Oral Answers to Questions

Sadiq Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Miss Smith]

Many Members take an interest in that issue. I do not have a specific date to give the hon. Gentleman. The Government are looking at the matter and I shall be happy to discuss it further with him.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

We all want a register that is complete and accurate. The Electoral Commission’s recent damning report on the move to individual voter registration in Northern Ireland is extremely worrying, yet the Government have decided to speed up the implementation of individual voter registration and to remove the safeguards that Labour put in place.

All this is happening at a time when local authorities are having to make record cuts, including to the amount that they can devote to electoral registration. Given the criticism levelled by the Electoral Commission’s report, what extra are the Government considering to avoid a repeat in the rest of the UK of the experiences in Northern Ireland, which could see millions of eligible voters dumped off the electoral register?

[Miss Smith]

I think the right hon. Gentleman is misrepresenting some of what the report says. The evidence from the report is that continuous registration is working for the majority of the population in Northern Ireland. The report notes that many of the key lessons from the experience in Northern Ireland have already been addressed by the proposals. It also states:

“The findings from this research do not undermine the principle of individual electoral registration or mean that the introduction of this system in Great Britain will necessarily lead to similar declines in accuracy and completeness.”