HC Deb 22 June 1995 vol 262 cc460-2
2. Mr. Barnes

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make it his policy to introduce a rolling electoral registration system; and if he will make a statement. [28398]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Nicholas Baker)

The report of our post-election review concluded that more work was needed before a decision could be taken on a rolling register. Ministers are considering the report.

Mr. Barnes

Is not the current electoral registration system pathetic? An Office of Population Censuses and Surveys report showed that between 3 million and 4 million people are missing from electoral registers. People register in October, but the register—which lasts for a full year—does not come out until February and is 16 months out of date by the time it is completed. Does the Minister realise that the annual death rate among over-18s is 630,000, which means that about 800,000 names—some 2 per cent. of the electorate—should not be on the registers? It is disturbing for people to find that the names of their loved ones are still on electoral registers and that they are receiving electoral communications. Would not a rolling register be the answer to the problem?

Mr. Baker

I should like to take the opportunity to correct some of the figures that the hon. Gentleman has given. There is not enough information to give a wholly reliable and accurate figure, as the hon. Gentleman found out from correspondence with my office, but according to the best figures available there were 42.624 million names on electoral registers in 1994, compared with an estimated resident population of 44.780 million—a difference of 2.156 million. The working party has looked at a rolling register and while it certainly concluded that it might result in a more up-to-date register, it decided that it would not improve registration. We are considering a detailed analysis of a complex matter, but experience in Australia, which has a rolling register, suggests that house-to-house checks are still necessary. That experience hardly suggests that a rolling register is as accurate as the hon. Gentleman seems to think.

Mr. John Marshall

Does my hon. Friend agree that the real scandal of electoral registration was the campaign organised by certain hon. Members to discourage people from registering and to encourage them to become tax dodgers?

Mr. Baker

My hon. Friend is quite right. We spend a great deal of money on advertising the desirability of registering, and I am glad to have my hon. Friend's support for that campaign.

Mr. Trimble

Does not the issue require more urgent attention? In addition to the problems mentioned by the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes), is there not an increasing problem in certain areas of England with false registration and other forms of electoral fraud? Does not that stem from the fact that registration officers and party workers who are dealing with extended families with similar names have difficulty in identifying who is who? Must not that issue be tackled? Could it not be tackled and cured by the adoption of identity cards—an additional reason for such cards that does not appear in the Home Office consultation paper?

Mr. Baker

We are certainly looking at all the ways of improving registration, although not at the particular example mentioned by the hon. Gentleman. According to the OPCS figures to which the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes) referred, the number of people registering to vote in England and Wales rose in 1995 by 88,000 to a total of 38.765 million. I am pleased to say that—no doubt as a result of the hon. Gentleman's advocacy—electoral registration in Derbyshire, North-East rose by 0.5 per cent., more than the national average.