The Labour Party – Written Evidence (ERA0006)
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The Labour Party – Written evidence (ERA0006) i. The Labour Party welcomes this review of the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013. The shift from household registration to Individual Electoral Registration (IER) was one the biggest change to electoral matters since the introduction of the universal franchise. It is important to consider how the Act is working or what could be improved. This submission is made by Cat Smith MP, the Shadow Minister for Voter Engagement on behalf of the Labour Party. Individual electoral registration Has the introduction of individual electoral registration been a positive development overall? Has it achieved its objectives, and how does it compare with the previous household registration system? How well was the transition to individual electoral registration managed? How might it have been done differently? What other steps are necessary to improve the electoral registration process, and to increase the accuracy and completeness of registers in particular? Has there been sufficient Government focus on completeness of registers? What other non-legislative measures might be necessary to encourage registration among groups that may be harder to reach? What are the main obstacles in this respect? Groups that may be harder to reach may include: students, BAME groups, attainers, frequent home movers, British citizens living abroad, people with long term health conditions, disabled people, and Commonwealth and EU Nationals, among others. What has been the impact of introducing online registration? What challenges has this created for electoral administration? ii. A system of IER was first set out in the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009 by the last Labour Government and the introduction was to be phased. At the time there was an acceptance that household registration was neither fit for the modern world nor suitably robust to combat electoral fraud. This change was supported by the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators, the Electoral Reform Society and the main political parties. Rushed move to IER iii. Whilst we supported the ultimate objective of IER, we raised our concerns about the Government’s means of achieving it. The Political Parties and Elections Act 2009 proposed a phased five-year timetable for its introduction with safeguards to protect against a drop in registration levels. However, the Government sped up the timetable, removing some of these safeguards and eroding the civic duty on registering to vote by not applying the legal obligation to respond to an electoral registration officer’s request for information as exists for the household registration. iv. As a result, large numbers of people fell off the electoral roll. The 2015 electoral statistics represent the first full registers following completion of the transition to IER introduced in England, Wales and Scotland in 2014. The total number of UK parliamentary electors in 2015 was 44,722,000, a fall of 600,000 (1.3 per cent) from 2014. In addition, there was a shocking 40 per cent drop in the number of attainers (16- and 17-year-olds) registered to vote.1 Unfair boundaries v. The Government took this as an opportunity to redraw constituency boundaries based on an electorate that is far lower than it should be, by using the December 2015 electoral register half way through the transition to Individual Electoral Registration. As a result, areas where people have lower rates of registration because they move on a regular basis, like those with a high concentration of private renters and younger people, are underrepresented. vi. The December 2015 start-point also ignores the increase in registrations following the EU referendum and 2017 General Election, which saw 2.1 million names were added to the electoral roll.2 Labour believes the best starting point for a boundary review is to use the registration figures from June 2017, as this is the best way to take into account the names that were added to the register since December 2015. The wax and wane of registration 1 The total number of UK parliamentary electors in 2014 was 45,325,100. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/elections/electoralregistration/bulletins/electoralstatisticsforuk/2015-04-16 2 The total number of UK parliamentary electors in June 2017 was 46,800,000. https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/find-information- by-subject/elections-and-referendums/past-elections-and-referendums/electoral-registration-at-the-uk-general-election-2017/2-the-size- of-the-electoral-register vii. The Government argues the IER has been a successful because of the increase in the number of electors in recent years. However, the can be explained because of various factors. First, although the number of registrations has increased, this is to be expected as the population in the UK rises. Second, the UK saw major electoral contests in 2015- 2017 with two general elections and a nationwide referendum which boosted registration rates. viii. For the 2017 General Election, Labour’s election campaign included a strand of work focused on increasing voter registration, particularly amongst young people and above all students. Civil society groups alongside the APPG on Democratic Participation also worked proactively to raise awareness of the electoral registration deadlines. In comparison, the Conservative Party did not once use their social media platforms to encourage people to register to vote in the week before the deadline, an analysis by the Press Association has found.3 ix. However, this wax and wane of registration levels exemplifies the inherent flaw in our current system. Rather than ensuring consistent and universal registration, registration is built on registration drives in the run up to elections as people often only register to vote close to an electoral contest. It is therefore unsurprising that the total number of UK Parliamentary electors actually decreased by 372,000 (0.8 per cent) between December 2017 and December 2018, a period which saw no major national electoral contest.4 3 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/conservatives-voter-registration-social-media-not-use-encourage-facebook-twitter- election-2017-a7756736.html 4https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/elections/electoralregistration/bulletins/electoralstatisticsforuk/2018 An incomplete register x. Ultimately, individual electoral registration has not achieved what we were told it would. The Electoral Commission has estimated that 7 million people are still not on the registers at all, or not registered correctly.5 This is significantly higher than under the previous system of household registration, with the Electoral Commission estimating that 3.5 million eligible electors across Wales and England were missing from the register in 2000.6 xi. The Government’s own analysis found a “significant negative correlation” between low registration levels and areas with high concentration of young people, people from BAME backgrounds, and people from privately rented accommodation.7 Figures from the Electoral Commission show that 25 per cent of black people, 20 per cent of Asian people and 23 per cent of people with mixed ethnicity are not on the electoral roll.8 Electoral registration levels amongst young people are also disproportionately lower than older age groups, with only 45 per cent of 18 year-olds being registered to vote.9 xii. On Election Day citizens are also regularly turned away from polling stations for not being on the register. The Electoral Commission data on the 2017 General Election show that across the UK 10,700 people were prevented from voting at a polling station because they tried to vote without being registered. This compares to 32.2 million valid votes cast.10 European Parliamentary Elections xiii. The 2019 European Parliamentary Elections saw the problem of voters being denied the chance to vote because of administrative issues. On polling day the #DeniedMyVote hashtag was trending as EU citizens living in the UK were unable to vote because they had not completed a second piece of paperwork, transferring their voting rights from their home Member State to the UK. xiv. The Government is solely to blame for this chaos, having ignored the advice of the Electoral Commission to streamline the two-step registration process, like other European countries did after the 5 https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/238137/IFG-speech-Dec-2017-.pdf 6 Understanding electoral registration: the extent and nature of non-registration in Britain. Electoral Commission, September 2005. http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/templates/search/document.cfm/13545 7 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/atlas-of-democratic-variation?utm_source=25f45ff5-3bdd-4989-9951- f6f34871754d&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=govuk-notifications&utm_content=immediate 8 https://ukelectoralcommission.wordpress.com/2018/10/24/1313/ 9 https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/our-work/our-research/electoral-registration-research2/accuracy-and-completeness 10 https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/our-work/our-research/electoral-data/electoral-data-new previous set of European elections. Labour repeatedly warned the Government that EU nationals were not given enough time and notice to complete the necessary paperwork because of the short timeframe within which the election was called. We put forward reasonable requests that could have been adopted to mitigate the risks, such as ensuring that EU citizens were handed a copy of the form when they voted in local elections and extending the deadline by a week to ensure that the forms could be returned.11 However, the Government refused to listen and their response was to tell EU citizens to vote in their own country. Not only did that add to the anger and sense of exclusion that many felt, but it was asking people to register to vote in a country that they may not have lived in for decades and where voting registration may well have closed. Electoral services under austerity xv. The introduction of individual electoral registration has also added to cost-pressures by making it more expensive to compile the register.