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

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chris Ruane on 2014-04-29.

To ask the hon. Member for South West Devon, representing the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, what advice the Electoral Commission has given to electoral registration officers on the necessity of conducting local government data matching for the purposes of transition to individual electoral registration.

Mr Gary Streeter

The Electoral Commission informs me that it has published comprehensive guidance for Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) on their duties to maintain the electoral registers under Individual Electoral Registration (IER), including on using local data to identify and target potential electors and to verify and validate data held on the registers.

The Commission also informs me that the Lord President of the Council has issued Ministerial guidance on IER which EROs must, by law, have regard to. This includes guidance on using local data as part of the confirmation process of data-matching existing electors’ details and the verification process for verifying applicants’ identity.

The Commission’s guidance, which incorporates the Ministerial guidance, is available on its website at:

http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/i-am-a/electoral-administrator/running-electoral-registration

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