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ier, household registration, voting registration

Individual Electoral Registration 2015 one-off session

2 March 2015

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The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee takes evidence from the Electoral Commission on the recently published electoral registers for England and Wales, and the ongoing transition to Individual Electoral Registration.

Witnesses

Monday 2 March, Committee Room 8, Palace of Westminster

At 5.15pm

The Electoral Commission

  • Jenny Watson, Chair
  • Andrew Scallan, Director of Electoral Administration
  • Phil Thompson, Head of Research and Party Registration

Chair's comments

Speaking ahead of the session, Graham Allen MP, Chair of the Committee, said:

"My Committee has, throughout the course of this Parliament, been looking at the move to Individual Electoral Registration (IER). Two recent reports we have produced on voter engagement highlighted the risk that the change could adversely affect rates of voter registration, particularly for certain groups such as students. We have consistently called for the Government, the Electoral Commission and local Electoral Registration Officers, to do more to ensure electoral registration figures are not adversely affected by the move to IER.

The report published by the Electoral Commission on 24 February gives some encouraging news, including that over two million people have applied to register to vote since December 2014, but it also states that there are 920,000 fewer entries on the register than there were in March 2014. My committee has also previously noted that there were already 7.5 million people not correctly registered to vote. The failure to register is a real threat to the health our democracy.

We will, on Monday 2 March, be questioning the Commission about its latest report and what it will be doing ahead of the elections on 7 May, and particularly ahead of 20 April, the deadline for registering to vote. We will also be looking at the implications of IER for electoral registration in the next Parliament.

The focus in the coming months needs to be on ensuring that every person eligible to vote in May's elections is registered to vote."

Further information