Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, with reference to his letter of 20 February 2017 to the Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Democratic Participation, (a) how the Government will measure the effect of the voter ID pilots on turnout and (b) by what criteria voter identification would be deemed a deterrent to the number of people voting.

The Government’s response to Sir Eric Pickles’ review of electoral fraud, Securing the ballot, outlined the Government’s intention to run a number of pilot schemes at local government elections in May 2018. Over the coming weeks and months, the Government will be working with our key electoral partners (including the Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators) to set out the timing and methodology of the pilot schemes. My letter of 20 February to my Right Honourable friend, the Member for Loughborough, outlined that the purpose of the pilot schemes is to test the impact of voter identification measures on the electoral process as a whole, including on factors such as turnout.