Electoral Administration Bill

I shall shortly be coming to the question of student registration. Clear direction should be given about the use of door-to-door canvassing, which was widely and successfully used in the past. The practice has diminished over recent years, mainly on cost grounds, but electoral registration officers should be given specific instructions to use door-to-door canvassing. Whether it is at the end of the process, after the initial letter has gone out, the reminders have been sent or telephone calls have been made, we need to knock on doors to ensure that we maximise registration. The report by the Office for National Statistics on conducting the canvass strongly suggests that at some stage in the process personal contact must be made with householders to maximise response rates. Electoral registration could be dramatically improved if all EROs and electoral administration departments fully utilised current powers, which were given to them in the Representation of the People Act 2000. However, if I were to ask how many electoral administration departments were using those powers, I am sure that I would be told that the information is not collected centrally. Using existing powers could make a big difference. New computer programmes also offer opportunities. Local land and property gazettes give a unique property reference number to each building, each floor in a building and each living unit on that floor. Such 21st century information systems could offer a full picture of every house, home or living unit in a county or constituency. It would be of particular use to me in my constituency where there are about 1,500 houses in multiple occupation. If we knew where each living unit was, we would have a greater chance of knowing who lived there. Local authorities should also co-operate with the Royal Mail, which keeps a comprehensive list of properties. They should have the power to ask for information from owners of HMOs and caravan sites and from social landlords to help them to compile the register. Such powers should be used fully. The right and responsibility of EROs to consult local government databases, which was established in 2001, is the key to finding most of the information necessary for a full register. For example, education departments could furnish the ERO with the names and addresses of further and higher education students and sixth-formers. Social services departments could furnish information about residential and nursing homes, people receiving home help and attendance allowance, and vulnerable young adults. Housing departments have a treasure trove of information about council tenants and people on housing benefit. Environment or public protection departments will have details about HMOs. EROs should also have the right to consult letting agents and social landlords. The means are already in place, but they need careful monitoring. If all my proposals were carried out we could obtain most of the required information. My question to the Minister is: are those powers used? I do not think that they are, otherwise about 4 million people would not be missing from the electoral register. I urge the Minister to go further and push for secondary legislation to allow EROs to access central Government databases. If a majority of unregistered people are unemployed, why not use unemployment registers to find out where they are? If a majority are on low pay, why not use the tax credit registers to find out where they are? We should not wait another two or three years to see whether the current proposals are embedded. We should act now. I welcome the Bill’s proposals and I am pleased that the Minister has welcomed suggestions to improve security and widen participation. If we act co-operatively and collegiately and make our best suggestions, the Minister will take them up and democracy will be the better for it.