Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what the implications are for the Government's policies of recommendation 10 of the report of the Association of Electoral Administrators entitled It’s time for urgent and positive Government action: The AEA’s review of the 2017 local government elections and the UK Parliamentary general election, published in September 2017, on the Government undertaking a full examination of the benefits of and issues presented by electronic forms of counting in order to assess effectiveness where it is currently permitted and to consider suitability for use at other types of election.

The total cost of the Electoral Registration Transformation Programme, which introduced Individual Electoral Registration (IER) in 2014, was £116.2 million. Funding for the Programme was provided by central Government. The figure includes the cost of funding provided by central Government to local authorities to cover the additional costs associated with IER compared to the previous household system. The figure also includes the costs of establishing the IER digital service and certain voter registration activities.

Since the transition to IER, central Government has continued to provide direct funding to local authorities to cover the additional costs of IER compared to the previous household system.