Chris Ruane – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chris Ruane on 2014-05-06.

To ask the hon. Member for South West Devon, representing the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, what the main reasons given by electoral registration officers were for not conducting data matching activities for the purpose of individual electoral registration.

Mr Gary Streeter

The Commission informs me that the use of local data-matching to support confirmation and verification under Individual Electoral Registration (IER) is at the discretion of Electoral Registration Officers (EROs). Ministerial guidance sets out the considerations EROs should take into account in determining whether to conduct local data matching for these purposes, which includes an assessment of the costs and benefits of doing so in their local area.

Following the dry-run of the confirmation exercise in summer 2013, 137 EROs reported to the Commission on the trials that they had carried out of local data-matching to support the confirmation process. The reasons given by EROs for not carrying out local data-matching at that time included a lack of staff resources and an already high match rate. However, in a survey of EROs after the dry-run, 91% of respondents said that local data-matching would be important in their area during the confirmation live run in 2014.