Electoral Registration

Debate between Nick Smith and David Ward

Wednesday 4th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)]

I am somewhat disappointed by the motion, because it over-eggs the pudding to some degree. It does not recognise that this process was started by the previous Government but has been picked up and progressed by this Government. Labour Members began the whole process—I welcome that and have congratulated them on it many times—and we are now successfully delivering on it. That is a good thing.

There is still a lot of work to do before the 2015 election and before IER is fully introduced. The motion calls for more to be done to tackle under-registration, without any recognition of how much effort and money has been put into doing that. It is curmudgeonly not to recognise that that effort has been made. The conspiracy theory that this is all about removing poor people from the register is not compatible with that huge effort and with the funding that has been made available to ensure that they are given the opportunity to be put on the register.

[Nick Smith]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the Government are missing important sources of voter data? For example, if they used information from credit reference agencies such as Experian, they could boost registration considerably. Does he accept that that would be a worthwhile thing to do?

[Mr Ward]

The pilots have identified the best ways of getting the most people registered, although the system can always be refined and made better. There seems to be an assumption that the previous registers were perfect, but in areas of high fraud that was simply not the case.

Eighty-seven per cent. of people have successfully been moved on to the electoral register. Yes, plenty still needs to be done, and that is why I agree with many parts of the motion. We need to tackle registration for the hard-to-reach groups and to make sure that EROs are doing the very best they can to ensure that as many people are on the register as possible. The reduction in the voting age that I hope will happen in future means that we need to do many of the things suggested in relation to schools and colleges. That work is being done through the all-party group on voter registration.

Part of the reason for implementing the new IER procedure was to increase the accuracy of the register. Those who represent an area like mine will know just how necessary that was, particularly in helping to deal with voter fraud. In many cases, not even the new system will bring about changes to the voter fraud that takes place as a result of certain behaviour and the failure of political parties to impose strong discipline on their own activists. In Bradford, 88% of people are automatically registered under the data-matching system, yet we are still likely to have problems with postal vote fraud in particular. The problem we have experienced is not that people are not legitimately registered to vote in a household, but that postal votes are collected and filled out on behalf of constituents or that unacceptable pressure is put on individuals to vote in a particular way, as court cases have identified.

As well as ensuring the accuracy of the register, we need to ensure that the police take seriously and investigate cases of fraud that are reported to them. Too often, the thought in the mind the police has been, “Well, they’re all at it,” and it has not been taken as seriously as it should be. In Bradford in the past, candidates of all parties have been required to sign a pledge stating that they will not take part in voter fraud. That is how serious the situation is in places like Bradford.

Between now and the election, work needs to go on. Bite the Ballot has been mentioned and I will be on a bus—which we are paying for, not the Government—going around the constituency tomorrow for national voter registration day. Last summer, we took the bus out and registered 250 young people in our constituency. That is where the effort should be going. That is the effective way of ensuring that we get people on a register that we can be satisfied with and that is more accurate.