My Lords, we had not pre-planned who would speak but, having attached my name to this amendment and being one of the two people here to do so, I will speak, with some unexpectedness, in favour of it.
Amendment 141 introduces a carefully planned and worked-through plan—as noble Lords can see—for automatic voter registration. It is a great pity that, given the time of this debate, the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, is not able to be with us, but I hope that we might return to this on Report. It would be particularly interesting to hear from both the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, and the noble Lord, Lord Woolley. Many of the issues that the noble Lord addresses in this amendment were similarly addressed in his speech on voter ID and the importance of allowing the engagement of everybody in our electoral process. I urge people who have not read or heard that speech to catch up with it because it is an important one.
To put the case for why we need automatic voter registration, when I was reflecting on this, I thought it sounded like the sort of thing that we would normally do in Grand Committee in the Moses Room, looking at some detailed statutory instrument and going through the dusty tomes. But this is of course far from a bureaucratic detail. Rather, to bring in automatic voter registration would be the long-delayed completion of a democratic progression of a couple of centuries, right through the 19th-century reform Acts and the 20th-century women’s suffrage. It is a vital step in ensuring that everyone who is eligible to vote actually has that vote available to them. The fact is that people do not have that practical opportunity now.
As I said at Second Reading, just because the Government are trying to slash away what little democracy we have in this country with many elements of this Bill, it does not mean that we cannot use this opportunity to set out a way forward to reform and repair our archaic and dysfunctional UK constitution. For there are what is known in shorthand as the “missing millions”—
people who are eligible to vote but not registered for the right. An Electoral Commission study from 2019 suggested that their numbers exceed 9 million, while more than 5 million people are incorrectly registered. Those millions are not some random sample of the population. It is the young and those in private rental accommodation, many of whom have to move often, who are massively underrepresented on the rolls and by our so-called democracy. This ties into the debate that we were having earlier about votes for 16 and 17 year-olds. Those people are least likely to vote Conservative.
This amendment, therefore, is about not just people’s individual rights but ensuring that our electoral results reflect the views of the people. The background to this is individual electoral registration, which was introduced in 2014. It cleaned up the messes—I am sure that I am far from the only Member of your Lordships’ House who has knocked on the door of a very small flat at which there are apparently 16 people registered, and it is not a case of fraud but various people have moved in and out and names have been added without any being removed. However, it also cleaned out millions of people who should have been on those rolls, particularly young people and students at university.
This is a really important point and I hope that the Minister might be able to address it. It is not even easy to check whether you are registered correctly. The Electoral Commission website says—this is the only information it provides—
“contact the electoral services team at your local council”.
That is how you go about checking whether you are on the electoral roll. It is a far from simple, easy process. Can the Minister say whether the Government plan any improvements on that simple step so that people can check whether they are registered?
To briefly address the details of this amendment, automatic voter registration need not be complicated or introduce a large bureaucratic burden. Schools and colleges could register young people as attainers—those about to become voters—and university students could be registered by their universities. Changing the address on your driving licence, which is something everyone is legally obliged to do, registering for council tax, or having contact with the Department for Work and Pensions are all things that could feed into the electoral roll—they are how the Government know where people are.
I will make one final point, because I am sure other people will have many other things to say on this important amendment. Of course, automatic voter registration will not guarantee that people turn out to vote. Already, typically, fewer than 70% of people on the roll turn out for general elections, and often 30% or fewer in council elections. But giving people the opportunity by making sure their name is on the rolls as it should be without them having to go to extraordinary efforts has to be essential to make any claim of calling this country a democracy. I beg to move.