Examination of Witnesses (Question Number
199)
DR ROGER
MORTIMORE AND
DR STUART
WILKS-HEEG
9 SEPTEMBER 2010
Chair: Dr Mortimore and Dr Wilks-Heeg,
nice to see you. Welcome. I think we are probably going to focus
primarily on electoral registers in the 50 minutes that remain,
and I am going to ask Sheila Gilmore to start off.
Q199 Sheila Gilmore: My question to begin
with is about the unreliability of the registration system, and
in particular the under-registration that there is of certain
groups in certain places. It has certainly been my experience—and
I have been involved in elections over a large number of years—that
this seems to have become substantially worse, ironically at a
time when some ways of registering yourself have become easier—you
can go online and register at home. I don't think I have ever
found it quite so bad as I have found it this year, in terms of
going to some streets, some areas, where out of a block of eight
flats there are perhaps only two households registered. This is
a serious problem, so do you have any views about how we could
take steps to deal with this, and how long it might take to resolve
that problem?
Dr Wilks-Heeg: I'll take that
first. There is no doubt that there has been a long-term decline
in registration levels going over several decades. It probably
started in the 1970s. There were two issues with the registers
then and it's important to separate them out: one is the issue
of the completeness of the registers and the other is the issue
of the accuracy. Those two things often mirror one another but
they are conceptually quite distinct. What we do know—from
what we can piece together, because there is a complete lack of
research for the period between the late 1990s and about 2005—is
the biggest drop happened in that period, between 2000 and 2005.
Since then there has been some recovery. The registers have certainly
stabilised, in terms of their completeness and to take into account
population growth and the growth of the eligible electorate. They're
not getting back to where they were in the late 1990s, however.
So there does seem to have been this overall decline and we also
know, very clearly, that the pattern of there being a big contrast
between different parts of the country has continued and probably,
although the evidence is difficult to really interrogate, the
differences between areas has grown in terms of the completeness
of the registers. I think it is also important to add, though,
that the registers decline in quality, in terms of accuracy and
completeness, over the lifecycle of a register. So whenever you
do an estimate, depending on the point you are at in the life
of the register, you're going to get a different figure. The one
thing that has helped with this problem is rolling registration,
which has not been taken up by as many electors as it should be,
but certainly that is an improvement relative to where we were
before the changes introduced in 2000.
Dr Mortimore: I agree with all
of that. I think the biggest single factor in terms of the register
is simply outdatedness, that when people move house they don't
always get on to the register very quickly. Although rolling registration
has improved that, it is clear that a lot of people aren't aware
of it and a lot of those who are aware of it are not taking advantage
of it. Those who have recently moved are not getting round to
filling in the forms every time, so they're still off on the second
year, and you can see that the longer people have lived at their
present address the more likely they are to be on the register.
That is the biggest part of it. I guess part of the decline is
the social change that people are getting less and less prepared
to fill out all the forms they get through the door every year
and possibly, also, the ways in which social changes have made
it more difficult to make sure that the councils have delivered
the forms to every household.
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