Voter Engagement

Debate between Stephen Twigg and Chris Ruane

Thursday 5th February 2015 Westminster Hall

[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?

[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?

Voter Registration

Debate between Stephen Twigg and Chris Ruane

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.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Stephen Twigg and Chris Ruane

Tuesday 19th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Ruane]

rose—

[Stephen Twigg]

rose—