§ The Minister for Local Government, Regional Governance and Fire (Mr. Nick Raynsford)As the Government reaffirmed in its White Paper Response—"The Government's Response to the Electoral Commission's report: The Shape of Elections to Come—A Strategic Evaluation of the 2003 Electoral Pilot Schemes" (CM5975)—we are committed to developing multi-channelled, e-enabled elections, culminating in an e-enabled general election sometime after 2006. As a further step to achieving this goal we are today, in partnership with the Department for Constitutional Affairs including the Scotland Office, launching a new project to modernise the electoral registration process in Great Britain and which will lead to the registration infrastructure that can underpin multi-channelled, e-enabled elections.
This project—CORE (Co-ordinated Online Register of Electors)—will be in two phases. The first will standardise local electronic electoral registers across the country and make them fully interoperable regardless of the local system in use. The second phase will allow authorised users to access local registration data centrally and will support a multi-channelled, e-enabled general election. The project replaces the earlier proposed LASER project to modernise the registration 43WS process, which was to have been led by the Improvement and Development Agency. Copies of a project outline, which the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is publishing today is available in the Libraries of both Houses.
Throughout the project we will be working closely with local government, the registration software suppliers, and other key stakeholders. Government are providing £12 million Capital Modernisation Fund resources to meet the costs of the project, and we will shortly be consulting local government and others on the details for taking forward the project, including details of the funding arrangements.
We are committed to making voting more accessible and straightforward for the electorate and to allow people more flexibility in where and when they vote. This project aims to improve the quality of electoral registers and ensure that accurate and timely registration will support the needs of the electorate and authorised users and help facilitate voting in the future. It is an essential element of our electoral modernisation agenda.