Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee
Oral evidence: Electoral Registration, HC 841
Wednesday 13 December 2023
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 13 December 2023.
Members present: Mr Clive Betts (Chair); Bob Blackman; Ian Byrne; Mrs Natalie Elphicke; Kate Hollern; Tom Hunt; Mary Robinson; Nadia Whittome.
Questions 232 - 282
Witnesses
I: Simon Hoare MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Local Government), Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities; and Liz Owen, Deputy Director for Registration and Franchise, Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
Witnesses: Simon Hoare MP and Liz Owen.
Chair: Welcome, everyone, to this morning’s session of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Select Committee. This is our final evidence session in our inquiry into electoral registration and the challenge we have in this country, where there are an estimated 8 million people—maybe even a few more—who are entitled to be registered to vote but do not appear on the register. That is the issue we will look at today. We have the local government Minister, Simon Hoare, with us today. I will come to you and your official in a minute, Simon.
To begin with, I will ask Committee members to put on record any interests they may have that may be relevant. First of all, welcome to Tom Hunt, a new member of the Committee. I think you have put your register of interests as in the register before us today; thank you very much. We will go around the table now and put on record any particular interests we have that may be relevant to this inquiry. I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
Kate Hollern: I employ a councillor.
Nadia Whittome: I am a member of the One Nottingham board.
Mrs Natalie Elphicke: I am vice-president of the Local Government Association and I employ a councillor in my office.
Tom Hunt: I employ two county councillors in my constituency office.
Chair: Okay, fine. That is all the particular interests, as well as the ones on the formal register.
Minister, thank you very much for coming this morning. Would you like to introduce the official who is with you today?
Simon Hoare: Liz Owen is the brains of the outfit. Anything that sounds a bit tricky I shall pass to Liz, but hopefully between the two of us we can answer your questions.
Q232 Chair: The first question is quite obvious and is the reason why we are doing this inquiry. Eight million people who could be registered—that was one estimate and I think the Electoral Commission said recently that it might be as high as 9 million—are not on the register. Does that concern you?
Simon Hoare: Yes.
Q233 Chair: That was the easy question. I suppose the next question is: what are you going to do about it?
Simon Hoare: Yes, of course it is a concern. I take a rather old-fashioned view that there is almost a sacred majesty in voting and therefore anybody who is entitled to vote should at least be on the register. Whether they then exercise their vote is of course a matter for them to decide.
There isn’t a silver bullet, Mr Betts, as you know, with your long experience as a local authority leader and as a Member of Parliament. There are a number of tools and there are a number of organisations that are involved. Local authorities of course play a key part in local promotion. They are the best people to know their communities and where certain initiatives may be required.
There are partner organisations. One might think, for example, of organisations like the National Union of Students, which is very important in driving registration among young students in our universities and colleges. The charity sectors are quite involved in encouraging people to think about registering. The Electoral Commission, which I met yesterday, obviously plays a big part with big TV ads. The Government can support and augment. We can use the gov.uk site to promote registration.
Social media has a huge influence, of course, which we forget at our peril. You will recall the biggest spike in registration before the 2019 general election followed hot on the heels of a Facebook post that it had promoted, which effectively said, “You have X number of hours” or days or whatever it was, “before the deadline for registration”.
It is something where you cannot say the job is done because in every generation and in every year there is a new cohort of people who need to be told what to do. We do not think that the figures now, with the IER system introduced in 2014, in any way show a change from prior to its introduction. There is always work to do by an awful lot of people.
Q234 Chair: Minister, you have accepted that it is worrying that 8 million people are not registered who should be or could be. You have just described what the current system is. You have not indicated any potential change that you might like to see to improve it.
Simon Hoare: If you are talking, Mr Betts, about the process by which somebody can get on to the electoral register, there are, as we know, two principal ways of doing that. There is online, which the vast majority of people do. There is the paper forms that local authorities use, and there is an element of local design and promotion that sits around that. The thing that a lot of people do not know about is that you do not have to fill out a form either digitally or on paper to get on to the electoral register. On the proviso that you provide the information that is required, one can just write a letter to their local authority to say, “I wish to be included on the electoral register.”
I don’t think it is the method of registration that causes me or the Government concern. It is about focusing more resolutely on how you make people aware of the process and get them to utilise it.
Q235 Chair: You have just described all the ways that people are made aware and it still does not work. Have you no interest at all or no intention to make any changes to the system to try to tackle the 8 million people?
Simon Hoare: I do not want to default to an easy answer. However, one can take a horse to water but one cannot make it drink. You can promote as much as you like. You can advertise; you can have public awareness campaigns. Think of the great work that the commission does in television advertising, online promotion and so on. We cannot force people if they do not wish to register. We should also be aware that of course contained within the figures are a number of people in our country who for primarily faith reasons do not take part in the democratic process.
Chair: Minister, I do not think there are 8 million Jehovah’s Witnesses missing.
Simon Hoare: Chairman, no, and I did not say there was, but you have to try to unpack the figure. There are, for example—somebody can do the maths—139,106 Jehovah’s Witnesses in the UK, 6,000 Rastafarians, 16,000 Exclusive Brethren or Plymouth Brethren, 8,200 Christadelphians—
Chair: How many does all that add up to?
Simon Hoare: Somebody can do the maths for me because I do not have the running total, but it certainly does not run up to 8 million.
Chair: I don’t think it runs up to 800,000.
Simon Hoare: It doesn’t; you are right. What I am saying is that there are a number of factors that play into people—
Chair: Okay, let’s get back to this.
Simon Hoare: You have to raise the awareness—
Q236 Chair: Yes, but we have been trying that. Other countries manage to get registration figures in excess of 96% or 97%. We are below 90%. Have you no interest in looking at what anybody else does to see if they do it better?
Simon Hoare: We would always look to other countries to see what they do. Canada is an interesting example.
Chair: Yes, we have been there to look at that.
Simon Hoare: Yes, Canada is an interesting example. I will never say in whatever sphere of elections that we have alighted upon the most perfect system and there is no scope for change. I think that anybody who ever says that is a certifiable idiot. There is always room for change, for evolution, for iteration and for learning from others. It is important that it is nationally bespoke and not just some off-the-shelf response. Yes, of course it can always remain fluid and we are always open. As I say, I was talking yesterday to the commission on a variety of subjects. If any company comes up with a stellar idea that can be deployed at pace in order to promote registration, we will of course give it thought.
Chair: Okay. We may look at some stellar ideas of other people.
Simon Hoare: I look forward to your report on this, which hopefully will be a Lord Young of Graffham report, which is: don’t just bring problems, bring solutions.
Chair: Well, you never know. Let us look at and explore one or two options and ideas. Kate, over to you.
Q237 Kate Hollern: The Electoral Commission has identified a form of assisted registration that could be implemented. Do you have any concerns about this form of registration?
Simon Hoare: I might ask Liz to start off and talk about that.
Liz Owen: I am assuming that you mean prompts from other government services. Is that what you are referring to?
Kate Hollern: Yes.
Liz Owen: As you know, over the last two or three years the Government’s particular focus in relation to elections has been working on bringing forward measures to improve the integrity of the electoral system. In terms of assisted registration, there are some interesting ideas there. We have done a piece of work with our colleagues in HMRC to include information about the register to vote service on the letter that goes out when somebody gets a new national insurance number. I would say that in principle those ideas are interesting. Over the last few years, working on electoral integrity has been a higher priority for this Government.
Simon Hoare: I would also point to, for example, when HMRC—which communicates, as we know, with a huge number of people—sends out letters to notify people of their national insurance number, it will signpost people that that number is required if you wish to register to vote, so there is some signposting. I think there is a danger if one is just relying upon the agency of government with which you are interacting—it could be the DVLA, the Passport Office and so on—to effectively then make the leap to assist in electoral registration. That might be quite a flimsy base upon which to launch a strategy.
I also make this point, and it goes back to whether you think—and I am sure we all do—that the act of voting is an important part of our citizenship. It is part of the contract between the citizen and the state. People should think about registration to allow them to take part in our democratic processes. I think there has to be a certain amount of personal responsibility and motivation to do that, going back to the Chair’s initial question. That interest has to be prompted by a whole variety of promotion points, but in essence it is part of that relationship between the individual and the state if they wish to take part as an active democratic citizen.
Q238 Kate Hollern: Of course you are right. You talked about campaigns just before an election, but it could be much smoother. It can be quite daunting for people to go online and register with all the evidence that you need. Are you suggesting that you would not support further assistance because you think people have a duty to register?
Simon Hoare: I think the primary motivator—again, you have to have the information to make you think about doing it, so once you have that I do not think it is unreasonable to expect the individual to make the effort to join the register themselves. It is part of that contract, as I say.
Ms Hollern, I entirely take your point about trying to avoid spikes, which is why it cannot be one of those things where you say, “Here is a stream of work” and it lasts six months, box ticked, job done. It is an iterative process because you have to consider people qualifying to get on to the register. It is an annual ongoing event. The people who would most like to avoid dramatic spikes in registration—so having a calmer approach—are of course the electoral registration officers themselves. We will all appreciate as political practitioners the huge amount of pressure that those staff are under in the immediate run-up to a general election or any election. They want to ensure as best as they possibly can the accuracy of the register. The integrity of the register is important. If you suddenly have a massive spike, let’s say as a result of a campaign that has been singularly or solely focused at younger voters, and you have that dramatic spike in university cities, the EROs would much prefer to see that as a nice steady approach to life.
I was just trying to look at the figures. Facebook, for example, ran a campaign between 22 and 25 November 2019. The peak was 659,666 applications to register to vote in just one day, so that was a phenomenal volume of people for EROs to deal with. A nice steady workload and a nice steady workstream is to be preferred. However, if there are spikes, as the 2019 registration process demonstrated very clearly, they can cope. The blood pressure may go up a wee bit, but they can cope.
Q239 Kate Hollern: I am sure you are aware that the Welsh Government introduced a Bill in October to consider bringing in automatic voter registration, which seems a very sensible approach. It reduces the spikes and it verifies a lot of the information that is held. What were your feelings on that?
Simon Hoare: I am in a freethinking spirit at the moment. As I understand it, it is on the agenda for me to discuss and learn more for when we have our inter-governmental ministerial meeting. However, you speak to a generally important point and it speaks back to the point that I made earlier. If one thinks that this system is utterly perfect and cannot be reformed in any way, that is a very arid way to start any conversation. Of course we will look and listen and learn and speak to and engage with Edinburgh or Cardiff or other parts of the democratic world, because technology and citizen expectations change. It is a fluid thing and therefore our systems have to have that baked in, whereby there is the opportunity to deliver change. I would suggest that if you look at the legislation the Government have brought forward in recent times, it does suggest an appetite to respond to demands for change in changing circumstances.
Q240 Bob Blackman: Minister, I have a quick follow-up. You will be aware that there are a large number of people who have come to this country from despotic regimes. They are very nervous about putting anything around identity to authorities. What action are you taking to enable those people to feel confident that they should register?
Simon Hoare: Mr Blackman, that is a key and important point. It is certainly one I learned when I chaired the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee, with refugees going to live in Northern Ireland. We never really think about the innate suspicion of people in uniform and officialdom and authority when you have come from a country where they are agents of the state, who will dob you in at a moment’s notice and would sell their granny for a gold epaulette.
Funnily enough, we were discussing this with the commission yesterday. They do quite a lot of work, but there is room for doing more, and that is with faith leaders. Faith leaders are hugely important in saying to their communities—I hope it is not on a false premise—that those communities will welcome newcomers into their area and bring them into the fold to provide support and advice and so on. It is a very key thing to do.
I also think that, without creating work for our teachers, in areas such as yours in Harrow, where you have a lot of children of new people coming into the UK, it is the role of the education sphere to say to our young people that authority is not something to be feared. It is something to be respected, it is something to be admired and it is something to be trusted, but feared is not part of it. There are a number of things that can play into it, but it is a hugely important point. People from very despotic regimes will be particularly partial as to who they share their data with, their date of birth or any information that could lead to “their collars being felt”.
Chair: We will move on to the use of data with Natalie Elphicke.
Q241 Mrs Natalie Elphicke: Building on that very point, the evidence from Professor James is that, in relation to cyber-security, overseas actors could purchase the data that we have in the open register and compile it into a single dataset for malign purposes. Building on the question about confidence in the use, security and privacy of data that is provided by individual citizens, could you explain why you do not support the abolition of the open register?
Simon Hoare: The first thing to say, Ms Elphicke, is that the Government always seek to ensure up-to-date, contemporary security measures for the individual electoral registration digital service. We always look to best practice and there is a vast amount of work that is done across government and across Departments to make sure that that is in sharp focus and being thought about. There have been, as we know, several changes in this arena in recent years. In 2020 the IERDS moved to a cloud-hosted environment, adding substantial robustness and security to the service, in keeping with our Government Digital Service cyber-security cloud principles.
Q242 Mrs Natalie Elphicke: Sorry, could I just stop you there? This is a question about the open register. This is a question about people having the ability to purchase information that people have provided, not about people breaking into government systems, as has been known from time to time. I would be grateful if you could address this: why not abolish the open register?
Simon Hoare: Any individual organisation, as you know, before 2002 could ask for a copy of the electoral register and there were no restrictions on how it was used. The High Court in the Robertson v. Wakefield judgment in 2002 made some suggestions for change, which then led to the edited register.
There is an important point here about the need to safeguard, which again is why we think it is rather important that people do registration principally of their own volition. Those who would classify themselves as vulnerable—one automatically thinks of violence against women and girls, that arena of policy, but also vulnerable young adults who may be fleeing an abusive home environment and so on—want to be very careful with how they use their data. The law now governing access to the register was changed to provide two versions of the register, the electoral register and the open register, which is also sometimes known as the edited register. The full electoral register is available only to certain persons and bodies specified in law and can be used for electoral purposes, law enforcement, jury summoning and credit checking. There are different rules governing the electoral register as far as Northern Ireland is concerned.
Q243 Mrs Natalie Elphicke: I think the Committee is aware of that, thank you. Given that this information is available in the open register, why would the Government be opposed to abolishing the open register? The Electoral Commission, Professor James—who, as I mentioned, gave some expert evidence on this—and the Electoral Reform Society, people who know a lot about this are saying it is a problem having an open register. Can you confirm that it is the Government’s position that you will retain an open register?
Simon Hoare: That is the current position of the Government, with no intention to change it.
Q244 Mrs Natalie Elphicke: Moving to your “no intention to change it”, I understand from your comments earlier that you said that it was the EROs, the electoral registration officers, who had the responsibility to keep accurate records. What is the Government’s responsibility in relation to the accuracy of electoral information?
Simon Hoare: I think our first responsibility is to set clear rules, guidance and regulation and to ensure that we engage regularly with practitioners who are learning directly from the field delivering down on the ground elections—
Q245 Mrs Natalie Elphicke: You are providing guidance and training. Are you saying that the Government does not have a direct role in—
Simon Hoare: Each local authority is responsible for maintaining its own register. We do not—
Mrs Natalie Elphicke: It is the local authorities; it is not the Government.
Simon Hoare: We do not have a national—
Mrs Natalie Elphicke: Thank you. Moving on to the issue of the complete register—
Simon Hoare: Ms Elphicke, the point I wanted to make, if I may, is that we do not have a national register. One can deploy a perfectly acceptable argument for a national register.
Q246 Mrs Natalie Elphicke: Indeed, and I was coming on to that. Let’s just explore that. I understand from the comments you made earlier that it is not the Government’s position that they have a responsibility for accuracy and it is not the Government’s responsibility to have a complete register. I wanted to explore this by reference to the example that you gave of HMRC. If HMRC is involved, as you have recognised it is, do you think that the information that HMRC is providing—“You need this information” or “You can register”—is adequate for such a pivotal democratic role that you have expressed to us in very effusive terms?
Simon Hoare: Adequate as far as the role of HMRC is concerned, yes. Adequate as a total communication strategy, no. As I hope I set out in an earlier answer, there is not a silver bullet on this. People will pick up information from a whole variety of sources and it is important to make sure that those who want to help to drive up registration numbers—and I think broadly people do; nobody, I would think—
Q247 Mrs Natalie Elphicke: Do the Government want to?
Simon Hoare: Of course.
Mrs Natalie Elphicke: I was not sure from your earlier comments.
Simon Hoare: I think I made that hugely clear in my first answer to Mr Betts’s question.
Q248 Mrs Natalie Elphicke: In relation to that question, what is the Government’s target percentage to drive that up to?
Simon Hoare: Our ideal target is of course 100% of eligible voters.
Q249 Mrs Natalie Elphicke: A hundred per cent—but you have already expressed that there are a number of people who you think should not have to register. If it was 100%, why would you not just have compulsory registration?
Simon Hoare: No, what I said was 100% of eligible voters, which does not necessarily mean 100% of everybody over the age of 18. There are some who do not qualify because they are foreign nationals. They would qualify by age but not by category. There are those who qualify by age but decide not to register because their religious beliefs preclude them. I think it has to be an arena of exhortation rather than compulsion.
Q250 Mrs Natalie Elphicke: In relation to the information or access to this vital role in our democracy, you would acknowledge that there are some people in our society who might move more frequently than others, who might not be able to access this information. In the Government’s engagements, HMRC being a good example, why would Government not allow an opportunity, for example, when submitting a tax return for someone to tick a box to say, “Yes, please add me to the register”?
Simon Hoare: Because HMRC does not administer the register. If we had a perfect system of data handling—and I don’t think anybody ever would have a perfect system of data handling—the idea of HMRC registering people to vote and then passing on those details to the—
Q251 Mrs Natalie Elphicke: I have not suggested it registers. I have suggested that there is an opt-in process as part of the tax return. That is not it registering, although there is an argument to have a national register. To the question, why could it not indicate that and that be the process? Why do Government have a passive role in this?
Simon Hoare: They could, but principally we have the commission, which is, as you know, an independent body that leads principally on these matters. It is the job of Government to set the rules and the regulations. One can construct, I readily accept, a perfectly cogent argument that supports the idea of a national register administered by central Government. There are some people who might have general questions about the efficacy of that, and the morality of that, if you will.
It also presupposes that in terms of the communications campaigns that central Government—the man or the woman in Whitehall—would know better as to how best to target specific campaigns to motivate people to vote. We do take the view—and whether you agree with it or not, I still think it is a perfectly respectable position to take—that in the spirit of localism, local officials are the people who are best placed to know the intricacies of their communities and to target bespoke and specific campaigns to drive up registration in those “harder to reach” groups.
Q252 Mrs Natalie Elphicke: I know we are going to move on, but just to be clear about the question, this is about Government’s communication with individuals and the exercise of their democratic right and the role of Government, which is already providing information. From your answer, you are saying that that passive role of information is as far as the Government are prepared to go.
Simon Hoare: No, I would not describe it as passive, because that suggests an air of relaxed complacency.
Mrs Natalie Elphicke: Surely not.
Simon Hoare: What, from His Majesty’s Government?
Mrs Natalie Elphicke: Surely not.
Simon Hoare: No. We are conscious of the part we have to play. We help to facilitate best practice between EROs and others to learn from experience. There are elements of financial support that Government can provide in certain areas to advance that. We have an engaged role to play. It is a role that we take very seriously, but it is not our sole responsibility because it presupposes in the first instance that every person in the country takes as gospel information that is given to them by the Government. Other people will want to go to other sources for authenticity and verification and the like.
I am not a golfer, but just as I am told you wouldn’t turn up on a golf course with one club in your bag—you would have the full set of clubs that you could play—so there are a lot of—[Interruption.] No, it is a perfectly acceptable metaphor. [Laughter.] The point I am making is that there are lots of clubs in the bag of driving up electoral registration. I think it would be folly to rest it all entirely on central Government and a centrally administered national register.
Chair: Moving on to the issue of how we do it now, Mary.
Q253 Mary Robinson: If I may, before I go on, another metaphor is having all the tools in the toolbox. Surely one of the tools that could be considered, given that you have already said that local administrations are best placed to know their local communities, is perhaps looking at the system in Canada, where there is a box that is ticked on tax returns and that information is communicated with local administrations through a unique number. It is always worth looking to see whether we have the full range of tools in our toolbox, Minister.
Simon Hoare: Ms Robinson, I agree entirely. The Department is very familiar with the Canadian model, which seems to work very well. These things are kept under review. As I say, it is iterative and organic. If you are saying—and I am not suggesting that you are—“Let us bring in these changes for 2 May and the subsequent general election,” I think there has been a significant amount of change in how we are conducting our elections going forward, as kicked off in May of this year. To now have a wholesale root-and-branch change around with regards to how the register is compiled might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Liz Owen: If I may also add, Minister, we did some work looking at what could be done to encourage under-registered groups to register. It would have been about four or five years ago now, looking particularly at younger people and people who move house regularly. We did quite a lot of research and provided some funding for outreach organisations. We generated some materials providing insights on how to engage with those groups, which are all on gov.uk, which we then promoted out to EROs to use. When we stood back and took stock of the work that we had done it was simply unclear whether that action by central Government was having an objective impact, so at that point we decided not to undertake any further work. Ministers decided not to undertake any further work in that area.
Q254 Mary Robinson: Thank you for that clarity. I think we may move on to more about that later, but clearly if something is found not to work it is worth looking at why and what else might.
Meanwhile, we have the annual canvass, which basically is every year, writing to households asking whether they are still there and inquiring who is eligible to vote. The Electoral Commission found that one-third of households whose electoral details have changed do not respond to a canvass. Is the annual canvass therefore an effective tool? Or are you considering alternative methods? If so, what may they be?
Simon Hoare: Are we considering changes, or are changes under consideration at hand at the current time? The clear answer to that is no. I have certainly heard from EROs the questions that they have about the efficacy of the annual canvass in terms of input versus output. I think it is certainly something that I will be giving thought to, as to whether that is the best way to do it, whether we should retain it but change it in some way, or whether we can add anything to it to make it a more robust exercise, but it does take up quite a lot of time.
I think it is quite useful, and I am certainly persuaded on this point, that in areas of relatively high churn, areas with a lot of quick turnover in the rented sector, it can play a useful part. I also think it is helpful for EROs and their team to then craft their wider communications campaign where they need to make specific interventions to try to drive up registration.
Q255 Mary Robinson: What may those interventions mean? It is those areas of high churn that need to be targeted. What would that targeting look like? Clearly if one third of people are not responding to the annual canvass, that is a deficit in our democratic process.
Simon Hoare: I think it would be horses for courses. Again, this speaks back to the overall benefit of having the registers managed, maintained and compiled locally. Let’s say, for example, you are dealing with part of a city—part of an electoral area—that has a lot of students and they will have a very quick churn. You could easily see the electoral team reaching out to the National Union of Students, for example, to the college principal or the university people to say, “What can we do collectively to try to drive up registration?” Students are quite a challenge, because a lot will say, “Look, I will only be here for three years. I am a temporary citizen. I either will not vote at all or I will try to vote back at home.” Again, students must be able to decide which register they wish to be on. It is that sort of intervention.
If you were dealing with an area with a very identifiable demographic, it may well be—speaking back to the point I discussed with Mr Blackman—religious leaders or faith leaders who could play a part in helping the registration there. There may be people in the voluntary and charity sector who can play a part and help as well. Again, I think that just underscores the importance of that local knowledge and information and in a very bespoke way devising communication campaigns, different in all areas—some with similarities and of a complementary nature, of course—with the overall uniting ambition of driving up legitimate registration.
Q256 Mary Robinson: I am sure we will go on to explore more how more engagement can be achieved. Meanwhile, is it sensible to carry on with the annual canvass? Are you comfortable carrying on with an annual canvass that clearly is not getting the people registered who need to be?
Simon Hoare: As I say, I think it plays a part. Since 2020, under the reformed annual canvass—I am looking at my briefing note here—all EROs upload their registers to the IERDS at the start of the canvass period. That is 47 million entries in total. Obviously not all of those are generated from the annual canvass, but they play a part. I think they play a part in three specific ways: accuracy, awareness and alertness as to where specific communications need to be targeted. From that perspective they can play a useful part, but I take entirely the point that we hear from some EROs. They will raise the question about effort versus output and that is something that we will of course keep under review and keep alert in our discussions.
Liz Owen: On the one third of non-responses, as you mentioned, I believe that is in relation to the proportion of households where the data shows there has been a change in their details. I believe that for the 2022 canvass that was 24% of households, so we are talking about a non-response rate of 8% of households when you look at households overall. There were always non-responders to the canvass before it was reformed in 2020, and of course since it was reformed. There are very few silver bullets here. What the reformed canvass did was give EROs more tools to use to contact those households, so now they can use email and they can phone them, as well as writing to them and knocking on their door.
This year we are in the third year of normal running of the reformed canvass, because obviously 2020 was highly disrupted by covid. We have an evaluation that is running at the moment. There will be a final report on that early next year. We have published two already so we are keeping it under close review. My overall view is it is a little early to say. We are giving time for the changes to bed in, see how they have landed and then consider whether further changes are required.
Simon Hoare: I have two statistics, if I may. Satisfaction among the EROs has increased by over 20% during the survey and review period. The one area that remains in the negative is the effectiveness of the door knock. It is the door knock that is the area we would need to have a look at. That would be data rather than hunch-driven, and I think that is quite important.
Q257 Kate Hollern: The door knocking is a very expensive and ineffective way to gather information. You mentioned the areas with high churn—where if someone knocks on your door in the middle of November, by March they have gone anyway. I think it is something that probably needs to be looked at quite urgently if we want accuracy and engagement to get people to use their democratic right to vote.
Simon Hoare: I agree, and I think the Government indicates that by the fact that they are conducting an evaluation on the effectiveness even of the reformed annual canvass process. It is one of those areas where there is efficacy and effectiveness in it. Have we maximised those? To use Ms Robinson’s phrase, are we using the right tools in the box to achieve that? We will listen to what practitioners on the ground say and to their suggestions as to how we can achieve the end objective, which is maximising the number of people who want to go on the electoral register. Is it the right way? Is it the best way? Are there other ways? If so, what are they? The Government are open-minded on that.
Chair: Look, we have a system—we will come on to the issue of young people in a second, which is another major problem—where effectively we are putting most of our effort into writing to people whose circumstances have not changed. They live at the same address and they are going to send the forms back because most people who send the forms back are already registered at that address. The people who are moving and churning, that is where the effort should go. That is why we should look at Canada.
I spoke to the previous Secretary of State for Oregon the other day, which was the first state in the United States to bring in an automatic registration system. It uses data to identify where people have moved and then follow them up. Either they tick a box to say, “Yes, you can share my data with the registration officers,” or they have an opt-out system where it is shared unless they say no. They put all their effort into the people whose circumstances have changed.
The other thing is that, as we said, if you are on the register in Canada, you do not get taken off unless you move to another address. Here, many people get taken off the register simply because they have not responded to the form, even though they have not changed. That happens. The EROs operate a different policy. If you do not respond in two years, you are off. In Canada you have a registration number for voting and it stays with you for life. You do not get taken off the register; you get moved to another address.
Simon Hoare: I will certainly look at that two-year point that you raised, Chair. That is new to me, so we will look at that. If we may, we will write. As I say, the system we have is the system we have and in broad terms it works. Could it be changed? Yes. Could it be changed, and to what? That is one question. Could it be changed over what timeframe? That is another. I am not sitting here—I do not think any Minister would—and saying, “No, our system is absolutely perfect and there is nothing we can do to change it or make it better.” We are living in a very fluid world, which is why we are always open to the experiences of other jurisdictions to see what they are doing. I think that is broadly the right approach to take.
Chair: That is helpful and we may encourage you down that route. We will see what is in our report when we make suggestions to you. Let us move on to the issue of young people, which is another challenge.
Q258 Ian Byrne: Thanks, Minister, for the evidence. I am still none the wiser, so I think the good thing is that you can put the golf clubs away, because the report on electoral registration from this Committee is coming down the line, so that should give you lots of food for thought.
Simon Hoare: I look forward to it.
Ian Byrne: I want to touch on engagement and accessibility. I think we have a real issue in the country with regards engagement politically and there is a huge amount of apathy, which is very worrying. If we look at some of the figures, levels of completeness continue to increase with age for voter registration, remaining lowest for the 16-to-17 year age group. In Great Britain, completeness for this group has dropped from 45% in 2015 to 16% in 2022. That is quite devastating. As you said, it is the cornerstone of democracy and we have this level of apathy. Are we removing barriers for young people who are voting for the first time?
Simon Hoare: You are right to point to that cohort, and this is not something that we are alone in experiencing. There is a growing block of evidence that tells us about the wider lack of engagement in party politics among the young. That seems to be common to all liberal democracies. Whether it is hard baked or a temporary phenomenon, I don’t know. I hope it is temporary. In part that may speak to a huge level of support and interest in joining single-issue pressure groups, but not getting involved with the general political arena.
I have always thought more can be done in our schools to tell people about the responsibility of being an active citizen. I will share briefly, with the leave of the Chair, something that was seared into my mind immediately post the 2016 referendum. I had voted to remain part of the European Union. I was walking across from Parliament to go to something and there was a massive demonstration of predominantly young people. I am not quite sure whether it was a compliment or not, but someone said to me, “You look like a Conservative MP,” so I said, “Guilty as charged,” and we got into a huddle of about 20 young people—I will not ask for a Division on whether it was a compliment or not—all of whom were on the electoral register and only 10 of whom had voted. I asked what the other 10 had done, “We posted on Facebook. We put something on social media.” They had not manned a stall, they had not delivered a leaflet, they had not done anything to support the campaign that they were passionate enough to come out on the streets to protest about, and had not been thoughtful enough to engage in the process. When I pointed out that returning officers do not count posts and likes and things on Twitter, there was a lightbulb moment. There is a huge amount to do.
The worrying thing is—because I don’t think it is necessarily about registration—that even when first or relatively young-ish voters, in their first or second year on the register, are on the register, their turnout is disproportionately lower. When you consider we have postal votes, proxy votes and a very long election day of 7 am through to 10 pm, I would suggest it is not lack of opportunity. Registration to vote digitally is very easy and straightforward and this is a supposedly digitally connected cohort of our fellow citizens. I don’t know if it speaks to something more underlying.
Q259 Ian Byrne: What are we doing to reach what that reason is? You give me reasons why they can do it, but why aren’t they doing it? What are the Government doing to get to the root of that problem?
Simon Hoare: You ask me to consider why they are not. As I say, for some it may be, “A curse on all your houses. Politics does not change anything but I will join a pressure group.” That is certainly a phenomenon. This is where there is that active role of, “I did not understand that I needed to be on a register to vote,” and the commission, if you remember, did some very good ads underscoring that. But we must appreciate that not everybody is now sitting at home watching television, so it must be online as well, which it is doing.
Q260 Ian Byrne: You said this is not unique to the United Kingdom, which I completely agree with. We went to Canada and saw similar issues there, but it has done something positive as regards a register for young people called the future list of electors. It is talking about mandatory education around politics. Now we expect young people to stay in education until 18. Why don’t we use that opportunity to talk about politics and how important it is to use your democratic right to vote? Why aren’t we taking a leaf from Canada’s book?
Simon Hoare: I am going to guess your constituency schools are very similar to mine. Some of the schools do it brilliantly and some do not bother doing it at all. Some parents do it brilliantly and some parents do not bother doing it at all. Organisations such as the NUS are phenomenally helpful if you are talking about people at college or at university. It also strikes me that organisations such as Greenpeace, WaterAid and the RSPCA are all campaigning organisations who want to effect governmental change. I would hope that they would be able to email their supporters, their members, and put on their pages and their website that there is a general election coming, “Do not forget to make sure you are on the register so you can vote.” They all produce manifestos on certain issues because we all get sent them.
Q261 Ian Byrne: There is no plan from central Government; it is about encouraging other agencies. You keep talking about faith leaders. It is that soft messaging.
Simon Hoare: I wouldn’t say it is soft messaging, because the message is that if you want to vote, if you want to shape the future of your council area, if you want to shape the future political direction of your country, you need to be on the register to vote. Sometimes I think we do need to pause. I have been giving thought to this, which is “register to vote”. We all know what that means. Do we explain that there is an electoral register that you must be on to vote? Because we all slip into the language with which we are familiar, sometimes we do not explain terribly well the sort of “why” of the whole thing. Schools, NUS, colleges, universities, political parties, charities, campaigning groups—that is a range of people, plus social media. The Facebook promotion that led to that enormous spike in registration was authored and set up by Facebook, because it thought it was important.
Q262 Ian Byrne: How do we reach out to communities who find it difficult to register? What are we doing as a Government for communities who feel under-represented? We have had many stakeholders from the disabled community speak at the Select Committee, and there have been many groups who feel under-represented from a democracy point of view. Disability Rights UK suggested that some disabled people did not feel supported to register to vote, and particularly struggle with the lack of variety in communication channels and one-size-fits-all. We have heard a lot of concerns around that area. What are we doing?
Simon Hoare: In terms of the process of registration I would not describe it as onerous. You are not sitting there filling out page after page of information. We should think about carers and parents—I am thinking particularly of those who have a mental rather than physical disability, who sometimes just get very concerned about the sharing of their data because of a mental health issue. The roles of those who know them best and who care for them best and therefore are more likely to be the most trusted source of support within their lives can play a very important part in helping that person, be they young or old, to make the step of registering. They can of course then act as a proxy vote if necessary. They can help somebody to arrange to have a postal vote if that person has anxiety issues.
Q263 Ian Byrne: I agree with everything that you are saying, but is there a strategy that will be driven?
Simon Hoare: It can only be a broad strategy, and that is through the work of the commission, the third sector and local authorities. They are the ones who drive the information campaigns. The job of central Government is to provide the rules and regulations that guarantee the integrity of the ballot. That is not to say that Government does not have a role in working alongside those cohorts of people, some of whom are very good and some of whom occasionally need a little bit of a nudge and a push and, “Have you thought about this?” That is why there was a huge amount of interaction between officials in my Department and the wider election landscape.
Q264 Ian Byrne: What you are saying just feels totally different from when we went to Canada. It feels so much more hands-on there and there is much more of a push.
Chair: All schools have a session about registration.
Ian Byrne: There seems to be more of a holistic national strategy to tackle this problem.
Simon Hoare: Chair, I would love every school that has sixth-formers in it, within assembly time or a tutor group or whatever, they could talk about an awful lot of stuff. When I was at school we used to call it civics. My daughters tell me what it is called, but I can never quite remember the acronym. Half an hour on the importance of being on the register, how to do it, doing it in real time in class, would I suggest—
Ian Byrne: That is what I am asking for.
Simon Hoare: Yes. It would be a very good idea and it is something that we discuss with DFE colleagues all the time. Schools will deliver things in their own way, and I hope that they do, because they play a very important role. What we cannot do is go around being fantastically bossy, telling people how to talk to their constituents of interest, sending them a rubric, some sort of straitjacket. We maintain—and we think we are right—that the local knowledge is better than the guy in Whitehall who is trying to direct and dictate these things. You know more about Liverpool, Mr Byrne, than I do. I would suggest that your local councillors and council officers know far more about how to get people in Liverpool on the electoral register than I do, representing a constituency in the west country and sitting in my office in SW1.
Chair: You actually have commissioners in Liverpool trying to run the council.
Simon Hoare: Pausing there, Chair, if I may, can I put on record my thanks to those commissioners, but also to those local politicians in Liverpool who have been responsive to change, who are working very closely with the commissioners? I signed a letter to you this morning, Mr Byrne, which you may very well have received, which goes to show that at least that bit of the system is working.
Chair: I am sorry to distract you, Minister, but let us get back to the subject.
Simon Hoare: I want to put on record my thanks to them all.
Q265 Mary Robinson: So much of this seems to hinge on where responsibilities lie. Earlier you indicated that in the Government’s view the responsibility was quite clearly with the elector to register. We are exploring the waters of just how much that should change and it should be the responsibility of the Government to be more hands-on in that process. One of the other potential ways to engage young people would be through schools and colleges, because you can register to vote before you are 18 and get on the register. Maybe that is something that could be looked at.
Also regarding people who have disabilities, are you confident that you are doing enough for people who are visually impaired and are not able to access the register? Do you have statistics as to how many people who could be on the register, but within those groups are not?
Liz Owen: I definitely do not have statistics to hand. I have a couple of things I might specifically mention. We have an accessibility of elections working group where we work closely with various civil society organisations representing people with accessibility issues, where we hear from those groups about what the highest priority things are for them to address. You might be aware that there have been changes to accessibility measures in polling stations, for example, as a result of that. That work is ongoing.
In terms of the accessibility of the register to vote website, it meets the highest accessibility standards for websites and should be usable with all screen-reader technologies that people use. Along with the new services we introduced at the end of October to apply online for postal and proxy votes, it means that people who would otherwise have needed support to apply on paper can apply independently online both to register and to get a postal vote or a proxy vote if they want one, or, indeed, a voter authority certificate if they need one to vote in person independently, without needing the additional help that they might have previously.
Q266 Mary Robinson: Of course, there are accessibilities with the online registration as well. Are you collecting data and will you have information that will be able to give us some steer as to whether it has been a success? In other words, how are you going to measure it?
Simon Hoare: It is quite hard. If somebody has successfully registered to vote and they may be visually impaired or blind, we will not necessarily know that. We would be looking to talk to organisations such as Guide Dogs and RNIB for what they are picking up and for what they are doing to help their interested cohort.
You asked if we are doing enough. Nobody is ever doing enough, because when the organisation thinks that is enough that is when complacency has set in. There is always room for improvement. I do not say this to merely be polite, but I am looking forward to receiving your report on this. You have been to Canada; I have not. You have spoken to the guy in Oregon; I have not. Rest assured that as somebody who sat as Chair on a Select Committee for four and a half years, I can recognise when a Minister is giving a brush-off to a Select Committee report. I will take it very seriously. If I disagree with something you are saying, I will tell you, but I will have the courtesy of telling you why I don’t agree with you, rather than just ignoring it. I make this offer: all ideas gratefully received, because we are not saying we are the absolute source of perfection in this area.
Chair: That is helpful. We need to move on now. We will look at voter ID next and then we have several questions that we are going to have to ask briefly, with brief answers if we can.
Simon Hoare: I never do brief answers, Chair. I am trying to learn but—
Chair: Right. We need to finish by 11.50 am, I think.
Simon Hoare: You will have to shout at me a lot.
Q267 Nadia Whittome: Minister, you mentioned Facebook earlier. Just a head’s up that not many young people use Facebook, so if you want to do a voter registration campaign it is perhaps best to target it elsewhere.
Simon Hoare: On that, Ms Whittome, it was not our campaign. This was something that Facebook did off its own bat, and the figures, as I say—
Nadia Whittome: I do have a few questions to ask.
Chair: Can we just get back to voter ID?
Simon Hoare: Let me just give you the figure again: 659,666 people applied to register at the time that was coinciding with the Facebook campaign and they were using links.
Q268 Nadia Whittome: I want to ask you this question. The Electoral Commission reported that 4% of people—that is approximately 740,000 people—said that they did not vote in the May 2023 elections because of the introduction of voter ID, and disabled voters and unemployed voters were more likely to struggle with the voter ID requirements. Is the voter ID requirement working as intended?
Simon Hoare: Is it working well? Yes. For those who predicted that the sky would fall on their heads in May of this year, it did not. It was right to use a local election, not taking place across the whole country, and as always with an expected lower turnout. That allowed EROs and others to assist in those elections so that they were learning best practice in those areas that were not having elections. It has also helped us to work out where additional effort and resource needs to be targeted to help people to understand what it is.
I think we have a wide and deep list of those forms of ID that are acceptable and I think that strikes the balance between inclusion and the operational ability of the polling booths. I don’t think there was enough effort put into the existence of the certificate and the ease of securing a certificate and the fact that it is as legitimate as a passport or driving licence or any other form of accepted ID, so there is some work to do there.
The turnout was good. Of the 37,000 people across the areas that were having elections who were turned away because they did not have the right ID, 14,000 regrettably did not return, so that is something we must look at and work is in hand on that. Anxiety among polling staff, which I take very seriously, about the disruption to the operational ability of the polling station did not come to pass. Lessons have been learned, but I think in broad terms the machine is well oiled and is mechanically working. We need a few tweaks.
Q269 Nadia Whittome: You said it is working well. Do you think that number—740,000 people who say that voter ID meant they did not vote—is acceptable? What number would be acceptable to you?
Simon Hoare: Zero is of course the desired figure. I want everybody to understand how to register to vote in the first instance and then I want people to know what they need to do to vote. Any new system will raise questions, concerns and uncertainty. I think we have identified what those are and then targeted resource can come through. For example, the new burdens funding that the Department provides to local authorities is a very useful way of targeting people who have anxieties about either the registration or the identification. It is not eccentric, in a complex world of identity fraud and everything else, in order to secure the integrity of the ballot, to have voter ID as a point of principle.
Q270 Nadia Whittome: In a study published this week, the IPPR found that the next election is set to be the most unequal in 60 years, due to the rising gap in voter turnout based on age, income, class, home ownership and ethnicity. Your colleague and former Minister, Jacob Rees-Mogg, implied that the Government’s insistence on voter ID was an attempt to gerrymander. Is it?
Simon Hoare: No. Jacob is one of my oldest friends. We have known each other since we were 18; it is a long time. I don’t think he is right on that at all, and I would not serve as a Minister or be a member of a party that had that as part of that intention. I gently remind you that the Conservative party is the oldest political party in the world. I would point to the work of Disraeli in the 1860s in giving the vote to the urban working class—
Nadia Whittome: Is this relevant?
Simon Hoare: I think it is because you impugn the integrity, or suggest to impugn the motivation—
Nadia Whittome: It was not me who suggested it; it was Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Simon Hoare: Of the Government, and I am rebutting it as firmly as I can and pointing to a long history of democratic inclusion.
Q271 Nadia Whittome: Lastly, you mentioned the voter authority certificates. What are you doing to ensure that there is increased awareness and take-up of those certificates among those without other forms of ID ahead of a general election?
Simon Hoare: It is an important point. For example, on the banner of its website DWP has been and will be carrying advertisements about that, because that is a cohort of people we are very keen to ensure know about it, and who may for a variety of circumstances not have the form of identification that is required. It is still a big figure, so I am not diminishing it, but those who do not have access to one of the forms of ID outside of the certificate amount to about 2 million people.
Nadia Whittome: Okay, so DWP is one. What else?
Simon Hoare: We go back to the role of local authorities. We get lots of information in our council tax bills when those land on the—
Q272 Nadia Whittome: What are the Government going to do? The question is how you will ensure the awareness and take-up is adequate.
Simon Hoare: The whole range of gov.uk communication online and social media can be and will be deployed; there is the replication of that as far as local authorities are concerned; and there is the role of the vitally important and independent commission, which can help to drive awareness of that. Between those three efforts, plus wider civic society and political parties—I am sure everybody who is a practitioner, when they are knocking on doors, wants to ensure that the voter they capture is able to go out and cast that vote when the big day comes—I think a lot of people will be engaged in ensuring that as many people who wish to vote are both on the register in the first instance and then are aware of the ID requirements to be able to cast their ballot on election day or through the postal ballot or proxy.
Q273 Chair: We now have one or two brief questions, with brief answers. We just about got through the local elections but a lot of registration officers would say they are under pressure and borrowing staff from other councils. They cannot do that at the general election, so what extra help is the Government looking to give to councils to recruit more staff and probably pay staff a bit more to deal with all the changes that are coming in for the first time at a general election?
Simon Hoare: Chair, it is an important point. We know through survey work that there were some people who had a long history of working in polling stations who said, “I have reached that stage in my life where I can’t be bothered to get my head around all these new arrangements, so this is my get out of jail free card.” There were some who started the induction training and then thought it was not for them and that it all sounded frightfully complex. I hope in part the proof of the pudding will demonstrate that it is not as complex as some people feared and that it is as safe a way as possible in terms of running the ballot.
You are right to point out that authorities that did not have elections deployed staff to turbo-boost and augment. In recent times we have deployed civil servants from across Whitehall to work alongside councils to make sure that all the polling stations are staffed throughout and there is no disruption. That is something we would continue to do on a case-by-case basis. There are of course other organisations, not just civil servants in Whitehall. HMRC staff are often deployed to assist with running polling stations and there are other agents of the state and government who of course could also be deployed.
The crucial thing—and this is the point I want to leave with the Committee—is that each and every polling station will be staffed and will be staffed appropriately. We will do whatever we need to do, both in terms of central and local government, to ensure that happens. Whatever the result of any election, people need to know that those who won won fairly and those who lost lost legitimately. I have set myself this task: I do not want to see a half-naked individual with buffalo horns running around a town hall or Westminster saying, “We was robbed.” That was the scene at Capitol Hill. You cannot say things were stolen. [Interruption.] Ms Elphicke might want to see a man with buffalo horns running around—
Mrs Natalie Elphicke: I was thinking it was a very inappropriate image. That was my concern on that.
Simon Hoare: It was an image that we all saw on our screens. The point I make is that the robustness, the resilience and the legitimacy of how we conduct our polling and how the results are declared and the authority of the people who administer the polling stations must always be beyond challenge.
Chair: We move on now to other measures apart from voter ID in the 2022 Act that have not been implemented and might pose additional challenges to the resourcing and staffing of local authorities. Kate will briefly explore them.
Q274 Kate Hollern: Yes, very quickly. Some witnesses have told us that the upcoming changes in the Elections Act will be more difficult to implement than voter ID, and we know how difficult that was. Are the Government still committed to the Gould principle?
Liz Owen: The Government of course seeks to follow the Gould principle where possible. Sometimes it is necessary to implement changes. In this case I imagine you are referring to the changes to the overseas electors franchise more quickly in order to deliver manifesto commitments in a timely manner. In relation to overseas electors we have been keeping the sector updated on those measures for some years, so they have been aware of the implementation plans and the timing for them for some time. We work closely with them all the way through policy development and through implementation and we have absolute confidence in their ability to deliver.
Q275 Kate Hollern: I am glad you have confidence. I know a number of electoral registration officers have less confidence. Your impact assessment suggests that 3 million people might need to be added to electoral registers because of the changes and the introduction of votes for life. How do you think local authorities will be able to cope having to hold and check registers for entries that may be more than 15 years old? Are you confident that councils still have those records, given the number of changes with boundaries and so on?
Simon Hoare: It is a good point. We discussed it last week in the SI Committee that took this through and in the spirit of political agreement your Front Bench accepted entirely the principle of the changes that we have made. Forget the details, but in the broad principle of all overseas qualifying voters to be able to vote, your Front Bench accepted that in the statutory instrument and we are grateful to it for its support in that.
Kate Hollern: Just to say I am not the Front Bench. I am very concerned—
Simon Hoare: Yes, and not everybody follows the minutiae of statutory instruments with close attention, so I just give that as a piece of information. The principle has been established and agreed and legislated for, as we know. A voter will not just be able to pick by political preference and dictated by marginality a constituency that they would like to be registered in.
Q276 Kate Hollern: On the Elections Bill the then Minister suggested they would, provided they can prove a connection to someone in that constituency.
Simon Hoare: No, you must have a demonstrable connection to it as your last place of residence before you left the United Kingdom. You may have been on the electoral roll, but if you have been away for more than 10 or 15 years the electoral roll is not kept. National insurance, banking, DWP, HMRC—there are a raft of sources of information that need to be satisfied for an overseas voter to get on to the register.
On the figures, you are right that the cohort is estimated to be 3 million, but of those who were entitled to vote before the changes were brought in, only 19% of those who qualified registered and exercised their vote. Not even all those who registered would have exercised their vote. In extremis 3 million people could be, but we very much doubt it.
Q277 Kate Hollern: You have just demonstrated quite clearly yourself how difficult it will be for local authorities to identify and check records, HMRC and DWP.
Simon Hoare: No, the applicant must provide. It is not me writing to Dorset Council to say, “Twenty years ago I lived in Dorset. Prove that I did.” I must prove to Dorset Council that I lived in North Dorset 20 years ago.
Q278 Kate Hollern: How does a council check that?
Simon Hoare: You must submit proof either in paper form or electronically. It can be a scanned copy of a bank statement, communication from HMRC or utilities. There are a whole range of things, but—
Kate Hollern: Fifteen years old?
Simon Hoare: But the weight of proof is on the applicant, not on the body to which you are applying. They do not have to squirrel around and find the evidence. They must check and verify it.
Kate Hollern: That is what I am asking. How do they check and verify it?
Simon Hoare: Using the powers that they have, they have the ability to cross-reference with the authorities that are being prayed in aid. The crucial thing is it is a checking rather than a testing role that the ERO has to play. It is a robust system that we believe, as confidently as we can, is robust enough to meet the challenge of finding people who may support one party or another saying, “Oh, that is a marginal seat. I will vote for somebody who doesn’t hold it. I am going to register there.” That just cannot take place.
Chair: We must move on now to the question about postal voting as the last question we are going to take.
Q279 Tom Hunt: Are the Government concerned at the increasing use of postal votes and the need to keep this type of voting secure to ensure the integrity of the ballot?
Simon Hoare: As long as it is secure and in the scope of the rules that we have at the moment, I do not care how people vote—by proxy, in person or postal—as long as it is robust and resilient. There are, as we know, penalties for those people who register either erroneously, deliberately, and/or who frustrate the Representation of the People Act. It is the security bit that I would focus on rather the means. If we are serious about addressing the points that your Committee colleagues have raised—welcome to the Committee, by the way—about inclusion, one is not going to aid inclusion by narrowing down the options whereby people can vote.
Q280 Tom Hunt: There was a significant increase in postal voters during the covid pandemic. Have the Government made any assessment as to whether that number is falling off, or whether it is roughly where it was when everyone registered around covid, and the implications of that?
Simon Hoare: It seems to be broadly maintaining the levels. I think people are in the habit of doing it. They thought it worked quite well and is easier for them. I would not be at all surprised if we didn’t see more people who have a postal vote yet still turn up with it at a polling station, which of course you can do, but there appears to be no trail off of those who were using postal.
Q281 Tom Hunt: This is a fairly peculiar question. Historically, when we have had 80% or 90% of people voting on polling day, our whole democracy has been geared around the polling day and TV debates have been timed around the significance of the polling day. It seems to me now that the singular importance of the one event on polling day has diminished. There seems to be a bit of a lag in terms of the way we structure our TV debates and a lot of the engagement that doesn’t take into account now that sometimes, particularly in local elections, the vast majority of people who vote will be postal voters, and also the difference in terms of some local authorities send out a postal ballot sometimes three or two weeks before. Is there any work going on with DCMS about how we take into greater consideration the fact that our great democratic event is not singularly obsessed with polling day to the same extent?
Simon Hoare: I think you make an excellent point. In essence we have two election events in that one electoral cycle. Certainly, by research, most people will use their postal ballot on the day upon which it is received. Their choice will be shaped by the state of the campaigns and the messaging at that time. You then will have the delay period until you turn out to election day.
I think you raise an important point about the timing of the debates. There is a whole party logistic thing and the resilience of Royal Mail to deliver election literature in a timely fashion to ensure that those who are casting their ballot have access to party information at the time. Let me raise that issue—if I may, through the Chair—with the broadcasters, because you are right that it does fall within DCMS, and let me see what the Secretary of State is thinking on that. I can either write back to the Chair to circulate or directly to Mr Hunt for him to do so—whichever is easiest.
Q282 Tom Hunt: Thank you for that response. I have one final question. Voter ID for postal votes adds an additional check for electoral registration officers to undertake, likely just before an electoral event. Have the Government undertaken an assessment of the amount of potential extra work in verifying incorrect national insurance numbers?
Simon Hoare: We have. A point was raised with me in a meeting literally just yesterday afternoon with regard to the technical linkages to cross-reference NI numbers. I have not had an answer to that yet, but again, if I may, through the Chair, I will send a note on that when I have a clearer picture. In essence, I have talked about robustness, transparency and resilience, but simplification and ease while maintaining security must be some of the motivating principles that sit behind that. That is about ease for the administrators of an election as much as for those who are taking part in it.
Chair: Minister, thank you very much for coming this morning to answer a range of issues that we all agree are very important subjects. Also thank you for your willingness to indicate at least a relatively open mind about the suggestions we might make on how to improve the system going forward.
Simon Hoare: We are all capable of improvement, Chair.
Chair: We will produce our report in due course. Thank you, everyone, for your contributions this morning. That brings us to the end of our public proceedings.