Voter Registration

Stephen Twigg Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

We have had a very good debate, with excellent contributions on both sides of the Chamber. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott). Many of us will be jealous of how quickly the counts are undertaken in Sunderland elections. I think that for the last election in Liverpool, I got my declaration at 6 o’clock in the morning. Something can certainly be learned from a system that enables people to be in bed in the early hours of the following morning. More seriously, I pay tribute to the work that Sunderland electoral services do. As she said, that is something from which we can all learn in this country, as well as people in other parts of the world.

May I mention two other contributions before making my own speech? The hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), the former Minister, spoke about the work of the all-party parliamentary group, and it is a very welcome innovation. It is supported by Bite the Ballot, which I will say something about later. Bite the Ballot is a fantastic, non-partisan organisation that basically exists to get more young people registered to vote. I pay tribute to it; it is playing a very important role in the changes.

I also have to mention, of course, my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane), who has been tireless in raising these issues. He was raising them before others were even talking about them. He is tenacious in challenging Ministers, shadow Ministers and, indeed, the Electoral Commission, and all power to his elbow for the brilliant work that he has done. He expressed the concern that Opposition Members have consistently expressed about the acceleration of the introduction of individual voter registration. I support individual voter registration because it is an archaic concept for the head of a household to determine who is registered to vote. There is undoubtedly cross-party support for changing that, but we have to balance getting to what is the right system that we all support with doing that in a way that does not have the unintended consequences that hon. Members have spoken about.

As has been said, the latest estimate from the Electoral Commission is that there are now 7.5 million people who could be registered but are not. We know that that is not a cross-section of the population as a whole. There are massive disparities between different sections of society. Let us look at 2011, which was the last time we could compare census data with the electoral register. About half of 18 to 24-year-olds were not on the register, compared with just 6% of those aged over 65. If we look at private renters—my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central spoke about private renters from the Sunderland experience—we see that barely half of people living as private tenants were on the electoral register, compared with more than 90% of home owners. Therefore it is a very big challenge, and that was under the old system of household registration. The big concern is that the situation could get worse.

We know that the data-matching pilots have given a figure of 79% for matching. That leaves 21% needing to be found in other ways, including local data matching and data mining.

Certain groups are particularly affected. My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd drew attention to the latest annual report from the Electoral Commission. I share his concern—which he expressed so powerfully—that it says that its target is simply to avoid any further fall in the level of registration. Surely we must have greater ambition than that. We want the 7.5 million figure to go down. The risk, as has been said, is that it will get even worse.

[Chris Ruane]

It could go up.

[Stephen Twigg]

Exactly. We want the 7.5 million figure to fall. We want the numbers of those who are not on the register to fall. We want a register that is more accurate and complete. Seven and a half million is far too many voters unregistered. We want the figure for those who are not on the register to be lower.

The hon. Member for Norwich North rightly reminded us that those who are already on the register will be carried over for 2015, but of course that does not capture people who have turned 18 since the previous register, who would be new to the register, and crucially—this is where I want to focus my remarks—it does not cover those who have moved home since the previous register. They then have the responsibility of registering under individual voter registration. In this immediate period, those are the people whom I am most concerned about.

There are three groups. One is private renters. By the nature of private renting, people are more likely to move about, and I echo the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central in that regard. When the Minister responds to the debate, I ask him to say something about the position of private renters. What can be done, working with local authorities and organisations that represent landlords and that represent private tenants themselves? Generation Rent is a fairly new organisation that is playing that role. What can we do to try to ensure that the numbers of private renters who are registered goes up rather than falling even further?

However, let me focus in particular on the two groups that I think are most affected in the immediate term: students and young people. There is already an enormous gap in terms of young people’s registration, as I have said, but also in the turnout of young people who are registered. There has always been that gap—it is not new—but it has widened over the last 40 years or so.

Students are a particularly important group in this regard. My hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central spoke about Sunderland as a university city. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), who is no longer in his place, spoke about the Sheffield experience. We can learn from the excellent practice that he has promoted in Sheffield and which Sheffield university has adopted. When its students register as students, they are then taken to the voter registration site of the Electoral Commission so that they remain registered to vote. I think that that is the ideal system and that all universities should adopt it, but there are worrying signs already that the levels of student registration are falling dramatically.

I spoke to a Manchester city councillor recently. She told me that the initial indications are that registration at the student halls of residence in Manchester is averaging around 10% under the new system, whereas under the old system, with block registration, it was of course 100%. In the city centre ward in Manchester at the moment, registration is down by 98%. Things can be done between now and next April to ensure that the levels are improved, but that reminds us of the scale of the challenge with regard to university students, and that is something that does apply for 2015; it does not await further changes in terms of the legislative framework. What measures will the Government take to work with universities, the National Union of Students and local authorities, so that we maximise the number of higher education students on the register at their place of study in time for the election next year?

Let me now say something about young people and, in particular, the role of schools and colleges in registering young people. I was very interested to listen to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) talking about the experience in Northern Ireland. The model that exists in Northern Ireland—the schools initiative—is one from which we can learn a great deal.

I have done a number of visits with Bite the Ballot to sixth forms both in Scotland and in England and seen the fantastic work that it does in encouraging young people to register to vote. I think that it makes sense to have a duty on schools and colleges to work with local authorities on voter registration. I urge the Government, who I think have been resistant to that idea, to consider it as a serious option. I asked the Minister about it at Deputy Prime Minister’s questions last week and I shall do so again today. Bite the Ballot has suggested that we have an opportunity with the Wales Bill, currently going through Parliament, to make an amendment that would ensure that there was a responsibility on schools to undertake one voter registration session a year and to work with their electoral registration officer to get more young people signed up. It is a modest amendment that is before the House of Lords at the moment. It is, as I understand it, supported by all the party leaders in Wales, including the leader of the Welsh Conservatives in the Welsh Assembly. The head teachers’ trade union—the Association of School and College Leaders—is very supportive of the idea, and we support it. I urge the Government to give serious consideration to adopting it. Clearly, under the Wales Bill, it would apply only to Wales, but we would like it to be adopted in England and Scotland as well—one step at a time. We would be drawing on and learning from the positive experience of that practice in Northern Ireland.

We have concerns about the speed with which the Government are implementing individual voter registration. The principle is sound; it is the speed of implementation that concerns us. In relation to certain groups, there is real concern about a large number of people falling off the register. I ask the Minister to consider, either in his remarks today or perhaps beyond today, whether we need to amend the legislation to allow certain groups to be block registered. I am particularly concerned about two groups in that regard. One, which I have already spoken about, is university students. There is a case for saying that the legislation should be changed to allow students who live in halls of residence to be automatically registered, in view of those unique circumstances. The other group that I am concerned about is those who live in residential homes—often older people or people with learning difficulties or other disabilities—who may fall off the register. Is there a case for looking at the retention of block registration for those two groups?

The immediate priority is to address some of the points that have been raised in the debate. I support my colleagues who have spoken of the importance of the door-to-door canvass in getting the highest level of registration possible. There is a real concern that, even with some of the additional resources that I acknowledge the Government have provided for the introduction of IER, that basic building block is being eroded in many local authorities, and it must not be. If IER is not to result in the negative consequences that some of us fear, door-to-door canvassing—including, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central said in her opening speech, a mini-canvass in January and February—is essential. I look forward to the Minister’s comments on that.

I reiterate the importance of looking at the Northern Ireland experience with schools and colleges. I urge the Minister to think again about extending to England, Wales and Scotland the duty on schools and colleges that exists in Northern Ireland. Above all, in the next period, the group that is most likely to find itself not on the register at election time next year is students in higher education. That is a real risk. Will the Minister give a commitment that he will work closely with the universities, the National Union of Students and local authorities to maximise student registration?

I finish by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central once again for securing such an important debate. A register that is as accurate and complete as possible is a crucial building block for our democracy. I am sure that the Minister will agree that to have 7.5 million people not on the register is unacceptable. If an unintended consequence of IER is that the situation gets even worse, surely all of us, whichever side of the House we are on, should be very concerned.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Stephen Twigg]

I welcome the work of the student forum. Can the Minister assure us that he will take a close personal interest in the matter and look at the figures as they come in? If by January or February it is clear that there has been a substantial fall in the level of registration among students, will the student forum work with him to look at what can be done via online registration to get those figures up?

[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.