Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what recent steps his Department has taken to detect and prevent electoral fraud involving polling cards and voter registration.

The Electoral Commission provides guidance on preventing and reporting electoral fraud sets out the role of Local Electoral Registration Officers, Returning Officers, the police and political parties in detecting and preventing fraud. This guidance can be found online.

Moreover, the security of registration has been improved by the introduction of Individual Electoral Registration. This service checks the details provided by the applicant, including their National Insurance number, against government data before passing the application to the relevant local electoral administration team.

For applications with no National Insurance number and other applications not verified through the digital service, the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) will seek further information regarding identity. For all registration applications, online or otherwise, the ERO is also responsible for ensuring that other eligibility requirements, such as the nationality of the applicant, are satisfactorily met.

Finally, the Government considers the integrity of the electoral system of the utmost importance and has recently welcomed the report published by Sir Eric Pickles into electoral fraud.

The Government will closely consider the recommendations laid out in that report and issue its response shortly.