Question

To ask the hon. Member for South West Devon, representing the Speaker's Committee on the Electoral Commission, if the Electoral Commission will publish electoral registration rates for each region and constituent part of the UK for each of the last 30 years; what the long term and predicted future trends in levels of registration are; and if he will make a statement.

The Electoral Commission informs me that it holds regional and country-level data on completeness from the studies on electoral registration which have been carried out using census data. This is presented in the table below. Note that these estimates are not corrected for non-response to the census and as a result are higher than the commonly quoted headline completeness estimates.

The Commission's 2011 report summarises its conclusions on the recent trends in levels of registration and likely causal factors. The report can be found on their website here: http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/145366/Great-Britains-electoral-registers-2011.pdf

A further report on the completeness and accuracy of the registers will be published in July and will update the picture to 2014.