National Voter Registration Day

Baroness Hanham Excerpts

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, with the approach of the general election next year, it is a bit late for pilot schemes. The Government have given £4 million to local authorities to promote registration among vulnerable groups. I am aware of three local authorities, Dumfries and Galloway, Ceredigion, and Redcar and Cleveland, that have specifically allocated some of this to looking at how to register young voters. In Ceredigion’s case, it has an explicit partnership with Bite the Ballot while doing this. We encourage all those activities. I remind the noble Lord that electoral registration is managed at the local level, which as a former local councillor he will well know.

[Baroness Hanham (Con)]

What progress has been made on individual electoral registration? It is very important for young people to know about the democratic process, but as part of that they must also know that they have to register in order to vote.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, online electoral registration was introduced four weeks ago. I have the figures only for the first week and we were extremely encouraged by how many people had registered. We hope that we will have the figures for the first month by next week. That is part of why we think that we have moved on from the Northern Ireland experience, in which electoral registration officers took paper forms into schools. We think that young people are much more likely to register online. The experience of 2010 suggests that the registration rate rises rapidly in the few months before a general election. It rose by 700,000 in early 2010. We expect that to happen again.