Voter Engagement

Debate between Sam Gyimah and Chris Ruane

Thursday 5th February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Chris Ruane]

I will give way to the Minister if he wants to confirm that Bite the Ballot will be getting some funding. A pat on the head is fine, but it wants more than that.

[The Minister for the Constitution (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene so that I can set the record straight. We acknowledge and recognise the good work of Bite the Ballot, with which we have opened discussions on the grant funding, as we have with a number of organisations. The Government operate with those organisations in a uniform way, and historically we have funded “Rock Enrol,” which Bite the Ballot has updated and is using in schools, but we have not been able to come to an agreement with Bite the Ballot—that is why Bite the Ballot is not included —although we want to involve it in this process.

[Chris Ruane]

I thank the Minister for that response. I will give him some statistics that prove how efficient and economic Bite the Ballot is. The Electoral Commission judges success on registration by the number of registration forms that are downloaded from its website. The commission is given millions of pounds by this Government to increase registration, as it was by the previous Government. For the European parliamentary elections in 2009, there were 137,000 downloads, with each download costing the Government £64. At the 2010 general election, the cost went down to £16 per download, and at the referendum it went up to £41. At the Scottish elections it was £38 and at the English local elections it was £12. Bite the Ballot can get a young person registered for 25p. Is that not a strong reason for his Department to help Bite the Ballot financially? Some might say that, because Bite the Ballot has hopefully registered 200,000 people today, it is embarrassing the Electoral Commission and the Government and must therefore be silenced. During the last election, the Electoral Commission had a target of registering 142,000 people in the two months before election day. That is 142,000 out of 7.5 million people who are not registered, which is 1.8% of the missing millions. Bite the Ballot has done that in one day. Is that not a strong reason for aiding Bite the Ballot financially and making it a partner of the Government and the Electoral Commission?

I think Bite the Ballot is being ignored out of political spite because it is embarrassing the Government and the Electoral Commission with its performance. Bite the Ballot can walk into a sixth-form college and get 100% of pupils to sign up by doing role play, by getting them involved with an emotive issue and by saying at the end, when they are all fired up, “Now we are going to have a vote, but you people aren’t registered to vote. You have no voice.” There is 100% take-up when Bite the Ballot then asks, “Would you like to fill in the registration form?”

[Mr Gyimah]

I know the hon. Gentleman is a great fan of conspiracy theories, but I make it clear that we all recognise the good work of Bite the Ballot in this area. Also, Facebook is partnering the Electoral Commission to reach pretty much everyone in this country who is online and on Facebook to help them register to vote. Bite the Ballot was not part of the announcement yesterday because it came to the Government—we have opened discussions—with its own strict legal criteria. We need to seek legal advice before we can engage, but it is Bite the Ballot’s legal criteria that are hindering any funding.

[Chris Ruane]

In times of austerity and cutbacks, when every penny counts, Bite the Ballot should be out there and recruiting those young people at 25p a shot, instead of at £44 a shot through the Electoral Commission.

Moving on, because I have only five minutes left, the other recommendations mentioned by the Chairman of the Committee include weekend voting, which is eminently sensible, and citizenship education. As I just said, Bite the Ballot does citizenship education in a fantastic way and gets a lot of traction with young people. On registration, it is a sensible suggestion to have automatic registration when a citizen interfaces with a public body, whether it is the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, the Department for Work and Pensions or housing benefit organisations. Whatever public institutions are out there, if they interact with the public, they should have a form for people to sign. There should also be block registration for pensioners living in homes, and definitely for students living in halls.

The issue is important. As I said, a decision will be taken in June—possibly by the Minister, if he is still in power—whether to drop the additional 5.5 million unregistered people from the register altogether. It will have a massive impact on the boundary freeze date of 1 December 2015, because that 5.5 million will be added to the 7.5 million to make 13 million people missing from the register. The Government-recommended 75,000 people per seat is almost the equivalent of 200 MPs missing from Parliament. That is the nature of the game. We will become a laughing stock. That is why I say it will be a constitutional coup if that decision is made.

I questioned the Minister yesterday on what his guiding principles were. I will ask him again, because when I asked him yesterday, he said:

“Whoever is the Minister, and whoever is in government, the decision they make will be taken on the independent advice of the Electoral Commission. That is pretty clear”.—[Official Report, 4 February 2015; Vol. 592, c. 365.]

Is he saying that if the Electoral Commission says, “Don’t drop these people off the register,” he will say, “We won’t”?

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[Mr Gyimah]

I cannot answer a hypothetical question.

[Chris Ruane]

It is not a hypothetical question; it is the Minister’s own words from 24 hours ago. The hon. Gentleman said yesterday—I will read it again if he wants—that if the Electoral Commission says, “Don’t drop these 5.5 million missing people off the register,” he will not do so.

[Mr Gyimah]

The hon. Gentleman’s question involves many assumptions. Nobody has deliberately dropped anyone off the electoral register. A proper assessment must be made at the time of the state of the register: who is on it and who is not, what more can be done to maximise the register and, in view of that, what decisions need to be taken at the next boundary review. It is not a binary question of whether or not I would drop them off, so the question is inappropriate, which is why I cannot answer.

[Chris Ruane]

Obfuscation.

In conclusion, I turn to the performance of the Electoral Commission—I have mentioned it before—and its total lack of ambition to get unregistered people registered. That is one of its two main duties: securing the vote by removing people who should not be on the register, and ensuring that we have the maximum number of people possible on the register. Its ambition is virtually non-existent.

I have highlighted the Electoral Commission’s targets in each of the past five elections. It has massively overshot each target that it has set. In the 2009 European elections, it wanted 50,000 electors, but overshot and got 137,000. That is fantastic, but a target is supposed to be reviewed regularly so that more difficult targets can be set, for constant improvement. The Electoral Commission did not do so. For the general election, it set itself a target of 142,000 people. It overshot and got 466,000. Is the Electoral Commission not fantastic? No, it is not, because again it did not review the number. In the 2011 referendum, the target was 75,000, just 1% of unregistered people—that shows a lack of ambition—but it got 131,000.

The Electoral Commission has overshot every target that it has set. It needs to give itself more difficult targets so it can test itself. That is the commission’s record over the past five or six years. Its future target—to have 7.5 million people registered in five years’ time, which is exactly the same as today—is woeful. There is a complete lack of ambition, and I am pleased that the Committee raised that as a specific point.

With very little time left, I will say that there are good electoral registration officers out there. We need to work to that best practice. I particularly congratulate Gareth Evans, the electoral registration officer from my constituency, who has done a fantastic job. Of the 12,000 postal voters in my constituency, we have lost only 25. He has had a 93% transfer rate from household to individual registration; he is doing a fantastic job. We need to spread that best practice.

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[Stephen Twigg]

We believe that there are very clear categories where an exemption can be made: where there is a residential character to people’s accommodation. Halls of residence are the most obvious example, but adult residential homes are another example.

The Minister’s intervention links directly to the question that I want to ask him, originally put by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) yesterday. Under the Cabinet Office guidance, Sheffield university has been able to achieve remarkably high levels of registration using individual voter registration but without the requirement for the national insurance number. The assurance of the university saying, “These are students who have registered to be students at Sheffield university” has proved sufficient under the new guidance. I welcome that, and I welcome the role that the Cabinet Office has played in that.

Will the Minister say whether he would be willing to write to all the other universities to ask them whether they can adopt the practice that Sheffield university has adopted? Frankly, if the Sheffield experience was typical, we could achieve even higher levels of registration of higher education students in the future than we did under the previous system.

Let me also press the Minister on the issue of Bite the Ballot and its relationship with the Cabinet Office. I welcome the extra money announced yesterday and I thank him for clarifying the position with regard to the Cabinet Office’s discussions with Bite the Ballot. However, I absolutely share the sentiments of my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd about the fantastic and efficient approach of Bite the Ballot. I urge the Minister to reopen discussions with Bite the Ballot to explore whether it could share in some of this resource; I am confident that it would do the job of increasing voter registration well.

[Chris Ruane]

I pay tribute to the Minister for his reaction to my hon. Friend’s question: he nodded his head and I think he said, “Yes.” Will he confirm what his nod suggested?

[Mr Gyimah]

The hon. Gentleman wants me to interpret my body language?

[Chris Ruane]

Yes.

[Stephen Twigg]

We are in one of these complex three-way discussions, so I will now give way to the Minister. Does he wish to intervene, so that he can respond to my hon. Friend?

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[The Minister for the Constitution (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

Thank you, Mr Davies, for calling me to speak. First, I offer my apologies for my slightly late arrival. I was at Chilwell barracks in Nottingham to launch the military’s voter registration day. It is very interesting that, although our armed forces fight all over the world for freedom and democracy, in the Army specifically at least a third of people are not registered to vote. I was there today to let people know about online registration and how important it is for our people in the Army to register to vote. That was why I was slightly delayed; my apologies.

That brings me on to a much wider issue. When we consider under-registration, we see that it affects young people but it also affects some ethnic minority groups and some people with disabilities. There are a whole range of people who are under-registered and not engaging with the electoral process in the way that they should, so Government policy should seek to get all of those people to engage with the political process.

I would like to draw a distinction between the process that Government can do something about and enthusing people to vote. I believe that getting people to the polling station and excited enough to vote, is the job of us politicians; making sure that the system works is the job of Government. In that context, obviously the first and most crucial step to engage people in the political process is the registration system. It is great that we have national voter registration day today, and I echo the comments made earlier to congratulate Bite the Ballot on its efforts in increasing voter registration. However, as I said in an intervention, organisations such as Facebook, which is in partnership with the Electoral Commission, can really help to make an impact across the entire country, which is what we want to do on a day such as this.

I also thank the Select Committee for its report. It has done a lot of work in this area and it contributes a lot of good ideas, some of which I am sure will find their way into the manifestos of some of the parties, come the election in just over 90 days’ time.

First, I will talk about what the Government are doing and, secondly, I will deal with some of the recommendations in the Select Committee’s report. Without rehashing the arguments from yesterday, the issue of under-registration goes back to the previous Government. Individual electoral registration, which I am glad the shadow Minister said the Opposition are not against, was introduced by Labour in government and has been taken forward by this Government.

What I counsel against is taking a snapshot within any one month of what is a two-year process, and then concluding that somehow IER, as a method of getting people to register to vote, is not working. I speak a lot to electoral registration officers on the ground. Furthermore, I was at the Association of Electoral Administrators’ conference on Monday—I spoke to a lot of people and asked them, “What do you need that you’re not getting from Government?” They all said that they were getting whatever they needed from Government in terms of resource and that they did not see the problems that some politicians stand here and say are happening with IER and the transition to it. In other words, the people on the ground accept that we are going through a transition process and to take a snapshot in any given month, and then generalise about the process, is the wrong approach.

[Chris Ruane]

The Minister said that we are at the beginning of a two-year process for the introduction of IER. Does he not think it would have been better to have started that two-year process after the general election, and after the freeze date for the boundary review, as was originally planned? Can he tell us one more time why IER was brought forward by one year, when all this impact on the general election and the Boundary Commission could have been avoided? Why did he bring it forward by one year?

[Mr Gyimah]

May I reject the hon. Gentleman’s premise that somehow the transition to IER will result in a negative impact on the general election? Nine out of 10 electors have been transferred to the new system. More people than we expected are registering online to vote, including some 900,000 18 to 25-year-olds. May I correct a second thing as well—the idea that somehow we can sort out the register, but not have online registration? Online registration is very much part of dealing with the long-standing deterioration in the register that happened under the previous Government.

[Mr Gyimah]

The Electoral Commission has a target of 1 million people being registered to vote in the final weeks running up to 26 April. It met its target last year, so I expect it to meet the target this year as well.

I have only 10 minutes left, so I will race through the rest of my speech. Yesterday we announced a further £10 million towards continuing to maximise the register. We have to recognise that the very act of getting people to register to vote is a bottom-up process. Politicians in Westminster, dressed in our suits and ties, do not get people to register to vote. What is needed is electoral registration officers writing to people, knocking on doors and speaking to people to get them to register. That is why the bulk of the funding is going to local authorities and why it has been weighted to local authorities where there are higher rates of registration.

[Chris Ruane]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Gyimah]

I am sorry; I can take no further interventions.

We also recognise that a number of national organisations do great work in getting people to register to vote. Bite the Ballot has been mentioned, but the British Youth Council also does good work, as do UK Youth, Mencap, Operation Black Vote, Homeless Link, Citizens UK and Citizens Advice.

The work of those organisations and of the local authorities will help us to reach the very groups that the Opposition have identified as being at risk of falling off the register. If some grand conspiracy were going on, we would not be investing money with those groups and with the National Union of Students to get people on the register. There is nothing cynical going on and no conspiracy. Whenever we introduced IER, at some point we would need a cut-off date and an effort to maximise the register. We cannot get away from that fact.

Of the points made in the report, the first I will deal with is the one about electronic voting, which comes up over and over again. I am sure that some time in my lifetime we will have electronic voting, but it took us long enough to deal with registration. We have to recognise some of the practical difficulties, however. Furthermore, the introduction of increasing process into the electoral system, whether electronic and weekend voting or same-day registration, does not address why people are disillusioned with politics.

Scotland had a huge turnout in the referendum without electronic voting. The reason was that people were motivated, excited and engaged with the issues. Introducing more electoral innovation might make voters’ lives easier, but it is not a substitute for us politicians doing our work to connect properly with people, to engage with them and, after all, to get them to turn out to vote for us.

Countries where electronic voting has been introduced—France has it for overseas voting, for example—do not necessarily achieve an increase in turnout, but, rather, an increase in turnout among certain groups of people. Overall, electronic voting does not drive an increase in turnout. That is not to say that it is not a good thing to explore—it is—but, practically speaking, in the UK we would need a system of authentication. When people turned up to vote, we would have to be able to identify them and instantly verify that so that they could vote. We do not have identity cards in this country. Some countries that have introduced electronic voting have ID cards, which is why they have been able to implement it. There are big practical challenges.

Votes at 16 also came up over and over again. There is significant scope for debate about that, especially given what happened in Scotland. Among the reasons why there is scope for debate is that 16-year-olds can join the armed forces. However, they cannot fight without parental support, and nor can they get married—there is a lot that they cannot do. If we were to give 16-year-olds the right to vote, we would have to ensure that, for example, they did not have to ask their parents which way to vote; only with parental permission can a 16-year-old serve in the forces.

I made this point in the debate yesterday, but it is striking that the very party that wants to give 16-year-olds the vote is the one that does not trust them to navigate the vagaries of individual electoral registration and says that somehow they would not have their national insurance numbers or—[Interruption.] It is a serious point. If the Labour party believes that 16-year-olds are old enough to vote, it has to believe that they are old enough to register themselves to vote in the first place.

[Mr Charles Walker in the Chair]

That brings me on to some of the registration techniques suggested in the report, such as block registration. The Government’s guidance to universities strikes the right balance between giving EROs the information that they need—that is, enrolment data, so that they can go after students, because they know who they are and can chase them, write to them, knock on doors and get them on to the register—and preserving the fundamental tenet of individual electoral registration, which is that individuals have to register themselves.

If we cross the line where people end up on the register, but they have not been engaged in the process—that is, they do not even know that they are on the register, because the warden of the college put them on it—we breach the principle of individual registration. If we breach it for first-year students, what about ethnic minorities, or—

Electoral Registration

Debate between Sam Gyimah and Chris Ruane

Wednesday 4th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

As I said, in addition to the £161,000 of maximised registration funding, Liverpool received £288,000 to help boost its register. If that money was not enough, the city can apply to the Cabinet Office for more funding using justification-led bids. Electoral registration officers have statutory responsibility for maintaining the register, so perhaps the hon. Lady will ask her EROs what they have done with the money.

What has prompted the change of heart on the Labour Benches about IER? Is it because the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) is trying to taunt the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) and the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) in their bids to become the Labour candidate for the Mayor of London? Could it be that the Labour party, rightly scared of the next election, has retreated to the comfort zone of opposition politics and scaremongering about the Government’s policies?

[Chris Ruane]

If the Conservatives win, and if the Minister is still a Minister in June, he will take the most momentous decision of his life: whether to let 5 million people drop off the register before the freeze date for boundaries on 1 December. What principles will guide him in that decision? When I asked him that in Committee, he did not have any.

[Mr Gyimah]

I will come to the details of the electoral register—[Interruption.] May I answer the question? There is a clear process through which the decision will be made about whether to end the transition in 2015. That will be down to the independent advice of the Electoral Commission, whoever is Minister and whoever is in government.

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[Chris Ruane]

I agree with my hon. Friend.

I wish to probe more deeply into the machinations of that grand plan. It is only by looking at what has happened in the recent past that we can find out what would happen over the next few months if the Tories were to get back in.

[Mr Gyimah]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Ruane]

No, I will not give way.

Individual electoral registration was introduced by the Labour Government in 2009 with cross-party support. The issue was so sensitive that we sought that cross-party support. The deadline for its introduction was after the latest date for the next general election, which is of course this year. The reason for the long run-in period was that there were already 7.5 million people missing from the register, and we hoped that we could get them back on to it during that five-year period. The Electoral Commission was going to have marking points throughout the period, so that we could implement IER and assess its impact. This cross-party support, this cherished unity, was shattered, as one of the first aims of the coalition agreement, set out on page 27, was:

“We will reduce electoral fraud by speeding up the implementation of individual voter registration.”

What was this massive electoral fraud that so concerned the Conservatives? Why was it so important that a new IER Bill took precedence over virtually all other Bills at the height of the economic crisis?

Let us look at the facts and figures concerning electoral fraud. The fraud that so exercised the Conservatives was one case in 2008 and one in 2009. In the six years from 2008 to 2013 there were three cases out of 45 million electors. That was the size of the problem.

[Chris Ruane]

No. I shall make progress.

That was the size of the problem—three cases of electoral fraud in six years. The Government, backed up by the Electoral Commission, claim that it is not the numbers—

[Mr Gyimah]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. Will he explain to us why the Labour Government decided to introduce IER if not to deal with electoral fraud, which he says does not exist?

[Chris Ruane]

We introduced it because, although the old system had served us fairly well and quite a high number of people were registered, we thought it was patriarchal and registration should be down to the individual. We did it with cross-party support, cross-party unity.

Why did the Conservatives go to such trouble to shatter the cross-party support? They knew exactly what they were doing when they rushed the Bill through with undue haste. They hoped that even more poorer voters would drop off the register before the 2015 general election and increase their chances of winning it.

[Chris Ruane]

I am coming to that right now.

What the Conservatives proposed was not simply bringing forward the date by one year. They had a few more tricks up their sleeves. They wanted to replace the civic duty to register by making it a lifestyle choice. Electors could simply opt out of registering by ticking a box that would be supplied to help them on their way to political disengagement. The Electoral Commission warned that if this happened, it would be assumed that those who did not vote would not register and we would lose 35% of the electorate.

If the Tories had succeeded, nearly half the electorate would have been missing from the register. Those left off would have been the poorest. This was a blatant, deliberate political act to drive the poorest people off the register. There is a term for it used by right wingers in America—voter suppression. No vote, no voice: those people were being silenced. The Conservatives were leaving nothing to chance. They planned a few more measures to ensure that those electors were forced off the register. They proposed that there would be no annual canvass—the Minister mentioned this. We introduced an annual canvass. The Minister did not want to introduce an annual canvass, but he was forced to do so. To complete the stitch-up the Conservatives proposed to remove any sanctions for not registering to vote. All these actions together show beyond doubt that the Tories’ direction of travel was to disfranchise as many poor voters as possible.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David) who, as shadow minister at the time, summoned civic society to fight this, and we managed to get the worst aspects of the Bill removed. The Lib Dems finally realised that they were being stitched up too. I pay tribute to the work of Chris Rennard in the Lords and others in the Lib Dem party who informed their Front-Bench team of what was going on.

We were able to stop the worst aspects of the Bill, but even though the Tories were defeated by a mighty alliance of those who wanted to protect democracy, they managed to squeeze one concession from their Lib Dem partners. The Tories proposed that they be given an opportunity, should they win the election, to make a political decision to drop off the unregistered in June this year, six months before the freeze date for the next boundary review. Five million electors would not transfer from household registration to individual registration. These voters would also be removed from the Scottish parliamentary elections, the Welsh Assembly elections and the local government elections. The Minister has already admitted that he has no guiding principles when he makes this important decision to smash British democracy—no such principles are in place. He failed to answer on this when I asked him at the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee and he failed to answer today when I asked him. The press and the public are watching the Minister. Would he like to intervene on that? Where are his guiding principles?

[Mr Gyimah]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that invitation to intervene. Whoever is the Minister, and whoever is in government, the decision they make will be taken on the independent advice of the Electoral Commission. That is pretty clear as far as guiding principles are concerned.

[Chris Ruane]

The Minister wants to have a word with his boss because I do not think he is thinking like that. The Minister was unable to answer this question about guiding principles, so I will tell him what the answer on the guiding principles will be. They will be what they were at the beginning of this Parliament: party political gain for the Conservative party.

Voter Registration

Debate between Sam Gyimah and Chris Ruane

Wednesday 22nd October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gyimah]

Since the launch of IER on 10 June, the digital service has processed more than 2.5 million applications. Almost 70% of those were made online through the “Register to vote” website, which has a satisfaction rate of more than 90%.

I am conscious of the time, so I will try to address all the points that have been raised as fast as I can. A lot has been said about the transition to IER, and there has been some bombast, hyperbole and conspiracy theory. The transition was speeded out as part of the coalition Government’s programme to tackle electoral fraud and rebuild trust in our elections. The timetable is phased over two years to help to manage the risk that the transition will impact on the general election. I want to put on record that no one who registered to vote at the last canvass will lose their right to vote at the general election in 2015. It is for Parliament to decide in the summer of 2015 whether the transition will conclude in 2015 or at the end of 2016. The phase-in of the transition to IER with a carry-forward will allow those who are not individually registered by the time of the 2015 general election to vote in that election. I hope that will provide some reassurance that no one will be disfranchised, which is the word that has been used so far.

Of course, we must be mindful of the pitfalls of introducing a new method of registering to vote, and we should focus on the completeness and accuracy of the register. Much has been said about the need for the register to be complete, and the Government and I agree with everyone on the need for that, but we cannot ignore the importance of accuracy. Without an accurate register, we risk undermining the very elections on which the system is based, so we must not simply sweep away the importance of accuracy.

During the process, we have had to learn a lot of lessons from Northern Ireland, which is a point that was raised several times during the debate. We have introduced some safeguards, such as the confirmation process, the carrying forward of electors, online registration, the retention of the annual canvass and the maximisation of registration funding. So far, £4 million has been made available to help all local authorities and five national organisations to maximise the register and deal with the problems that have been identified.

[Chris Ruane]

One of the key lessons from Northern Ireland is the importance of door-to-door canvassers, especially for non-respondents. Some electoral registration officers have broken the law by not knocking on those doors for five years on the trot. What advice has the Minister got for those EROs who break the law?

[Mr Gyimah]

EROs, of course, must follow the law. I will come to the hon. Gentleman’s point during the course of my speech. The need to ensure that students, who can be quite mobile, get on the register has been mentioned several times during the debate. I assure hon. Members that through the creation by the Cabinet Office of a student forum in early 2013, the Government have been working with key partners in the higher education sector, including Universities UK, the Academic Registrars Council and the National Union of Students, to agree on practical steps that EROs and universities can take to encourage students to register. Steps that have been agreed by all representatives of the student forum include the provision of data from universities to EROs to help them to contact students individually; promoting the use of online registration, particularly during university course enrolment; and publishing guidance for ARC to help registrars to implement those steps before the start of the 2014-15 academic year.

My predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), wrote to university vice-chancellors asking them to support local authorities in their efforts to maximise the number of student registrations. A lot is being done to get students on the register. We recognise the importance of data sharing in the context of students, which was mentioned during the debate. Individual electoral registration officers must make it easier for students to register. More than 410,000 applications from 16 to 24-year-olds have already been submitted via the online registration process.

[Mr Gyimah]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that not only students but all under-registered groups are a priority for the Government. We want to maximise the register so that people can exercise their right to vote.

The Electoral Commission’s research found that 90% of people feel that it would be easy to provide their national insurance number when registering to vote—that is based on real evidence—and only 1% of applicants so far have been unable to provide their national insurance number or their date of birth. In February 2014, the local authority in Sunderland received £12,627 for maximising registration. That allocation was based on under-registration, especially due to the authority having a high student population. Of course, there are people without national insurance numbers, but that is a very small cohort. In such exceptional situations, people can provide other information, such as their passport.

A lot has been made of local data matching in this debate, and in other debates on individual electoral registration. All local authorities and valuation joint boards in Great Britain took part in the confirmation dry run in 2013, which involved matching their electoral registers against Government records. We believe that EROs are best placed to understand the relevance of locally held data and are likely to improve confirmation matches. That varies between local authorities, so we believe that EROs are best placed to make that judgment.

[Chris Ruane]

I thank the Minister for giving way once again. Should the Electoral Commission have told the 383 EROs that the cross-matching of local government data was mandatory, not just a choice?

[Mr Gyimah]

As I have said, it is for EROs to judge how to go about local data matching in order to maximise the register. I have a couple of points to make about EROs, so if the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I will come to that in a second.

We have also talked a lot about people in homes who are missing from the register. Again, I assure Members that every unconfirmed elector will be written to twice, and those who do not respond will receive a doorstep visit. Eighty-seven per cent. have been confirmed and transferred to the new register automatically. Every household will also have two written reminders during the annual canvass. We are therefore undertaking a practical, step-by-step process to ensure that people get on the register.

Postal vote fraud is another issue of concern, and it is a valid concern. The Government are working to address any form of electoral fraud, and I assure Members that further measures are being taken to strengthen the integrity of the postal voting system. Measures introduced in the Electoral Administration Act 2006 provide that applicants for postal votes must submit identifying signatures and dates of birth, which are checked against corresponding records. Like the recent review by the statutorily independent Electoral Commission, we have found no reason to recommend changes to the postal voting system, which we will keep as it is.

[Chris Ruane]

The Electoral Commission is proposing changes to the postal vote system. If Conservative or Labour canvassers are out there on the knocker and a person wants a postal vote form, which we give to them and they fill in, the Electoral Commission proposes that we cannot take that form away and send it off. That is a big change, which I oppose, although I support the Electoral Commission’s proposal on handling postal votes at election time. Is the Minister correct that new proposals are not being made on postal voting?

[Mr Gyimah]

Sorry, but I am not very clear on that. Will the hon. Gentleman restate his point?

[Chris Ruane]

The Minister has just said that there are no proposed changes to postal votes, but the Electoral Commission proposes to stop members of political parties handling the registration of postal votes on the doorstep, and I do not think we should accept that proposal. The commission also proposes that political parties do not touch postal votes at election time—I can support that proposal, but I do not support the proposal on registering postal votes.

[Mr Gyimah]

The hon. Gentleman has a point. Of course, the integrity of the electoral system is important, and it is worth keeping postal vote fraud under review as we go through IER.

I know that the performance standards of EROs are a subject close to the hon. Gentleman’s heart. I am pleased that the report shows that the majority of EROs clearly met the performance standards in 2013, but the commission identified 22 EROs who failed to meet performance standards. That is obviously disappointing, even if it represents an improvement on 2012, when 30 EROs failed to meet the standards. In fact, performance has improved every year: 53 EROs were failing in 2011, 30 were failing in 2012 and now 22 are failing, which is still too many. My predecessor wrote to all EROs who failed to meet the standards, stressing that Parliament expects them to meet those obligations. The Cabinet Office provided additional funding in the current financial year for that important work. I assure the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) that Ministers are fully prepared to issue a formal direction to EROs, if necessary, to ensure that they comply with their statutory obligations.

[Chris Ruane]

I do not like to pull the Minister up on what he is saying, but he just said that EROs had improved every year, but they have not. It was 16 EROs who did not perform their statutory duties in 2008, 17 in 2009 and then as low as eight in 2010, but in 2011 it shot up to 55. That is not an improvement; it is getting worse. Then the figure was 30 and then it was 23, so what the Minister has just said, from the Front Bench, is factually incorrect. There has not been an improvement over the years; there has been an improvement, then a worsening and then another improvement.

[Mr Gyimah]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention; yes, there has been a recent improvement: 58 EROs were failing the standard in 2011, 30 were failing in 2012 and 22 were failing in 2013. That is an improvement, but the important point is the one I made: that Ministers are fully prepared to issue a formal direction to EROs, if necessary, to ensure that they comply with their statutory obligations. Twenty-two is an improvement, but it is still too many.

I am conscious of the time, so let me bring my comments to a close. We have a registration system that is a huge advance on the previous system. We have modernised the system and introduced online registration; it is not a retrograde step. There are 7.5 million people who we need to ensure we get on the register, but those 7.5 million people were not on the register before 2010, so I reject the allegation that somehow there is a Government conspiracy at work. As politicians, we all have an interest in ensuring that we have a thriving democracy, which is why the Government are allocating funds to ensure that we maximise the register.

The shadow Minister made the point about the Wales Bill. My concern is that we would be introducing more onerous burdens by adopting those recommendations, but we will certainly keep under review the need to ensure further canvassing and doing everything we can to ensure that the register is as complete and accurate as possible.