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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chris Ruane on 2014-06-26.

To ask the hon. Member for South West Devon, representing the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, what the target was for each voter registration drive of the last five years of the number of electors they hoped to register; how much was allocated for each campaign; and how much the Electoral Commission planned to spend on each registration drive.

Mr Gary Streeter

The Electoral Commission informs me that the information requested for the years 2010 to 2013 was provided to the honourable member in response to his PQs 189416 (6 Mar 2014 : Column 892W) and 185198 (3 Feb 2014 : Column 61W).

In addition, for 2014, the Commission ran a registration campaign for the local and European Parliamentary Elections which were held on 22 May. The campaign budget was £2,800,000 and there was a target of 150,000 registration form downloads. 207,000 downloads were achieved during the campaign.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chris Ruane on 2014-06-26.

To ask the hon. Member for South West Devon, representing the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, how many times an electoral registration officer (ERO) has to fail Standard Three before the Electoral Commission will refer the ERO to the Minister of State for the Cabinet Office for the purpose of improving the performance of the ERO.

Mr Gary Streeter

The Commission informs me that it has reported on ERO performance against Standard 3 for each year since 2008.

To support EROs in preparing for and delivering the transition to individual electoral registration (IER) the Commission has developed a new performance standards framework, which it will use to monitor the performance of EROs against throughout the transition to individual electoral registration. The Commission will continue to carefully monitor and work closely with EROs and will consider a range of options to ensure EROs are carrying out their duties in full.

Discussions between the Electoral Commission and the Cabinet Office take place regularly on a range of subjects.

The Commission made clear in its June report that it would use its statutory powers to make a recommendation to the Secretary of State to require specific EROs to do door-to-door canvassing if this didn’t happen during the introduction of IER, which began on 10 June in England and Wales.

No specific date for conclusion has been set as it will depend on the circumstances in each area, but the Commission will continue to keep this under active review. Should the Commission make a recommendation for such a direction, it will write to the relevant honourable members and local council leaders. We will also write to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee and ask for this correspondence to be placed in the House Library.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chris Ruane on 2014-06-26.

To ask the hon. Member for South West Devon, representing the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, if the Electoral Commission will publish the 10 local authorities with the biggest (a) increase and (b) decrease in the net number of electors following the 2013 annual canvass.

Mr Gary Streeter

The Electoral Commission informs me that the table below shows the ten local authorities with the biggest increases and decreases in electorate between the start and end of the 2013 canvass.

These local authorities cover the following parliamentary constituencies:

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chris Ruane on 2014-06-26.

To ask the hon. Member for South West Devon, representing the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, what estimate the Electoral Commission makes of how many registered electors move house and (a) re-register and (b) fail to re-register to vote each year.

Mr Gary Streeter

The Electoral Commission informs me that it intends to provide information on this in its report which uses census data to assess the completeness and accuracy of the registers. This is due to be published in July.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chris Ruane on 2014-06-26.

To ask the hon. Member for South West Devon, representing the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, what estimate the Electoral Commission has made of the number of local authorities who conducted a dry run in data matching and did not repeat this to the Electoral Commission.

Mr Gary Streeter

The Electoral Commission informs me that it has not made any estimate of the number of electoral registration officers (EROs) who did not undertake local data matching trials following the dry run of confirmation in 2013. 139 EROs reported results to the Commission but there are likely to have been other EROs who carried out some activities but did not report it to the Commission.

The Commission further informs me that it did ask EROs, on a separate survey, whether local data matching would be important during the live run of confirmation and 91% said that it would.

The Commission therefore expects more EROs to conduct local data matching for the live run of confirmation than reported on results following the dry run.

The Commission, working with Cabinet Office, will be collecting data from all EROs after the live run of the confirmation process which will demonstrate levels of usage of local data in practice. This data will be published on the Commission’s website.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chris Ruane on 2014-06-26.

To ask the hon. Member for South West Devon, representing the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, on what specific date the Electoral Commission plans to publish its estimate of the number of people missing off the electoral register.

Mr Gary Streeter

The Commission informs me that it will publish this report shortly.