First, it is important to establish that there is a problem. I quote from the briefing supplied by the Electoral Commission to your Lordships on these amendments:
“There is more that could and should be done to modernise electoral registration processes in Great Britain, to ensure that as many people as possible are correctly registered.”
I believe I heard the Minister make the same point—that he believes it good public policy to get people registered. The Electoral Commission’s most recent estimate is that
“between 8.3 and 9.4 million people in Great Britain who were eligible to be on the local government registers were not correctly registered”.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said, those figures were collected in December 2018. It says there are another 360,000 or more people in Northern Ireland not correctly registered. It also made the same point as the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett:
“Our research found that young people, students and those who have recently moved are the groups that are least likely to be correctly registered.”
Courtesy of the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, I would say that Travellers are very much in that group of under-registered people.
The Electoral Commission has published feasibility studies which identified that there is potential to evolve the current system. Those studies are reflected in the amendments before your Lordships today. Amendment 141 is one route to it—the two are not exclusive but it is one route—and Amendment 144B is another, to which we have added our names as well. It provides simply that, when a person is issued with a national insurance number, they receive their application for the electoral register.
The Electoral Commission makes two more points in its briefing:
“the education sector … could help EROs identify attainers and other young people. Also, data from the Department for Work and Pensions could potentially be used by EROs to register young people to vote automatically when they are allocated their national insurance number ahead of their 16th birthday.”
I do not want to frighten the Minister; the Electoral Commission is not suggesting that they would vote from their 16th birthday but simply that, as attainers, that would be an appropriate time for them to apply to be put on as an attaining voter.
At least in theory, I think we are all in favour of all qualified UK citizens being on the electoral roll and we would all say that we would like them to exercise their vote. This legislation increases the number of people eligible to go on that register by virtue of what the Bill proposes to do in relation to overseas electors. We will debate that shortly.
Clearly, the Government do not have a problem with having a larger voting roll. They share the Committee’s view that it is desirable, in principle, that all eligible people should be on the roll, and yet, so far, they have been extremely resistant to doing that, as far as attainers in particular are concerned. In the light of the evidence that the Electoral Commission has produced, that it is a significant number and that there are solutions, and in a situation where the Minister has in front of him two amendments proposing practical ways to solve that problem, I hope that in winding up he will be able to say that he will take this back, give it further consideration and perhaps produce an appropriate government amendment on Report.