Individual Voter Registration

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

We know that some 5 million people who are eligible to vote have not registered to do so, and the Government’s proposed reform will allow another 5 million-odd people to be knocked off the register. These reforms, plus the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, are a blatant example of gerrymandering of the type that the former leader of Westminster city council, who is now a fugitive from justice living in Israel and who was knighted for her dishonourable action, carried out on a magnificent scale in Westminster.

Some 10 million people will not be on the register because of a number of the Government’s proposals. If the Minister makes the following promises, my party will be able to support him: first, that the signing of the electoral register will not be optional; secondly, that door-to-door canvassing of properties that fail to reply to the electoral register will take place in 2014; thirdly, that postal and proxy voters who do not provide new personal information or send back new forms will be allowed to vote in 2015—as we know, the majority of such voters tend to be elderly—and, fourthly, that anyone who does not fill in the form properly, or who opts out, will be included in the 2015 boundary review.

The Labour party proposed that IER should be introduced in 2020, but only after the Electoral Commission has established the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the register. The Government should not abolish the Electoral Commission’s role, and the changes should not go live in 2015. The current proposal will reduce the numbers on the electoral register to as little as 65% of the population. That is the prediction of the independent Electoral Commission. As a result, millions of people will be disfranchised.

Those who will lose the ability to vote are likely to be the young, those from black and ethnic minority backgrounds, the disabled and those in social and private rented accommodation. This is a partisan move, and if the Government have their way, for the first time in its history the electoral register will become unrepresentative of the population as a whole. It is imperative that people beyond Parliament recognise just how insidious these proposals are: never before has the very fabric of our democracy been at risk. Every democrat has a duty to defend it.