Individual Voter Registration

I rise not to oppose individual registration but to ask Members from all parts of the House not to throw away household registration without understanding the benefits it brings. No system brings perfection, but in the words of the great Joni Mitchell, ““You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.”” I would suggest that in my constituency and other urban areas like south London under-representation on the register among young people will be made worse by the quick introduction of individual registration. That was brought home to me at the last election. As I walked through Mitcham town centre on election day 2010, large numbers of young people came up to me and said, ““Oh, hi Siobhain! I just wanted to say that we've been out to vote.”” I thought, ““Great!””—I did not ask who they had voted for; the point was that they had been out to vote. It made me think about mums as electoral registration officers as often it is the head of the household who puts those young people on the register, and getting those young people sign a form to get on the register, which requires their name, address, date of birth and national insurance number, will be a difficult feat that will take several years to happen. I ask the House not to despise our experience of actual elections. Who was it who told us that the Child Support Agency did not work, if not our individual voters and constituents? We all know how difficult it is to get people to register and to vote. We also know the practical difficulties with all the mail that we receive in our households every day, where somebody can come along, pick it up and throw it in the bin. Where there are four, five or six electoral registration forms, how successfully do we really believe each one will actually be completed? Much mention has been made of the 11% reduction in the electoral register in Northern Ireland, but Northern Ireland as a community is so far removed from my constituency as to be another continent. We have a different turnover of people on the electoral register; we have a different, multi-ethnic make-up. Who is it who does not vote? It is, yes, young people and people with private tenancies or in houses in multiple occupation; but it is also some—but not all—ethnic minorities. If we look at America, which has individual electoral registration, as well as a difficult history of voter representation among some communities, we see that registration among the under-25s is about 58.5%, while six in 10 of those who rent privately are not on the register. Conversely, 80% of those with an income of over $100,000 a year are registered. Therefore, those who are rich are two thirds more likely to be on the electoral register than those who are poor. We get rid of the annual canvass at our peril. At the moment, with one electoral form per household, only 65% of people in even a wealthy borough such as Merton in my constituency return their forms without the canvass. That figure later goes up, to 97%, because of the canvass and the encouragement, and also because of the threat of fines. That is what gets those forms returned and gets the canvass up, and at the moment we are asking for one form from every household. We are not asking for multiple forms. Data matching is presented as the holy grail that will sort this issue out. However, as we have discovered from the investigation done by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), the electoral register is the most accurate of all our databases. Electoral registration officers have told us that when they cross-reference with the Department for Work and Pensions register, it tells them what they already know. It does not tell them what they do not know. Indeed, each of the Government's six pilots to look at individual registration has faced increased costs, of between 50% and 100%, for electoral registration officers. I ask all Members here this evening: how likely are their councils to increase their funding by that amount, at a time when they are reducing spending on social services, education and all the things that our constituents come to see us about? There is talk of fraud in electoral registration, but I would suggest that our problem is not an inflated electoral register but one whose figures are too low. My anxiety is not related to party considerations. I will fight in my constituency to win as many votes as I can get; like most Members, I love elections. I love the fight, and the arguments about the issues. That is what encourages us to get involved, and it is our role to get as many people as possible on to the register. However, if we do anything to alienate those groups in our society that are already alienated, we will bear the brunt of that action. The riots that we saw last summer will be repeated if more people begin to believe that they have nothing invested in the system. I believe that registering and voting involve a social contract. People register to become part of the system and, in return, they can claim the benefits that they are entitled to, and they can get a library card, a driving licence or whatever. If we undo that social contract, we will find it very difficult to put that genie back in the bottle and get more electors on to the register. Individual registration is fine, but the Government should not get rid of household registration until they are absolutely sure that the young men and women of 18, 19 and 20 in constituencies such as mine will register to vote without the benefit of their mum registering them.