Draft Representation of the People (Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Regulations 2025

Robin Swann Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2025 General Committees

[Robin Swann (South Antrim) (UUP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I have a couple of queries for the Minister. The chief electoral officer says that 87,700 retained electors are due to be removed on 1 February. The explanatory memorandum suggests that almost all of them live at the address on the register and

“are therefore eligible to be registered to vote at this address.”

That would suggest that those 87,700 electors are real, live people who are able and eligible to vote in Northern Ireland, so I assume that they had the opportunity to do so in the general election only six months ago. In my opinion, that is an exceptionally high number. I wonder whether the Government, although perhaps not at this stage, could ask the chief electoral officer to provide a breakdown of those 87,700 retained electors by constituency so that we can see whether there is any trend or specific registration issue in Northern Ireland of which we need to be aware.

I turn to a more specific question. Proposed new regulation 46C of the Representation of the People (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2008, which is entitled “Retained register entries: residence audit”, provides an opportunity to

“conduct a residence audit in respect of any retained elector”.

That indicates that there will be opportunities to do an individual residence audit. Is that the intention of the draft regulations? If so, who would instigate such an audit of an individual’s residence to see whether a retained elector is eligible to vote before a removal warning is issued? Could a residence audit be instigated only by the chief electoral officer and his staff, or could a member of the general public query the eligibility of an elector or their residence at an address?

Further to the point that the shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar, made about voter ID, may I encourage the Government to look at how voter ID is used in Northern Ireland? Perhaps I might encourage them to extend that approach to the rest of the United Kingdom.