups, such as young voters.

Among that information will be data from the Student Loans Company. Indeed, on Monday, the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, asked me whether data on school pupils could be used. I have now checked and can confirm that the Department for Education’s national pupil database is one of the data sets that we are considering for these schemes. I cannot say what the position is for information held by the Scottish Government, but I hope that they would be as willing to co-operate if there was a pilot in Scotland. We are working with local authorities to see whether they can make use of their own data on school pupils.

[Lord Maxton]

After I raised that point, someone raised with me the question of whether the Data Protection Act will allow that sort of exchange of information, as it is presently worded.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

If my memory serves me correctly, when I responded to the noble Lord on Monday I mentioned the concern about the Data Protection Act. I have checked, and we will do a further check in the light of that point, but the information that I have had since we had that exchange on Monday is that the Department for Education’s national pupil database would be one of the data sets that we would consider.

I say to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, who asked what we are doing, that a series of events will be planned over the next few months as part of the introduction of individual registration, when we will consider with stakeholders what further steps can be taken to engage with groups who are underrepresented on the electoral register. However, we must proceed with a boundary review to ensure that boundaries, in England in particular, are not 15 years out of date at the next general election, thereby missing out those who have registered in the past 12 months, because that would exacerbate the inequality. To achieve that, with due time for the commission to consult widely, we must allow it to get on with its task now. That in no way diminishes the importance of registration, and I hope that I have indicated to the satisfaction of Members across the House what we are trying to do to establish that.