Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the proposal by Lord Young of Cookham on 14 January (HL Deb col 889), what assessment they have made of the suggestion that local authorities should include information about registering to vote and voting by post with council tax bills; and whether this information can be delivered safely.

Electoral Registration Officers have the statutory responsibility for maintaining complete and accurate registers for their areas; decisions on what to include with local authority mailings is a matter for individual councils. The Electoral Commission (EC) also provides guidance for Electoral Registration Officers and will have a role in raising awareness of how people can vote by post or proxy. As part of their guidance to EROs on planning for the delivery of electoral registration, the EC advises that the online registration application form could be signposted on web pages that residents would most commonly use to carry out a transaction with the local authority, such as the page on which to register and pay for Council Tax.