Individual Electoral Registration

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that suggestion. I said in my statement that I wanted to work with local authorities and with Members of the House to promote electoral registration. His second idea is a very good one, and I shall think about it some more and see what we can do, ahead of the registration for this December, to make a significant impact.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

In my constituency, five Conservatives were jailed or convicted following illegal registrations. They will probably be the last people to be convicted of that, because Lydia Simmons, whose seat was stolen, still faces a legal bill of hundreds of thousands of pounds, which were not available because the Conservative party did not pay the costs of its representatives. When looking at this issue, will the Minister see whether there are ways of making funds available to prosecute criminally illegal registration in such cases? I should also like to ask whether he is changing the law when he says:

“Whether a person chooses to register or not should be their individual choice.”

I did not think that that was the case in law at present, and I wonder whether his statement is announcing a legal change

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Lady would not seriously expect me to comment on individual cases, particularly when I do not have the details of them. On her second point, people are not legally obliged to register to vote. If they receive inquiries from the local authority—the household registration form or some other inquiry—they are legally obliged to respond to them accurately, but there is no obligation on individuals to register at all. When registration is a household matter, and a person is responsible for registering other people, it is right that that should be obligatory, but when individuals take responsibility for their own registration, it is perfectly reasonable to say that it is up to them whether they choose to register— [Interruption.] We live in a free society, and people are entitled to decide whether they wish to be registered to vote and to cast their vote. That is the position today, and it will remain unchanged.