Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment he has made of the trends in level of childhood happiness and well-being in the last 30 years.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of including information on voter registration in national insurance number notification letters.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Government has worked closely with HMRC to identify opportunities to promote voter registration, for example in tax information products, and we are continuing to discuss how this might work in other communications, including National Insurance Number notification
letters
In addition, we publish a message reminding people to register to vote on our high traffic GOV.UK pages, such as HMRC and DVLA, in the run-up to electoral registration deadlines.
We welcome new opportunities to signpost voter registration, including to young people, and are continuing to explore physical and online spaces to place prompts with partners across government and the electoral community.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of (a) the University of Sheffield's initiative on voter registration for students and (b) mandating universities to promote students to register to vote.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Government is encouraged by the University of Sheffield’s experience but has no plans to mandate a single approach across the country.
The Government is, however, committed to ensuring the electoral registration system is responsive to the needs of students. Ministerial Guidance was issued to the Office for Students (OfS) in February 2018 acting on a commitment made in Parliament during the
passage of the Higher Education and Research Act (2017), directing that they require Higher Education providers to comply with Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) requests for data and they be encouraged to work with Local Authorities to promote electoral registration amongst their student populations. The merits of working closely with EROs have been demonstrated by a number of Higher Education providers across the country.
Yet, the Government does not believe that one size fits all and instead favours an approach which allows innovation.
The Ministerial Guidance has since been used by the OfS to produce their own guidance to Higher Education providers, which advises them how they might best implement, and abide by, the requirements placed on them. The OfS guidance came into force in August. The Government is committed to ensuring everyone who is eligible to register to vote is able to do so and, in 2014, introduced online registration for the first time. Statistics show young people aged between 14 and 24 are more likely than average to use this as a means of registering to vote.
The Government believes these measures will drive up the number of applications to register from students – improving both the completeness and accuracy of the electoral register – as well as further improve the relationships between Higher Education provider and Local Authorities.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment he has made of potential merits of introducing block voter registrations in (a) care homes and (b) university halls of residence.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Block registration undermines the principles underpinning Individual Electoral Registration that individuals take ownership of their registration status, deciding when and where they want to be registered. The Government, therefore, has no plans to implement any measures, including introducing block registration that would remove this choice
The Government has taken a number of steps to improve student registration. The Higher Education and Research Act 2017 ensures that student electoral registration is a core condition of the new higher education framework and subsequent regulatory guidance for higher education providers reinforces their obligations to promote registration and provides case studies of good practice.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, whether his Department measures optimism in society.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Cabinet Office does not routinely measure optimism in society. Occasionally questions on optimism may be included in other research studies undertaken by the Cabinet Office for contextual purposes.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of a pilot scheme allowing election-day voter registration in polling stations.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Government has no plans to introduce election day registration. To work effectively and securely, it would require all polling stations in a constituency to be electronically linked and the register updated in real time to prevent anyone registering and voting in one
polling station and moving quickly to another to do the same. This would present considerable technical challenges and carry significant cost.
Such a change would introduce uncertainties as to the register to be used for the election and undermine confidence in the process if candidates were unable to challenge any unusual trends in registration prior to Polling Day.
Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) are legally responsible for determining who is eligible to vote in polls in their local areas. Coming to a determination can take time and cannot be done instantaneously.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of replacing ERO electoral registers with a single national electoral register.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Government has no plans to introduce a new nation-wide database for the purposes of electoral registration. The introduction of such a database would raise a number of significant technical and practical issues, as well as security and privacy concerns.
The Cabinet Office is currently considering ways to modernise and streamline the existing registration system to ensure it is responsive to the needs of electoral administrators and citizens alike. This includes making the system of electoral registration even more convenient, accessible and user-friendly, as well as more efficient by developing more cost effective approaches to maintaining the completeness and accuracy of their registers.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, with reference to the voter ID pilot, what assessment he has made of the effect of the (a) poll card, (b) mixed ID, and (c) photographic ID model on people with protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010.
Answered by Kevin Foster
In line with the 2018 pilot evaluation, the 2019 pilots have been evaluated by both the Electoral Commission and the Cabinet Office. The evaluations show that the overwhelming majority of people cast their vote without a problem. As in 2018, the data collected does not indicate that any demographic group was consistently adversely impacted by the models across the pilot authorities.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps his Department has taken to increase registration rates and voter turnout of (a) visually impaired voters and (b) voters with learning difficulties.
Answered by Kevin Foster
In September 2017 the Government launched a Call for Evidence to find out how people with disabilities experience registering to vote and voting itself. The government responded to this in August 2018 and is working with organisations such as the RNIB and the Royal Mencap Society in overseeing delivery of the actions contained in the Government’s response and more widely.
These actions include reviewing the online registration system, utilising opportunities to promote awareness for groups representing disabled people, such as in National Democracy Week, providing information in Easy Read format and making use of sight registers held by local authorities in England to support more and better information being made available.
Improvements in place and intended for the voting process also support participation and include improved training of polling station staff to provide better support to voters with sight loss and those who have a learning disability and consideration of options for equipment for people with disabilities to use when voting.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what the electoral registration rate was in each year since 1997 in the 100 parliamentary constituencies which have had the largest decrease in the number of electors on the register from the date of the local boundary review to July 2019.
Answered by Oliver Dowden - Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority.
The UK Statistics Authority's Interim National Statistician has responded.