Electoral Registration and Administration Bill — Individual Electoral Registration — Decline Second Reading — 23 May 2012 at 18:50

The majority of MPs voted to introduce Individual Electoral Registration to replace the previous household based system.

The majority of MPs voted in favour of the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill^[1][2] at its second reading, supporting the main principles of the Bill and allowing it to continue its path to becoming law.

The key provision of the Bill introduces Individual Electoral Registration to replace the previous household based system. The Bill also contains a series of provisions relating to the detail of the administration and conduct of elections.

MPs were considering a motion related to the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill^[1][2] stating:

• That the Bill be now read a Second time

The amendment rejected in this vote would have replaced the above motion with:

• That this House,
• whilst affirming its support for a complete and accurate electoral register and a move to a system of individual electoral registration (IER), declines to give a Second Reading to the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill because whilst the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009 received cross-party support, establishing an orderly move to IER with a strong independent role for the Electoral Commission in guarding against a sharp fall in registration numbers, the Bill speeds up the introduction of IER, and downgrades the Electoral Commission’s role, with the result that there will be no independent arbitrator with the power to halt the process if it is deemed to have resulted in a sharp drop in registration levels;
• notes that the 2015 parliamentary boundary changes will be based on the new electoral register which will potentially be inaccurate, risking illegitimate new constituency boundaries;
• believes the proposals would mean the young, the poor, ethnic minorities and disabled people would face an increased risk of being unregistered and thus excluded from a range of social and civic functions;
• further regards the proposals as flawed as they risk making the list from which juries are drawn less representative;
• concludes that because the evaluation of the second round of data-matching pilots will not be published until early 2013 an assessment of the likely completeness of the register is in effect prevented; and
• deplores the fact that the Government has not published secondary legislation and an implementation plan for the introduction of IER.

In the programme for Government the Government committed to an individual electoral registration system that would: "Reduce electoral fraud by speeding up the implementation of individual voter registration."

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• [1] Parliament's webpage on the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill (now an Act)
• [2] Explanatory notes to the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill as introduced

Debate in Parliament | Source |