Automatic Registration: UK Elections

Louise Haigh Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson) on securing the debate, not least because, to my relief, his is a constituency that I can pronounce. I am grateful for the opportunity to respond to the debate and be part of moving the issue forward, as progress has been far too slow.

As has been said, this debate is incredibly timely because of the issues caused by the last-minute surge in voter registrations in the run-up to the referendum, which were discussed in the House earlier this month, and because of the general confusion about the entire registration process. Significant numbers of people simply do not know whether they are on the electoral register, whether they have to register every time or why they were not on the register for this important election. Many people just expect to be on the electoral register because they pay their council tax, because they interact with Government and because the Government know about them.

The debate is relevant today because, despite the recent surge, registration rates are still desperately low. We know the statistics from the excellent work that my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) did in bringing her ten-minute rule Bill before the House earlier this year. She mentioned the stark difference between pensioners in the shires and young men from ethnic minorities. I understand that a forthcoming study from the Electoral Commission will reveal that many millions of people are still missing from the electoral register.

I know the Minister will agree that we must do everything we can to encourage as many people as humanly possible to be on the register. That is why it was so important and so right to extend the deadline for registration in the run-up to the referendum, although perhaps some of us might regret that now. It is therefore perplexing that the Government have missed so many opportunities to improve registration rates. They were far too late to encourage the registration of students in university towns, despite having an excellent model on offer from Sheffield University. As far as I am aware, no action has been taken to deliver further pilots of online voting, as recommended by the Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy. We have had only a half-hearted commitment to reviewing e-balloting for trade unions, which would undoubtedly improve our industrial democracy. The Government are still proposing to use a completely out-of-date electoral register for the proposed boundary review.

I hope we can make significant progress with automatic voter registration. Significant work has already been done by organisations such as Bite the Ballot, which produced an excellent report, co-written by Oliver Sidorczuk and Dr Toby James, on the “missing millions” who have been mentioned. The Electoral Commission itself has put forward three credible options for automatic registration: automatically registering 16 and 17-year-olds, updating home movers’ details and confirmation matching. I state no preference for any of those methods today, but I urge the Government to explore them all and establish which will most significantly increase registrations while guarding against electoral fraud as far as possible.

As we know, automatic registration would bring many significant benefits. The register would be more complete, obviously: we would not see the peaks and troughs of registration that we currently have, which are a problem not only for elections but for statistical purposes and for exercises such as boundary reviews. There would be less confusion about whether people are on the register; the system would be significantly cheaper than the current one, as demonstrated by the example of Victoria, which has been mentioned; it would be more convenient for citizens; it would almost certainly be more up-to-date; and it would provide high-quality data that could be used by and shared with other agencies.

On that last point, devolution provides an opportunity to drive data sharing across the public sector and to deliver experimentation and innovation in our public services. It is right to devolve power down to local authorities so that they can take decisions as close as possible to where they are delivering services. We should seize the opportunity to finally break down some of the barriers between Departments and agencies, to ensure that whenever someone interacts with Government they are viewed as a whole person, not just dealt with in one Department’s silo. Automatic registration could play a major role in that. I completely support the comments of the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard), and I press the Government to bring forward new data-sharing protocols.

There are obviously challenges, not least electoral fraud and the need for a clear opt-out from the open register, but they can be worked through by learning from Administrations who already operate such systems successfully. The Law Commission has published a thorough interim report on electoral law and plans to publish a draft Bill for Parliament to consider next year. Will the Minister update us on progress on that, and on the Government’s response to the Law Commission’s report?

Will the Minister also update us on the progress of the Greater Manchester trial? It is absolutely right that devolved authorities have the control and power that they need to drive registration, and I very much hope the Sheffield city region will be given the option to trial such a scheme. Will the Minister confirm what conversations or offers have been made to other devolved areas? Will he consider requiring local authorities to put information about polling stations online? It is frankly ridiculous that that information is not digitally available to voters on polling day.

The Law Commission has said that current electoral law is an “unworkable mass” and that it is “complex, voluminous and fragmented”. Devolution and the fallout from the referendum present a prime opportunity to review that situation and consider options such as automatic registration. I hope the Minister will grasp that opportunity with both hands.

The vote last Thursday revealed the deep dissatisfaction in this country with the political establishment and the status quo. Despite politicians’ best attempts to be as accessible and as grounded as possible, we are seen as exactly the opposite. We are viewed variously as corrupt, immoral and sometimes merely irrelevant. Tragically, that general attitude culminated in the brutal murder of one of our finest colleagues less than a fortnight ago. We in this House have a duty to fix that, to improve the climate in which we debate ideas and to reach out to those alienated by our political debate. The people who are excluded from the process as it currently stands are exactly those we need to prioritise and reach out to. Fundamental electoral reform is now an immediate necessity, and automatic voter registration must be a part of it.