Individual Voter Registration

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman raised that. He made exactly that point at Deputy Prime Minister’s questions on 15 November and my right hon. Friend said that we would look into it. Indeed, I did. Although the numbers did broadly increase as the hon. Gentleman says, they did not do so over a year. The increase in the electorate in Rhyl West from 2,474 to 3,531 took place over a period of nine years—[Interruption.] I am sorry, I have the number of electors registered in front of me. I will not bore the House by reading them out, but the increase took place over a period of eight years, so I am afraid I do not think he has got his facts quite right.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

I implore the Minister to look again at this. Clearly, if failing to send back the annual survey is to incur a penalty, it seems illogical not to insist that failing to send back the individual form should also incur a penalty. As my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) said, some sort of fine that is clearly expressed to people, rather than hidden away in the small print, is a tremendous incentive to return the form. The absence of a penalty seems like a missed opportunity.

[Mr Harper]

Let me skip ahead to a quotation a little later in my remarks, which is relevant. There is a purpose in doing as the hon. Lady suggests only if it is effective. The evidence from the Information Society Alliance, for example, in its survey shows that compulsory registration —in other words, saying that people have to register or there will be a penalty—does not

“yield registration rates notably above those achieved in countries without compulsory registration.”

So it is not particularly effective. If I were persuaded that it was, I might look at it again. I certainly do not want to criminalise millions of people.

The current system, where failure to respond on the household registration form carries a penalty, is not noticeably effective because, as we now know, 15% of electors are missing. The single biggest reason why people are not registered to vote is that they move house frequently. One of the things that we need to do, which I will come on to, is to look at ways in which we can track people more quickly when they move house and get them registered to vote.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

Under the Government’s proposals as they stand, people who do not register individually by the end of autumn 2015 will find themselves removed from the register, and therefore ineligible to vote. That will have a particular effect in Wales, because the Welsh Assembly Government elections and all-out council elections will both take place in 2016. What happens in the autumn of 2015 is therefore crucial, and taking liberties with experimentation at that time does not seem the best way forward. However, given that the Government propose that programme, I should like to suggest some ways in which matters could be improved.

It is obviously very important that every effort is made to ensure that individual registration is carried out effectively and does not result in a drop in registration from 90% to 65%, which is what the Electoral Commission has suggested may happen. We are proud of our reputation as a well respected democracy, and we should ensure that our voter registration percentage is as high as possible.

I certainly welcome the use of cross-referencing, with the use of information from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, for example, to help identify those who have not registered. However, we need far more than that to make a success of the reform. As the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee has stated:

“The Government should publish a detailed implementation plan alongside the introduction of legislation”

for individual elector registration, so that electoral registration officers and the Electoral Commission can comment on its feasibility. We need to know what measures the Government will take and what resources they will use to maximise voter registration and ensure that some of the most vulnerable groups in the most deprived areas are not disfranchised.

It seems very confusing that the household will send back the household survey form, and then people will also have to return individual forms. A lot of people will think that they have already registered, and there will be plenty of complaints about both the bureaucracy and cost of the process.

How will the Government maximise registration and prevent a dramatic drop in registration rates? We need both sanctions and incentives. Several Members have mentioned sanctions, and there is no doubt that without a proper sanction, whatever form it might take—my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) suggested a fixed penalty system—there will not be sufficient incentive to register to vote.

I am horrified by the proposal to do away with the annual canvass. The Government should be doing precisely the opposite and providing funding for councils to do extra work and a thorough job. Such funding needs to be ring-fenced, particularly in the difficult economic circumstances in which we find ourselves. If the money is not ring-fenced, it will clearly not be used for that purpose. Furthermore, additional funds need to be allocated to councils with a large number of difficult-to-register people, for instance in wards with transient populations or with large numbers of people from groups among whom voter registration is known to be low.

We want to know what plans the Government have to make a success of individual voter registration. The Minister mentioned school visits, but we will need much more than that. Such visits may be a way to encompass 16 to 18-year-olds, but when we talk about young people we can mean those up to the age of 30 or so, many of whom are not registered to vote. We need a raft of awareness-raising measures and a proper, professional advertising campaign. We need to use every single means that there is—the internet, television and so on—and be really determined. It is no good having a half-hearted campaign.

We need people to have a lot of opportunities to register, whether at the supermarket or where they buy their lottery tickets. The Government need to put some thought into where people can register to vote. We need online registration, obviously, but also online advertising. We also need a painstaking door-to-door canvass, because the canvassers will have to return to houses again and again to get all the individual forms. They may meet mum on the doorstep, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) said, but mum will say, “Well, I’ve got to fill in all these forms, and I’ve got to find so-and-so, and I’ve got to find his national insurance number.” She will have to fill in all the forms, and maybe she will have to ring a couple of her children to find out their NI numbers—I am sure she will remember their dates of birth. The extra process may mean canvassers going back more than once to collect forms. We therefore need the input of an annual canvass.

Councils themselves also need incentives and sanctions to a certain degree. It is very odd, therefore, that there will not be any monitoring of overall registration levels by the Electoral Commission. There is no doubt that such reporting provides councils with an incentive to improve and people with an opportunity to ask electoral registration officers why the registration percentages are not very good in their area. It is very disappointing that that will not take place.

I hope that the Minister will work towards better implementation, getting plans out very early and ensuring that there are sufficient resources; £104 million is only 50p per person, which is hardly the cost of posting a couple of items, never mind people going around and knocking on doors. The matter needs some attention paid to it, and I hope that he will take that on board.