Electoral Administration Bill

The amendments relate to the registration system. Amendments Nos. 1 to 4 relate to the co-ordinated online record of electors. Amendment No. 5 relates to the new duty on registration officers to maximise levels of registration. Given the earlier debate, I do not wish to pursue the arguments on registration further at this stage. The House has reached another consensus on the importance of increasing registration. The amendments will ensure that registration officers do their bit in making sure that the registers are as comprehensive as possible. Amendment No. 1 was made in response to concerns that the regulations governing the publication and supply of information kept on CORE to bodies such as political parties might differ greatly from those which apply to electoral returning officers at a local level. As Ministers made clear in another place, CORE will not change the information that is held on electoral registers, or the records that EROs are required by law to keep, or the persons and organisations to whom information may be supplied. It simply acts as a central point of access. Some flexibility is needed, however. For example, the CORE keeper will not be required to keep a copy of the full register available for public inspection. There is also flexibility because the amendment more clearly sets in law the principle that the regulations governing access to information held in CORE will be the same as those that apply to EROs. Amendments Nos. 2 to 4 were also made in response to the concern in another place that, as originally drafted, some of the security measures included in the CORE provisions might call legitimate acts into question, rather than focusing on fraudulent activity. An example of that is the potential for large households with a number of postal voters, such as student halls, to be flagged up as potentially fraudulent. Amendments Nos. 2 and 4 tighten up the Bill’s drafting so that CORE will instead focus on instances where large numbers of postal votes have been redirected to an alternative address, as that is a circumstance in which fraud may be involved. There was also a concern that the Bill’s existing provisions would flag up legitimate instances of a person voting as another elector’s proxy—in a sense, the reverse of the earlier concern. Amendment No. 3 responds to that by focusing again on fraudulent acts of double voting. The new duty on EROs is set out in amendment No. 5. The new duty is to ensure that the electoral register is complete and comprehensive. Clause 9 sets that out as a new duty and includes certain minimum steps that EROs must take to maintain their registers. As drafted, clause 9 includes"““making on more than one occasion house to house inquiries””." Under amendment No. 5, EROs would instead be required to make such inquiries on ““one or more occasions””. The purpose of the amendment is to clarify that there is no need for electoral officers to make more than one visit if the first visit gives them the comprehensive information that they need.