Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what progress he has made on reforming the annual canvass of electors.

Although it continues to play an important role in helping to maintain register accuracy and completeness, alongside online registration, the current one-size-fits-all annual canvass process is widely recognised as being burdensome and inefficient. The Government intends to implement changes to this process that will make the canvass easier for citizens and administrators and improve overall efficiency considerably.

In 2016 and 2017 we delivered a range of pilots that have tested alternatives to the current process. The evidence from these pilots is currently being analysed and we expect to publish findings later this month. We are currently working in close partnership with the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators, the Scottish Assessors Association and electoral administrators to discuss what improvements to the canvass process could be made, based on the evidence from the pilots. We are engaging directly with the devolved administrations in this work. We intend to consult on proposals later this year.

More widely, since the transition to Individual Electoral Registration and the introduction of online registration, we have delivered a number of reforms, again in partnership with the wider electoral community. This has included making a number of changes to the law (for example to allow Invitations to Register to be sent by e-mail) as well as non-legislative improvements such as continual improvement of the online platform (both the citizen interface and behind-the-scenes). In addition, in December 2017 the Government published the first ever Democratic Engagement Plan.