Wayne David speaks out against changes to voter registration

Caerphilly’s Labour MP Wayne David has spoken out against plans by the UK Government to change the way people register to vote.

At present voters register together as a household through paper forms or online while the proposed system would place the responsibility to vote on an individual.

Opponents to the plans, which include the Electoral Reform Society, fear that millions of voters could be left off the electoral roll.

Under the current system, anyone who refuses to register can face a fine of £1,000 but the Government has said in its proposals: “While we strongly encourage people to register to vote the Government believes the act is one of personal choice and as such there should be no compulsion placed on an individual to make an application to register to vote.”

Speaking in Commons debate, Mr David said: “We can easily visualise an Electoral Registration Officer—if, indeed, there are EROs in the future—knocking on the door of someone’s home. A busy young mum comes to the door in the middle of making her children’s tea. The registration officer asks that young mum if she would like to fill in a form to be on the electoral register by writing down her date of birth and national insurance number. The busy mum explains that she is in the middle of making the kids’ tea and asks the ERO whether she really has to fill in the form. The ERO says, ‘No, it’s a matter of personal choice.’ The predictable reply is, ‘Fine, in that case I won’t bother. I have to make the kids’ tea. Goodbye’.

“Come the general election, that young mum believes that she has an opportunity to shape the country that her children are growing up in. She wants her children to have the best possible education and to have jobs when they grow up, and she wants her family to live in a safe community. She has taken the trouble to read all the parties’ manifestos and she has given careful thought to how she is going to cast her vote. She then goes along to her polling station on election day, but when she gets there she is told that she cannot vote because she is not on the electoral register.

“Our fear is that millions of young mums will be excluded from the democratic process because they are not on the electoral register. All the evidence suggests that the young, the disabled, members of the black and ethnic minority communities, those who frequently move and people living in private rented and public housing will be the people most likely not to be on the electoral register under the Government’s proposals. These are the people who are threatened with disfranchisement.”