Electoral Registration

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

Perhaps Ministers do not realise what officials in the Cabinet Office are sending out, but they have accepted that it was their mistake.

To be fair to the Minister, his boss, the Deputy Prime Minister, has finally woken up to the mess that this Government made by speeding up the process. That must be why, last month, the Deputy Prime Minister announced £9.8 million to help with registering voters who are currently under-represented. He accepted that he had messed up. Will the Minister confirm that that money is ring-fenced solely for electoral registration activities?

Another critical factor is the extreme pressure on local authorities because of the cuts imposed by this Government. Local authorities have to write to 48 million individual voters, instead of 20 million households. Unlike the Minister, who criticises them, I take my hat off to local authorities, most of which are doing a remarkable job dealing with this massive change in our democracy, all against a backdrop of enormous pressures on council budgets.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

In Coventry, more than 8,000 people have not been registered, the bulk of whom are students. Coventry city council, alongside the students, has organised a registration day tomorrow at both universities. The situation is very serious, and it is no good the Government blaming everybody else but themselves when things go wrong.

[Sadiq Khan]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. I am sure we all agree it is outrageous that the Government are once again seeking to blame somebody else for cock-ups that they were warned about.

The electoral register is in a parlous state. It is just 92 days until the general election, and just 75 days until the deadline for registration on 20 April. We need action, and we need it now. Doing nothing is not an option. The main thrust of our motion is to propose a number of remedies to which the House should give its backing. A particular priority must be young people. All the evidence shows that if people vote when they first become eligible, they are more likely to vote for the rest of their lives, because voting becomes a habit. The opposite is also true: if people do not vote early in life, taking part in elections will never be much of an issue for them. There must be a greater onus on schools and colleges to provide focused activities.