Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

4. What recent assessment he has made of the accuracy of the electoral register.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

5. What recent assessment he has made of the accuracy of the electoral register.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that, and I congratulate him on being elected to the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, where he can pursue his interest in these matters. He will know that when in government the Labour party did, to be fair, try a number of things, but the things it tried were not successful. We are going to introduce individual electoral registration and we are going to trial data-matching next year, so that we can see whether there are more effective ways of allowing electoral administrators to get people on the register when they are entitled to be on it.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Does the Minister agree that some individuals deliberately keep themselves off the register because they are partaking in or are aiding and abetting benefit fraud? How does he think we should address that important issue?

[Mr Harper]

One of the things that we will do on individual registration is ensure that people will have to register with a signature and their date of birth and national insurance number details. Those will be checked against Department for Work and Pensions records to ensure that the voting record database is accurate. One of the things that we will be doing when we trial data-matching next year is looking to see what other benefits can be obtained from those public sector databases.