Electoral Registration — House of Commons, 2015-02-04
Topic: Mixed Topics
Paul Christopher Blomfield (Labour, Centre-left): I would like to say that it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), but after that nonsense it is not, so I will not I represent more students by far than any other Member of the House—36,000 according to the latest census. They are not the only group that contributes to the enormous churn in the electoral register in my constituency, but I will concentrate my remarks on them. I am worried about their disfranchisement not simply because of the coming election, but because of the impact of their exclusion from the register on the next boundary review, which we know will be conducted on the basis of the register as it stands in December 2015 The hon. Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) challenged Labour Members on the principle of the equalisation of constituencies. We would embrace that principle but it must be on a legitimate basis, and the current register already contains deeply inequitable constituencies. There are many worse examples, but if we compare my constituency, Sheffield Central, with that of the Deputy Prime Minister next door in Sheffield Hallam, we see that the number of registered voters seems broadly comparable—the difference is about 5,000 people. However, 17% of households in my constituency have nobody registered, but that figure is just 4% in Sheffield Hallam. Sheffield Central has a population of 115,000 people, and Sheffield Hallam just 89,000—a variation of 26,000, which will only be made worse by the way the Government are dealing with IER Students are not the only group but they are a significant one, so to avoid that situation locally I worked with both universities to integrate electoral registration into the student enrolment process. We developed a system at the university of Sheffield for the 2014 entry which, if successful, will be rolled out to Sheffield Hallam university in 2015. I am sorry that the Minister misinterpreted my earlier remarks to attack Sheffield Hallam university for its low level of registration. Changing systems are complicated and we sought to work with Universities UK and the National Union of Students to encourage higher education institutions across the country to adopt a better system I am grateful for the support of the Cabinet Office for the pilot that we have been developing in Sheffield. The system requires students to make a positive decision about whether they wish to register to vote as a required step in their enrolment. Last September the scheme was successful, with around 64% of students choosing to register, as the Minister highlighted. The system then took people to the next step, which required them to fill in their national insurance number. At that point, two thirds of people dropped out of the system because they did not have ready access to their NI number and did not want to halt their enrolment. The situation looked bleak with only 24% of students registered, despite more than double that number wanting to register Again, credit is due to the Cabinet Office, because new guidance issued on 10 December allowed electoral registration officers to use their discretion to verify an application using only student enrolment data. Therefore in late December and January, our EROs added 7,000 students to the electoral register, even though they did not provide their NI numbers. That is sensible because universities have clearly collected significant and substantial information to verify student identity as part of their registration process The Minister said earlier that he is looking at ways of using data collected for other purposes to construct the register, so will he answer one specific question? It would be simpler to roll out this system across universities than to seek national insurance numbers in the first place, especially given that the Government are clearly happy for people not to have them. Would it not be better, therefore, to have a simple system in which we ask students, "Do you want to register to vote?" and then use the information the university has collected as sufficient verification?