Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Burns Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

Obviously, an exception has been made for Scotland, but the Government have no plans to extend it to the rest of the United Kingdom.

[Mr Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

We warmly welcome anything that increases the integrity of the electoral register, but is my right hon. Friend aware that although it takes only 10 or 15 seconds for someone to put their name on the register, it can take months, if not years, and considerable expense to remove someone who has inadvertently or illegally put their name on it? What is he going to do about it?

[Greg Clark]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Part of the transition is to ensure the integrity of the electoral register and to make sure that electoral registration officers target the accuracy, as well as the completeness, of the register. I was struck by some figures from the Metropolitan police, who disclosed that of 29,000 forged identity documents they had seized, 45% had a corresponding forged entry on the electoral register. That underlines the importance of the changes we are making.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I know that the hon. Lady’s party advocated no upper limit to fees, because it was the Labour Government who commissioned the Lord Brown review—never mind £9,000, it said there should be no upper limit. We have no plans to change the upper limit at the present time.

[Mr Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

May I press the Deputy Prime Minister on the answer I got from the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark)? What precisely are the Government planning to do to make it easier, cheaper and quicker to remove from the electoral register those who put themselves on it either inadvertently or illegally?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The whole design of individual voter registration—which, let us remember, was first mooted and launched by the previous Government—was precisely to stamp out levels of fraud and wrongdoing on the electoral register. Our view is that as we move towards individual voter registration on the timetable that we have set out—doing so carefully and providing a great deal of information to those who might otherwise not be aware that they need to make the change and comparing different datasets to make sure that those who are legitimately on the electoral register and are on other databases are transferred automatically—we will be able to weed out fraudulent entries on the electoral register within two or three years.