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

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chris Ruane on 2014-03-13.

To ask the hon. Member for South West Devon, representing the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, what discussions the Electoral Commission has had with the Office for National Statistics and other Government departments on the size of the UK population eligible to vote but not registered (a) before and (b) after the publication of its report, Great Britain’s Electoral Registers 2011.

Gary Streeter

The Electoral Commission informs me that its 2011 report on Great Britain’s electoral registers provided an assessment of the accuracy and completeness of the electoral registers in force in December 2010 and April 2011 using a house-to-house survey methodology.

The Commission always intended to also carry out an assessment of the same registers by matching them against census data. It has therefore been having discussions with the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the National Records of Scotland (NRS) and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) since 2010.

The Commission expects to publish reports on England, Wales and Scotland in summer 2014. The timing of the work in Northern Ireland is still the subject of discussions with NISRA.