Electoral Administration Bill

I can assure my hon. Friend that those people will get a knock on the door, not once but twice if they do not fill in the form and get registered the first time. It is right that we have independent electoral registration officers, but the performance standards that are laid down in the Bill will ensure that we have common high standards for electoral registration, as well as transparency and accountability. My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd rightly said that we do not know how much each individual registration officer spends in their area or the total amount spent on electoral registration. Under the Bill, electoral registration officers will be required to report to the Electoral Commission on what they are doing, how it is working, and how much they are spending on it. That transparency will enable us to compare neighbouring authorities, to see what is working and what is not. It is a basic building block to ensure that the citizens of this country become enfranchised by being on the register and able to vote. Data sharing is very important, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) said. A basic commonsense issue is involved here. People are exasperated if they turn up to vote and are told, ““You can’t vote because you’re not on the electoral register.”” They say, ““How can the council say that I don’t live there—they sent me a council tax bill yesterday?”” We must be cognisant of data protection issues but also use common sense. People do not understand why an electoral registration officer in a local authority does not use the information that it holds. That is a question not only of the legal powers to use data but of operational practice. Such practice varies because individual registration officers interpret the rules differently—for example, some might interpret them as permissive but decide that they are not going to use the data. They should have a clear understanding of the data that it is right for them to refer to, because those data will help them to understand where there are gaps on the register.