Electoral Registration Pilot Scheme (England) (Amendment) Order 2017

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2017 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Young of Cookham]

That the draft Orders and Regulations laid before the House on 8 March be approved.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak also to the Electoral Registration Pilot Scheme (England and Wales) Order 2017, the Electoral Registration Pilot Scheme (Scotland) Order 2017 and the Representation of the People (Scotland) (Amendment) Regulations 2017. The instruments will help enhance the operation of electoral registration across Great Britain. Noble Lords will be aware that individual electoral registration—IER—was successfully introduced in 2014 and for the first time ever enabled people in Great Britain to apply online to register to vote. Nearly 24 million people have applied to register under IER, 18 million of them online.

Applications to register to vote peak in the run-up to elections and during the autumn canvass, when each household in the country receives registration forms. Noble Lord will be aware that this process, and indeed registration overall, is costly for electoral registration officers—EROs. While the Cabinet Office currently provides direct financial assistance for registration linked to the introduction of IER, the total costs of the annual canvass are high, at some £65 million per year. The current process is inefficient, costly and burdensome for local authorities.

What is more, a large proportion of these costs relate to activities required by law that simply confirm that people are correctly registered. What is needed is a more effective and efficient system that targets resources on reaching out to underregistered groups to add new names to the register, rather than simply confirming names already there. The Cabinet Office is therefore working with EROs across Great Britain to pilot alternative approaches to the current paper-based, inflexible and prescriptive annual canvass. Three of today’s instruments will enable such pilots this year. The fourth instrument will enhance the operation of IER in Scotland to allow cost savings for EROs throughout the year.

I turn, first, to the annual canvass pilots for 2017. Three of these instruments establish pilot schemes under Sections 7 and 9 of the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013. As noble Lords may already be aware, Section 9D(3) of the Act requires the annual canvass to be conducted in the manner prescribed in the Representation of the People (England and Wales) Regulations 2001 and the Representation of the People (Scotland) Regulations 2001. This process requires EROs to send an annual canvass form—the household enquiry form, or HEF as it is known—to every property in their area. The HEF asks residents to set out whether there have been any changes in the composition of the household since the previous year’s canvass, and it enables EROs to identify whether any residents should be removed from the register or be invited to make an application. Response rates to the HEF are significantly lower under IER, as it is no longer a registration tool, yet, where no response is received, EROs are required to issue up to two further forms and to carry out at least one visit to the property.

These three orders disapply those requirements for 23 participating EROs in areas of England, Wales and Scotland. Instead, the orders require EROs in the specified areas to attempt to make contact with a person at each residential address in the area for which they act at least once between the date the order comes into force and 2 February 2018. The manner in which they do so, however, and whether they take further steps where no information is received at a particular address will be at the EROs’ discretion. This will enable EROs to test new and innovative approaches to canvassing—including using data, such as council tax data, the local land and property gazetteer, and internal local authority databases—to determine whether chasing responses to ERO inquiries is necessary. These approaches have been developed closely with the Electoral Commission, which is supportive of the pilots. The commission will be reporting on the schemes and will provide a copy of its evaluation to Ministers and the EROs by 29 June 2018. The order ceases to have effect on 6 July 2018.

The fundamental objective of the annual canvass—namely, the maintenance of a complete and accurate register through regular data collection—is and will continue to be a government priority. However, consultation with EROs and local authorities over an extended period has indicated that the annual canvass in its current form is not a sustainable way to achieve that aim. Many EROs, who are on the front line of electoral registration activity, have told the Cabinet Office that the canvass procedure is time-consuming and expensive. Electors will receive up to three letters and a visit from their local ERO, even if they are already registered, solely for the purposes of information gathering.

Last year, for example, huge numbers of citizens registered to vote in the run-up to the EU referendum in June. This year, many may register to vote in local and devolved elections in May, and perhaps even for a by-election as well, yet, when the annual canvass takes place between July and December, they will receive fresh inquiries in the form of the HEF about their registration status. The reality is that household churn is around 12% per annum—thus the majority of the canvass activity is redundant. Over half of households do not respond to the initial HEF, meaning that EROs are required to chase them up with the further two forms and a visit, despite the fact that 88% of households will be listed as “no change” on the electoral register.

This tremendously bureaucratic process is frustrating for administrators. Having to follow steps prescribed in statute is stifling their capacity to innovate and adopt new approaches to canvassing. Through knowing their local area or having access to local authority data, EROs may well be aware of the registration status of households in their area. However, the current system does not allow them to draw on their own expertise or on other information held by the local authority. This is not an example of “smart working”, and it does not allow citizens to “tell us once” of changes to their registration.

Furthermore, it is worth noting that the recent referendum was conducted using one of the largest electoral registers ever. With the advent of online registration, it is becoming increasingly apparent that electoral events can drive registration to new heights and that the current system of canvassing around six months in advance of a poll, through an inefficient cycle of paper HEFs and household visits, may not be the best approach for the modern world.

It is important to note that the canvass itself is purely an information-gathering process. The pilots will not alter the requirements for the registration process and for invitation to register forms to be sent to individuals. Therefore, what is being proposed—the impetus for which has come from EROs themselves—is to enable local authorities to test alternative methods for conducting the annual canvass that have the potential to be more cost-effective while still securing the same or higher levels of information on changes to the register compared with the current annual canvass process.

Operations along these lines were successfully carried out in 2016. Specifically, during the 2016 annual canvass process, the Cabinet Office ran initial pilots in three areas of England—Birmingham, Ryedale and South Lakeland. In order to broaden the evidence base, however, further pilots, including in Wales and Scotland, are needed to inform a wider change to the annual canvass across Great Britain. Early results from the pilots last year have been very promising, with provisional figures indicating that the costs of the alternative canvasses were substantially lower than those of the legislated canvass due to the reduction in printing, paper, postage and staffing costs. Ryedale, for example, estimated that the new methodology it employed resulted in an 89% saving in staff time and costs. The Cabinet Office and the Electoral Commission are currently analysing the full cost data of the whole process and intend to report initial results in May.

In addition to the pilot areas from last year, the areas selected to participate in 2017 are Barrow-in-Furness, Bath and North East Somerset, Blaenau Gwent, Camden, Coventry, Derbyshire Dales, Dumfries and Galloway, East Devon, Glasgow, Hounslow, Luton, Newcastle, Salford, South Holland, South Norfolk, South Oxfordshire and Vale of White Horse, Sunderland, Torfaen, Wakefield and Woking.

Although the initial results suggest that alternative approaches to the annual canvass can be at least as effective as the currently prescribed method, the Cabinet Office intends to ensure that applying this learning to local authorities across Great Britain, including Wales and Scotland, generates similar results. If successful, the pilots will demonstrate that the annual canvass does not need to be so prescriptive and that a number of alternative methods are just as effective and more cost-efficient, potentially saving at least £20 million from the cost of electoral registration each year.

The 2017 pilots will take place in local authority areas across England, Wales and Scotland. The areas were chosen using robust research methodology to ensure a spread of electoral register churn, population size, chosen pilot model and region. In each area, the EROs will be operating control groups and pilot groups so that the results of these approaches can be rigorously evaluated.

Four models of piloting activities will run with these EROs in the 2017 pilot scheme. Each model has been created based on proposals from EROs, and each participating ERO has chosen the model they wish to apply to their area based on their local knowledge and expertise. Each model reduces the number of paper communications sent to electors, using means such as telephone and email channels, and one model uses existing local data to determine where best to focus resources. Again, these ideas have all come from the experts on the front line and are designed to improve the citizen experience as well as ease administrative burdens on hard-pressed electoral teams. The elector will benefit from the local authority being able to redirect resources and target canvassing more effectively towards underregistered groups.

I will now give more detail on each pilot model in turn to offer some insight into the innovative approaches being taken to move us towards a more effective and targeted canvass process.

The first model, which is being piloted in areas such as Torfaen, Ryedale and Barrow-in-Furness, tests the use of a household notification letter, or HNL. Under this model, the ERO will send all households in the treatment group a HNL instead of a standard household enquiry form. The HNL lists the details of everyone registered to vote in that household and advises residents to take action only where the details held are no longer up to date. This model allows EROs to reduce the number of paper communications sent to electors and also reduces the number of expensive household visits required.

The second piloting model involves the use of email in areas including Hounslow and Woking. For this model, an electronic HEF will be sent to households by email, chased with a visit if necessary. Where no email is held, households receive a postal HEF followed by a visit. This model further tests the use of email communication between EROs and electors, following the uptake of email invitations to register in England and Wales. This also expects to reduce the number of overall communications with electors including, again, expensive household visits.

The third model uses a discernment step to identity different types of properties, in areas such as Glasgow and Birmingham, so that EROs can take the most appropriate approach. This discernment could involve local data matching using sources such as council tax, or assignment by ward based on the ERO’s expert knowledge. Depending on the assignment, some properties will receive a HNL, while others will be more actively canvassed where a change in household composition is suspected. Where possible, communication will be sent to these households by email before being chased with postal reminders and visits if necessary. This model allows EROs to use the existing data and knowledge they have of their areas to target resources better as well as use digital means to communicate with electors.

Finally, a fourth model tests the use of telephones in the canvass process. Areas participating in this model include Dumfries and Galloway as well as East Devon. Under this model, EROs will send initial postal HEFs but will then be able to chase non-responding households by telephone, rather than by additional canvass forms or household visits. Where no telephone number is held, households will receive two letters followed by a visit. This model allows EROs to test the use of telephone canvassing and should also reduce the number of household visits and postal communications.

The Government have consulted widely, including with the Electoral Commission, on the pilot proposals. The commission has been very supportive of these plans and has been involved from the early stages of their development. The Electoral Commission has also been consulted on these orders, on which it is content, following the Cabinet Office’s confirmation that Section 13 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 remains applicable to participating local authorities during the pilot scheme so that participating authorities are still expected to publish their registers by 1 December 2017, unless exceptional circumstances apply, such as a local election, where they are required to publish a revised register by 1 February next year.

Consultation has also taken place with bodies such as the Association of Electoral Administrators, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives, and the Scottish Assessors Association. This is in addition to the work the Government have been doing with interested councils directly and who have helped shape the four pilot models. The Information Commissioner’s Office was also consulted during the development of these pilot orders and is content that they do not raise any new or significant data protection or privacy issues.

Equality impact assessments have been completed to ensure that underregistered groups, as well as those groups protected by virtue of the Equality Act 2010, will not be negatively impacted by these pilot schemes. Privacy impact assessments have also been completed to ensure that no new negative privacy impacts under the Data Protection Act 1998 will arise.

While the purpose of these pilot schemes is to give EROs the space to innovate and test alternative and more effective approaches in relation to the annual canvass, I stress that the integrity of the register will be maintained throughout the pilot schemes. EROs have a duty, under the Representation of the People Act 1983, to maintain their registers and nothing in these orders change that.

I turn now to the draft Representation of the People (Scotland) (Amendment) Regulations 2017. These regulations take steps to allow Scottish EROs to benefit from the same cost optimisation measures as have been available to English and Welsh EROs since last year. This will be achieved by amending the registration application forms for Scotland to allow applicants to identify that they are the only person resident at the address aged 14 or over. It also provides discretion to EROs as to whether to canvass a property within 12 months of an indication of single occupancy. Allowing EROs to make this choice decreases the amount of resources spent processing applications and increases the efficiency and speed of the registration process.

Secondly, the regulations will modernise the system of registration by enabling Scottish EROs to send invitations to register and ITR reminders by electronic means if they wish to do so. This delivers a quicker and more efficient service to the elector, who expects electronic communication in this age, as well as enabling cost savings. The instrument will also allow an attester to an applicant’s identity to be registered in any local authority area in Scotland. At present, both the attester and the applicant must be registered in the same local authority. This provision will assist those applicants whose identity cannot be verified using the Department for Work and Pensions matching process, local data matching or by documentary evidence who have to provide an attestation to verify their identity. This change will result in more eligible applicants becoming registered to vote. In addition, the regulations make a minor amendment to correct an error in an existing regulation concerning the requirement to provide fresh signatures following rejection of a postal voting statement.

The measures were conceived to generate savings from the cost of the annual canvass process to counteract the fact that the introduction of IER has increased the cost and administrative burden on local authorities. These provisions also aim to reduce unnecessary ERO correspondence and contact. Preliminary estimations project that these regulations will reduce the overall cost of IER in Scotland by around £125,000 for the single-occupancy provision and around £400,000 for email ITRs per year. The Electoral Commission was consulted during the development of these measures and on the specifics of this order, and it is supportive of these regulations offering the same provisions to Scotland as already exist in England and Wales.

The Cabinet Office has worked very closely with Scottish Government officials to ensure that these measures can be in place for the 2017 annual canvass, and to ensure that Scottish EROs are able to participate in the aforementioned pilot schemes. The Minister for the Constitution and the Scottish Government’s Minister for Parliamentary Business agreed last year for these instruments to make provision in respect of both the parliamentary and local government registers in Scotland. This will be done before commencement of the relevant provisions of the Scotland Act 2016, which will devolve competence in relation to the local government register in Scotland. This was agreed in order to ensure that Scottish EROs could take advantage of these cost- optimisation measures in respect of both the parliamentary and local government registers this year, and that local authorities in Scotland are represented in the canvass pilot schemes.

With this in mind, the Government believe that the instruments allowing for annual canvass piloting schemes are a crucial step towards improving the annual canvass and wider registration process. I therefore commend them and hope noble Lords will also agree that the statutory instrument relating to cost-optimisation measures in Scotland helps move electors and electoral administrators towards an enhanced IER system for members of the public and for EROs as part of the continued successful implementation of IER across Great Britain. I beg to move.

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[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I make my usual declaration that I am a councillor in the London Borough of Lewisham and a vice-president of the Local Government Association. The four statutory instruments we are debating today are ones that I accept, as far as they go. I broadly welcome the process outlined by the Minister. Certainly, the entitlement to vote and the accuracy and completeness of the register are the most important things we are debating here. That underpins all this. I have some wider comments and one or two questions for the Minister but generally I welcome the orders and regulations and I am very happy that we are exploring new methods of getting people registered to vote.

On matters concerning elections and electoral registration, it is always desirable to get agreement among the interested parties on the way forward. I accept that that is not always possible but it is a desirable aim nevertheless. Changes should be implemented carefully, should be thought about, should seek to improve voters’ engagement in the electoral process and should command wide confidence. In that sense, pilots are a useful tool to see how certain measures will play out in practice, followed by proper evaluation and informed policy decisions. Can the Minister tell the House why the decision was made to extend these pilots for another year? I cannot believe that the Government have made this decision in isolation. But it is not clear from the papers why they have done so.

There is no mention of the political parties being consulted on the regulations. Will the Minister confirm that neither the Electoral Commission nor the Cabinet Office team that meets the political parties on a regular basis have brought these regulations anywhere near them? Of course, the Parliamentary Parties Panel is a statutory panel set up under PPERA. If that is the case, does the Minister agree that that is regrettable and should be rectified quickly? The political parties use the electoral register for their campaigning, they understand the registration process, and they have a legitimate voice that needs to be heard in any discussions on these matters.

I refer the Minister to page 3 of the Explanatory Memorandum to the Electoral Registration Pilot Scheme (England and Wales) Order 2017; he mentioned it in his introduction. Referring to the annual canvass, paragraph 7.1 in the section headed “Policy background” says:

“In its current form under IER, it is proving to be an unsustainable cost burden for local authorities to administer”.


I thought that was an interesting comment. I must say, it is not the biggest issue that comes up when we discuss finance and budgets and unacceptable cost burdens at Lewisham Council. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, may have let the cat out of the bag by telling us that these issues were discussed in the coalition Government in 2013. Of course, members of that coalition wanted to bring forward these proposals then.

I had a look at what the Local Government Association was saying and I could not find any mention at all of the unacceptable cost burdens of the annual canvass—not a thing—in its campaigns, press releases or anything else. I then had a look at London Councils and again there was no mention in any of its campaigns or media releases about these unacceptable cost burdens and the problems being caused for local authorities. Both organisations are well known to Members of this House. They are expert at getting their views across to us when they have issues they want to raise with us. But I have had absolutely nothing—not a letter, not an email, not a text message, not a phone call—from these bodies that represent local government.

Of course, there are many issues that these two bodies are interested in: the housing crisis, the social care crisis, education funding, public health budgets, business rates, pavement parking, homelessness and the lack of funding for that, bus funding, and many other issues—the list goes on and on. Many of these issues are putting local authorities in a difficult situation and putting pressure on budgets, but the Government are not the slightest bit interested in dealing with them. I also had a look at SOLACE and the AEA. Again, they are silent on these issues and do not appear to be campaigning on them at the moment.

It really is a bit rich for the Government to hide behind the suggestion that there are all these concerns from elsewhere in local government. The Government do not have a good record here. They sped up IER, against the advice of the Electoral Commission. They reduced the transition period for IER by one year. They threw out the consensus on that point. They moved ahead with reducing the number of seats in the House of Commons by 50. They removed voters from the electoral roll, against the advice of the commission, and of course that helped them in their redistribution of parliamentary seats and limited the scope of electors to get involved in local inquiries. At the same time, we all know that they made a record number of appointments to your Lordships’ House. Their claims about cutting costs just do not hold water.

Democracy costs money. We should cherish it and pay for it. We need an efficient, well-run, properly resourced electoral registration service in every part of the United Kingdom. In comparison with other services, the costs involved are not huge and the Government should be seeing how they can use every avenue of the state to get and keep people registered to vote. They should be learning from other parts of the United Kingdom. How does the Electoral Management Board in Scotland work in getting people registered to vote, compared with what happens here in England and Wales?

Pilots are good to see how we can efficiently and expertly register people to vote. There is nothing presently in force that stops EROs making any innovation, and many EROs do an excellent job of innovating to get people registered to vote. We should be looking at the incentives to get people on the rolls. What are schools, colleges and universities doing? What can we learn from the schools issue in Northern Ireland? Many noble Lords from all sides of the House have raised that and so far the Government have not been interested at all in bringing it into play in England. We should look also at what we can learn from other parts of the world.

I worry that the real agenda is just to cut the need to send out a prepaid envelope and a form and to avoid knocking on the door, with very little else under that. I am happy that we have new procedures and new ideas. We have to be absolutely sure that we are not making it any harder to get people registered to vote. I am not confident that so far the Government have done that.

My noble friend Lord Blunkett raised some very important points. The noble Lord, Lord Hayward, spoke about the two local authorities. I do not know that case but if that is the situation, it is regrettable. All the councils that have been invited to be part of the pilot should be part of it when it takes place next year. He made a very important point about savings. I am happy to make savings but, again, the important point in all this is the accuracy and completeness of the register. That must be paramount for all of us. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, made some important points about automatic registration. Again, young people and students are a very important group and we must make sure that we get them registered. I know that many councils and EROs have worked closely with universities and colleges. We need to ensure that that happens as well.

I am happy to agree the orders and regulations before us today, although I worry about the Government’s real intention behind these matters.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate and for their broad welcome for the initiatives that are in the orders before the House.

In response to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, I am grateful for his welcome for what we are doing, but there were some uncharacteristically partisan comments in his speech. On the size of the House of Lords, I just say, as somebody who was Leader of the House of Commons at the time, that if his great party had supported the programme Motion on the House of Lords Reform Bill, the House of Lords would be a lot smaller than it is now. His party bears some responsibility for the failure to get the numbers down to a more manageable level. I will put that on one side because I know the noble Lord did not mean to stimulate an aggressive partisan debate on these non-controversial orders.

I will try to respond to the issues that were raised. The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, raised the issue of privacy. Of course I confirm that the protection of personal data is important. As I think I said, the Cabinet Office carried out a privacy impact assessment which took into account privacy impact assessments commissioned from all the participating local authorities. The provisions before us do not have any significant further impact on an individual’s privacy than the current legislative requirements concerning registration. They simply support the EROs in carrying out their legal duty to take all the necessary steps to maintain registers of electors in their area. As I said, we have consulted the Information Commissioner’s Office on this order and it does not consider that the proposed measures raise any new or significant data protection or privacy issues. The noble Lord also raised some issues about the Digital Economy Bill and I would like to accept his generous offer to pursue those in writing.

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[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

No, I am sorry. I meant the political parties panel in PPERA which is drawn from officials.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I will make inquiries and deal with the important questions that the noble Lord has raised about the level of consultation, and of course he is entitled to a reply on that.

I think I have dealt with nearly all the issues that have been raised. If I have not, I will write. We have had direct advice from a range of those in local government—the chief executive of Trafford, the electoral registration officer for Grampian and others—about this initiative. I again thank noble Lords for the time they have spent scrutinising these instruments, which will enable EROs in England, Wales and Scotland to pilot innovative approaches to conducting the annual canvass and also allow EROs in Scotland to make use of email invitations to register and single occupancy provisions. I beg to move.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

Before the noble Lord sits down, the point I was trying to get across is that I am very happy that we have pilots. There is no issue about that. However, when we make changes—and stopping the annual canvass, stopping people knocking on doors and stopping letters going out are very big changes—we cannot assume that everybody is e-enabled. Each change has to be carried out very carefully; otherwise we make mistakes, things go wrong and people lose their right to vote. That cannot be the case. The heart of this is that the Government must take a long period and absolute care when they pilot changes. The decision to reduce the time for confirmation was a mistake. If we had taken a longer time, we might not have needed these measures now. That is the point I am trying to make.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. As I said, we are not stopping the annual canvass. The annual canvass remains. I will just end on this. The initiative for this has come not so much from the Government as from the EROs. They take their responsibilities very seriously and want to have the maximum number of people registered. They still retain all the powers they have at the moment, as well as the powers they have in the pilots, to continue to knock on doors and send all the forms. I personally have confidence that the EROs will use the powers they have, and which we are giving them today, not just to maintain the current accuracy of the register: I think we will end up with a better register if we go ahead with these pilots and extend the lessons that we have learned.

Motions agreed.