Automatic Registration: UK Elections

Tommy Sheppard Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

May I start by remarking on the fact that the Government Benches appear to be particularly denuded this afternoon? I hope that is because Government Members support the proposition under discussion. I ask the Minister to reflect on the fact that, so far, no one has spoken other than to support the principle of automatic voter registration, and that not a single Member of the House is so exercised to the contrary as to turn up—that alone might make him consider that this is an idea whose time has come. I hope that we will get a positive response from him.

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson) on bringing the debate to the Chamber today. I endorse and support pretty much everything he said in moving the motion.

I want to highlight a couple of aspects of the problem, the first of which is its scale. In 2014, the Electoral Commission estimated that as many as 7.5 million people who are entitled to vote might not be on the electoral register. To get some more up-to-date figures in preparation for the debate, I asked the House of Commons Library for a list by constituency of the estimated over-18 adult population compared with the number of people on the register. I have the figures with me, if anyone is interested, and they show that the difference between the number of over-18s in the population and the number on the register is just over 6 million. That is not a direct comparison, because many people on the register will be double-registered. The largest cohort of those will be students, but there will also be people who have moved house and so on, and some over-18s are not entitled to vote anyway.

Those figures indicate that we have a considerable problem, and we have it in all parts of the country. In my constituency, which includes the biggest part of the centre of Edinburgh, with its big transient population, I have 23,000 more over-18 adults than are on the electoral register. That is a staggering number of people. Even in the Minister’s constituency of Weston-super-Mare, the figure is more than 10,000.

That is a problem for three main reasons. First, it is a democratic outrage. We cannot sit here and be content with the situation if our fellow citizens are not even eligible to vote on that scale. As the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) pointed out, not everyone is treated equally. Those suffering deprivation or oppression of one kind or another are less likely to be on the register than people who have a reasonably comfortable life, are literate and are settled in their situation. The people who face multiple indicators of deprivation are the least likely to be on the register. We have a somewhat ironic situation: the more awful someone’s life is and the more problems they face, the less able they are to do anything about it through the democratic process. We cannot possibly let that lie for much longer.

Secondly, apart from the democratic argument, the situation is an administrative nightmare. That was epitomised by what happened in the run-up to the registration deadline for the European Union referendum. The computer crashed because it could not cope with the demand. Why do we create a situation in which there has to be a rush before a deadline, mostly comprised of people checking whether they are on the register in the first place? It does not have to be done that way. If we had a process of continual automatic registration of the electorate, the problem would not arise.

The other problem, which has been remarked upon, is that a lot of people think they are on the register when they are not. That is one of the contributing factors to a general disillusionment and alienation with our democratic system, which we cannot allow to continue. For all those reasons, I very much support the campaign for automatic voter registration, and I hope the Minister will say something positive today.

The all-party group’s report has been referred to, and it was signed off by a Member from the Minister’s own party, the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith). It made 25 recommendations, some of them incredibly sensible. Which of them does the Minister think are good ideas that could be implemented? I have a copy of the report here. The final recommendation is that, because of all that has come before, we should move to a system of automatic voter registration. I think we have to do that.

I want to try to anticipate some of the arguments against automatic voter registration. The first would be, “Perhaps there is a data collection problem, and data that have been collected for one reason cannot be used for another.” Well, the Government should bring forward the legislative changes required to enable that use. Provided that we specify at the point of collection that the information will be used to allow people the right to vote, I do not see any particular problem, and that could be done almost instantaneously given that so many transactions happen online. It could be done within weeks. We do not have to wait years for it to happen.

The second argument that people will probably make is, “The computer systems do not talk to each other. We will have to get a new computer system and that will take a lot of time and cost a lot of money.” Don’t blame the technology—the computer systems do not have to talk to each other. All that is required is that human beings involved in the process of compiling the electoral register can use the other computer systems to put together one that deals with electoral registration.

The third problem to be raised might be, “There may be a concern about people being put on the register against their will. People should have the right to not be registered.” Of course they should, so the Government could automatically register them and write to them saying that that is what has been done. At that point they would have the chance to opt out.

The final problem that is raised is, “Perhaps there is a problem with security. How do we know that the person who paid this bill should be put on the electoral register?” That is a ludicrous argument. If someone applies for and gets a British passport, which is one of the main credentials a person needs to be able to take part in democracy, surely it should automatically follow that they get put on the electoral register as well. If someone buys a new house, it is a legal obligation not only to register the property but to register ownership of the property. Surely we should be able to put that person on the electoral register automatically.

Will the Minister say which of the 25 recommendations in the all-party group’s report can be implemented now and which he would like to look at over a bit more time? Will he come forward with proposals to allow automatic voter registration to happen? Bring us solutions, rather than problems.