Question

To ask the hon. Member for South West Devon, representing the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission, what recent assessment the Electoral Commission has made of the potential benefits of the inclusion of the actual number and proportion of UK citizens registered to vote as a measure of the Electoral Commission's effectiveness.

The inclusion of the actual number and proportion of UK citizens registered to vote is not currently included as a key success measure of the Electoral Commission's effectiveness. The Commission's key success measures are reviewed each year and included in its Corporate Plan which is updated and presented to the Speaker's Committee for approval on an annual basis.

The Commission works with Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) and other stakeholders to increase the number and proportion of UK citizens registered to vote and therefore the change in registrations cannot be attributed solely to the Commission. Changes in registration rates are also likely to be the result of some factors which do not relate directly to registration practices, including levels of political engagement and changes in population mobility.

However, the Commission sets targets for the number of registration forms downloaded from its AboutMyVote website. This measure provides a proxy for the number of registrations attributable to each Commission campaign. The targets for the number of registration forms downloaded vary for each poll taking account of, for example, the size of the electorate.

It is currently not possible to directly map the number of forms downloaded from the Commission's site to actual registrations as the registers are managed by 363 Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) across Great Britain and EROs do not measure the number of registration forms downloaded from aboutmyvote.co.uk for the specific period of Commission campaigns. Following the introduction of Individual Electoral Registration, the Commission will examine the opportunities presented by online registration to review its registration measurements.