Electoral Registration

Lord Wills Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Wills]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to ensure that electoral registration levels do not decline between the 2010 and 2015 general elections.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Government are safeguarding the completeness of the register by using data matching to ensure that the vast majority of existing electors are reregistered in the transition to individual electoral registration. We are phasing the transition over two years, with a carry-forward to allow those not individually registered to vote in the 2015 election. We are making registration more accessible by introducing online registration and are providing additional resources at a national and local level to fund activities to boost the completeness and accuracy of the register to the greatest degree possible.

[Lord Wills (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for that Answer. I welcome all the measures that he has described and all the other measures that the Government have taken to improve the levels of registration. I also recognise his own personal commitment to that goal. However, he must recognise that every independent authority has warned that the approach that the Government are taking to changing the method of registration carries risks to levels of registration among particular groups of people—young people, people with disabilities, ethnic minorities and people living in areas of extreme deprivation. In the light of that, does he recognise that, in what is likely to be a very tightly contested general election next year, levels of registration could significantly skew its outcome? They are likely to benefit one party alone: the Conservative Party. In the light of that, will he give an assurance that he will monitor levels of registration later this year and, if they have declined, will he make more money available to local authorities to increase levels of registration?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I think the noble Lord knows that we are working extremely hard across the board on all this. In the confirmation dry run on data matching, the two boroughs that came out with less than 50% successful data matching were Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea—not exactly the areas with the lowest level of income in the country.