Electoral Administration Bill

I can reassure my hon. Friend that we will do that as well as ensuring that electoral registration officers use the information that is already available to them for cross-referencing. They can already examine council tax records, housing benefit registers, council rent records, and the records of the planning, education and social services departments. No primary or secondary legislation is needed for that. They can also examine Royal Mail records, because they are allowed to do that by custom and practice. We will consider the records that existing powers do not cover but which could be covered by secondary legislation, and whether such legislation is a good idea. That is, therefore, already on our agenda. Such information includes records held by other local authorities, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, TV Licensing, the Inland Revenue, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Land Registry. Indeed, a woman whose daughter had just become 18 but was not on the electoral register asked, ““How come my daughter’s not on the register? You know she’s 18 because you’ve just written to tell me that her housing benefit’s being stopped.”” People do not understand that. I believe however that data sharing is important not only to get people on the register and fill the gaps in it but to tackle fraud. Proper data sharing should have solved the problem that my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) identified. The records should have been checked to work out who was there and the appropriate action should then have been taken. Data sharing is for preventing fraud as well as ensuring full registration. I accept the spirit of the amendment that the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) tabled on disability. Electoral registration officers are already covered by the Disability Discrimination Act 2001, which will be fully implemented, as he said, by December next year. The amendment is therefore unnecessary for changing the law, but he was right to table it. We are not simply considering one’s right to participate on the day, but electoral registration officers going the extra mile to ensure that people with disabilities that might impede their registration are registered. Amendment No. 14 would provide:"““Each registration officer must take all necessary steps to remove individuals””," and so on. That already happens. Electoral registration officers’ responsibility is not simply to have loads of people on the register but to ensure that it is complete and accurate. That is implicit and explicit in their duties. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe asks us to make it a duty for electoral registration officers to ““maximise”” the number of people entitled to vote who do so. I believe that our approach of requesting a complete and accurate register and setting out on the face of the Bill the extensive steps that must be taken to achieve that, including sending more than one form, knocking on the door more than once, inspecting the records, and training officials to find hard-to-reach voters, will mean a culture change. That will be effected by the Bill and the performance standards, which will be keenly examined by hon. Members of all parties. For the first time, we shall be able to see what is happening because of the greater transparency. I therefore believe that the spirit of the amendment will be enacted. The hon. Member for Belfast, East (Mr. Robinson) asked about extending the provision to Northern Ireland. My colleagues in the Northern Ireland Office are considering the matter, but I shall draw his remarks to their attention.