EU Referendum: Voter Registration

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

My Lords, it is impossible to tell at this stage who was unable to register when the site had crashed.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that part of the problem is that many people think the system is automatically registering them when it is not and it should be? A significant part of the recent problem is that people cannot tell immediately whether they are registered. We urgently need an online system by which people can check whether they are registered. Only then will they know whether they need to complete the process.

[Lord Bridges of Headley]

The noble Lord speaks with a lot of experience on these things and makes a good point. I agree wholeheartedly with the principle that reducing the number of duplicate applications would certainly ease the burden on citizens and electoral administrators. We are open to all options for reducing duplicate applications. That said, we must guard against any solution which results in whole swathes of data unnecessarily being held centrally.