Integrity in ensuring that people can vote

Following the announcement that at least 6 million people who are entitled to vote are not registered, Lord Rennard calls for changes to the rules for the electoral registration system to put the responsibility on individuals rather than households.

The independent Electoral Commission recently estimated that at least 6 million people who are entitled to vote are currently missing from the voting register and are therefore unable to exercise their right to vote. This figure is far higher than previous estimates.

Twenty years ago, the last Conservative government was worried that people would seek to avoid registering to vote in order to evade paying the poll tax. They increased the fine for failing to return the form on which you register to vote from £50 to £1,000.

It is the threat of legal sanction that Returning Officers always emphasise on the forms in order to get people to confirm the information required to be on the voting register. Personal visits by staff employed by Returning Officers are also important to the process of making sure that people can vote. Those who visit homes as part of the process of following up the forms consider it very important to be able to say that it is a legal requirement to provide the information on the voting registration form.

The Commission report highlights some problems with the system. Many people think that they are automatically registered even if they don't return the forms or think that they are registered when they are not. The canvassers who chase up unreturned forms are able to explain the system. But as local authorities face enormous financial pressures, the resources devoted to the canvass to try and ensure that the register is complete have often been reduced.

People moving obviously present a problem and few of them take advantage of the provisions of 'rolling registration' to proactively notify registration officers that they have moved.

The government is looking at all the issues involved in electoral registration. The House of Lords had an excellent debate last Thursday led by Lord Wills (who was the Minister responsible for these issues in the last government).

You can read the debate here.

All parties and the Electoral Commission are agreed in principle that the electoral registration system should change to put the responsibility on individuals rather than households.

But the Commission report shows that our existing system is not as good as we thought and there are clearly dangers in making any changes. The biggest dangers to the integrity of the process would be to suggest that people do not have to comply with it and to fail to carry out full canvasses to complete the process.

There were concerns expressed about these issues from all parts of the House of Lords last Thursday. There was a general feeling that parties should work together and with people outside party politics to ensure that rules that are vitally important to our democracy are seen to be fairly drawn up.

Today I am asking the government how they will respond to the Electoral Commission's recent report. Above all, I want to make sure that they do not do anything that weakens the integrity of our democratic process.

Lord Rennard is a former Chief Executive of the Liberal Democrats.