Draft Representation of the People (Electoral Registration Data Schemes) Regulations 2011
Draft Electoral Registration Data Schemes Order 2011

The Committee consisted of the following Members:

Chair: Martin Caton 

† Afriyie, Adam (Windsor) (Con) 

† Andrew, Stuart (Pudsey) (Con) 

† Bryant, Chris (Rhondda) (Lab) 

† Burt, Lorely (Solihull) (LD) 

Donaldson, Mr Jeffrey M. (Lagan Valley) (DUP) 

† Dunne, Mr Philip (Ludlow) (Con) 

† Gardiner, Barry (Brent North) (Lab) 

Glass, Pat (North West Durham) (Lab) 

† Harper, Mr Mark (Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office)  

† Hinds, Damian (East Hampshire) (Con) 

† Laing, Mrs Eleanor (Epping Forest) (Con) 

McDonagh, Siobhain (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab) 

† Meacher, Mr Michael (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab) 

Mitchell, Austin (Great Grimsby) (Lab) 

† Pawsey, Mark (Rugby) (Con) 

† Percy, Andrew (Brigg and Goole) (Con) 

† Reynolds, Jonathan (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op) 

† Williams, Mr Mark (Ceredigion) (LD) 

Annette Toft, Committee Clerk

† attended the Committee

Fourth Delegated Legislation Committee 

Monday 23 May 2011  

[Martin Caton in the Chair] 

Draft Representation of the People (Electoral Registration Data Schemes) Regulations 2011 

4.30 pm 

The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper):  I beg to move, 

That the Committee has considered the draft Representation of the People (Electoral Registration Data Schemes) Regulations 2011. 

The Chair:  With this it will be convenient to consider the draft Electoral Registration Data Schemes Order 2011. 

Mr Harper:  It is a great pleasure, Mr Caton, to serve under your chairmanship. 

The powers to make the order are in sections 35 and 36 of the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009. The powers to make the regulations are in sections 53(1) and (3) and 201(3) of, and paragraphs 10B(1)(a) and (2) of schedule 2 to, the Representation of the People Act 1983. By enabling the sharing and matching of specified data between local authority electoral registration officers and public authorities who hold certain kinds of specified data, the two instruments will provide the legal basis for the electoral registration data-matching trial, which I announced to the House in my oral statement of 15 September 2010. 

Before I set out what the regulations do, let me provide the Committee with some background. I think that all sides of the House agree that we need to improve our electoral registration system. We need to make it both more accurate and more complete than it is at the moment. We need to ensure that it is not vulnerable to fraud, but that people find it as easy as possible to register. We announced that in 2014 we will have introduced individual electoral registration. We also said that there are potentially some tools that we could use to tackle under-registration and to ensure that people have every opportunity to register. Data matching is one such tool. 

Data matching involves comparing the electoral register against other public databases in order to identify people who are currently missing from the register. That will then give an electoral registration officer the chance to contact them and find out whether they wish to be added to the electoral register. Data matching will enable the identification of people who are on the register, but who are not entitled to be. The electoral register would be able to remove them. Data matching therefore has the potential to help make the register not only more accurate but more complete. 

We do not know how effective data matching will be, hence the pilots that we are proposing. We want to trial data matching in the next few months in a range of

areas in England, Wales and Scotland. The instruments before the Committee will enable us to do that. The results of the trial will be evaluated with the assistance of the Electoral Commission, and will enable us to determine whether we want to extend data matching and give those powers to electoral registration officers permanently. 

The order will enable some specified data-holding public authorities, including the Department for Work and Pensions, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Department for Education, to provide electoral registration officers with the data necessary for their data-matching schemes. The 22 local authorities planning to take part in the trial are listed in the schedule to the order. I want to express my thanks and appreciation to them and the participating data-holding authorities for their work. 

Eagle-eyed members of the Committee will have noticed that there are 23 local authority areas in the schedule. Peterborough local authority had to withdraw after the order was laid. That will not affect the validity of the order, because being included in the schedule does not compel them to take part. It will not affect the validity of the eventual results of the pilot schemes either. Indeed, even if one or two more of the pilots run into unforeseen practical difficulties, there will still be enough of them in the scheme for the results to be useful. 

The order stipulates that, before any data can be transferred, a written agreement must be in place between the electoral registration officer and the data-holding authority, setting out the requirements as to the processing, transfer, storage, destruction and security of the data concerned. It also sets 1 March 2012 as the date by which each of the schemes must have been evaluated. The first of March 2012—and not the end of December 2011, as mentioned in the draft agreement attached to the explanatory memorandum—will also now be the date by which all data created for the purposes of the pilot schemes must be destroyed. Since that version of the draft agreement was prepared, the Electoral Commission has told us that it would be helpful, for its evaluation of the pilot schemes, if it had access to the data until the date on which it is due to produce its report. We agree with the commission and we think that approach sensible. The final version of the agreement will reflect that change of date. However, by 1 March all the data involved, other than that which has been used to add people to the register, will be destroyed, so they will not remain after the pilots are complete. 

The regulations complement the order by giving registration officers the power to supply a copy of their full register, or an extract from it, to another person—that is, the data-holding authority—so that it can be compared with information under the data- matching scheme. The regulations provide that the person to whom the register is passed may do nothing with it for any purpose other than the scheme or without the registration officer’s consent. 

Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD):  I fully support the pilot, but I want to ask the Minister for reassurance on the letter from the Information Commissioner’s Office, which expresses concerns about data protection. Can the pilot look at how far it is necessary to share all data in each data set? Will the Minister comment on how data protection will be assessed in the pilots? 

Mr Harper:  I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. We have been clear in this process that we want to make sure that data are properly protected, which is why I went through some of the details at length. My officials have been working the Information Commissioner’s Office, and we have made changes to the scheme since we received the letter. My hon. Friend and other Members will note that we were originally thinking about an exchange of data including nationality data, but I decided that that would be disproportionate, given the benefit we would get from it. Therefore, the only information we propose to share is now names and addresses. That deals with one of the concerns raised by the Information Commissioner’s Office. 

One purpose of the pilot is to see what benefit we get from exchanging data and what would be a proportionate use of data if we rolled the scheme out. As I said, the regulations give the registration officer the power to supply the full register or extracts from it to the data-holding authority. For example, if there are particular areas where the local authority is concerned about registration, it could extract the relevant information and give it to the data-holding authority. The data-holding authority will run a matching process and give an extract of it back. We are not, therefore, talking about exchanging all the information, but only that necessary to do the data-matching pilot. It is that approach to data, which is in line with the Data Protection Act 1998, and which involves doing as little as necessary and acting proportionately, which my officials have very much in mind. That is why we are working closely with the Information Commissioner’s Office. 

Lorely Burt:  I am grateful for that answer. My hon. Friend says that different authorities may take a different view of how much data they release. How will that work in the context of a pilot that is being rolled out across 22 different local authorities? How will it work in terms of the continuity of the data we get and our ability to assess it? 

Mr Harper:  There are two things there. One thing we have been clear about is that a range of local authorities from different parts of the country are involved. There are also different data-holding authorities. Most, if not all, of the local authorities are using the Department for Work and Pensions, for example, but some want to trial different data sets from different data-holding authorities, because of the make-up of those local authorities. Those with large student populations may wish to use information on that, but that may not be appropriate in other areas. We want to make sure that we have consistent results and that we can evaluate them properly, but we also want local authorities to be able to run pilots that make sense in their areas. After all, when the electoral registration officer prepares a register, and their staff carry out the canvass and chase up information, different local authorities will prioritise different things because they have different make-ups, including groups that are more difficult to reach. We want to make sure that local flexibility is built into the pilots. 

Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con):  I may have misunderstood this, but I think the Minister said that there would be no sharing of nationality information. I

am sure that this is all factored in, but how does that ensure that EU citizens are not put on the register with the wrong coding next to them? 

Mr Harper:  The data-holding authorities with which we are doing the pilots do not include the UK Border Agency at this point. We may consider it in future, but in the original proposals to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the only authorities proposing to share nationality data were, first, the DVLA, which does not hold nationality data, and secondly, the Ministry of Defence. The potential use of nationality data was so small that it would have been disproportionate to share those data. I am conscious of my hon. Friend’s point about data security and treating data in a proportionate way. I decided that that was not relevant, but I have listened to his point and will bear it in mind. I am sure that he will raise it again when we publish the draft measures to introduce individual voter registration. No doubt he will want to feed those concerns back to me then. 

Andrew Percy:  It is a bit of a concern. Is the Minister saying that it is possible that people who are not British citizens or not entitled to be on the electoral roll could end up there through the pilots? 

Mr Harper:  One thing that will be done regarding data matching between the electoral register and the Department for Work and Pensions, for example, is extra checks on whether people have national insurance numbers and so forth. However, the electoral registration officer already has the power to check that sort of information. For example, if the ERO is concerned that somebody’s nationality and eligibility to vote is not what they have declared on their form, the ERO has the power to require them to produce that information in the form of their passport or documentation from the Home Office about their leave to remain. EROs already have full powers to do so if they have concerns about the nationality of people who have applied to be on the electoral register, although in certain cases, they might not be doing that to the extent that my hon. Friend would like. If he has particular concerns, he should draw them to the attention of the registration officer, who already has the power to investigate such matters. 

We think that data-matching schemes might lead to greater accuracy and improved levels of registration. If they do, and the results are promising, we will consider rolling out the scheme when we introduce individual registration overall, but at the moment we do not have evidence. We have a hunch, but we need to ensure that we have more than a hunch. That is why it is important to get the evidence, which is why the pilots are important. I commend the order and the regulations to the Committee. 

4.43 pm 

Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab):  My pleasure at serving under your chairmanship is completely and utterly unalloyed, Mr Caton. I am grateful to the Minister for his lucid explanation of why we are here, although there is another element to why the regulations are being introduced: the Government want to move as fast as possible—indeed, before the next general election—towards individual registration. 

I do not support that move, as the Minister knows. The agreement among all political parties when the draft legislation was introduced in the last Parliament was that there should be a voluntary-basis move towards individual registration up until the next general election, after which change should be mandatory. That would have been the appropriate speed, and that is where we should be going. However, I note that the Government, for whatever partisan reasons of their own, have decided to move rather faster, which is a shame. 

However, data sharing is a good idea. When we were in government, we tried to progress it. If anything, we were accused at the time, particularly by some Conservative Back Benchers, of wanting a data state, and we were told that it was inappropriate to share data in that way. I point out that the data that will be shared are limited, in the vast majority of cases, to name, address and date of birth. 

I have a few questions for the Minister. First, I understand why he wants each scheme to be slightly different, because they are pilots, but it is a little odd that in England Royal Mail is one of the listed bodies in relation to Southwark but not to Stratford-on-Avon. I do not understand why that is the case. Although the population is probably more mobile in Southwark than in Stratford-on-Avon, I think the Minister would none the less want to consider whether the inclusion of Royal Mail would be valuable in both types of area. 

In Scotland, the Edinburgh pilot includes only the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Social Development and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, and not the Department for Transport or the Student Loans Company, which are included in relation to Glasgow. Why is there a discrepancy between those two local authorities? For that matter, I cannot find a Scottish local authority for which the Ministry of Defence will provide material as a relevant body. For Wales, which produces more members of the armed forces as a proportion of the population than elsewhere, and in each and every other case, the inclusion of the MOD would be valuable, not least because so many armed forces personnel and veterans fail to end up on the electoral register and are effectively disfranchised at elections. 

Will the Minister explain why the Renfrewshire Improvement Service Company is included as a body, especially as it is a private organisation? What is the exact situation there? Why are the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice not included? There would be significant value in making sure that people who have recently come out of prison have an opportunity to come back in and be re-enfranchised, as it were—some of us would prefer them to be re-enfranchised when they leave prison, rather than while they are in prison. 

Under the heading, “Policy background”, in the explanatory memorandum, the Government refer to tackling fraud. Of course, all of us want to see fraud rooted out of the electoral system in the United Kingdom, but there is a balancing act to be done. I remember a time when it was virtually impossible to get a postal vote: people had to pay a nurse or a doctor £6 to sign the form for a postal vote. That was in my political lifetime, and I very much hope that we will not return to such a situation, because many of my constituents

could simply not afford £6 for what for them would become the luxury of voting, even if they are disabled or elderly. The Government state that the pilot scheme can 

“show up false, duplicate and inaccurate registrations.” 

How will that work in my constituency, because in most streets in Rhondda there are several David Joneses? There are not many houses that have not, at some point in the past 100 years, had a David Jones living in them—or Morgans, Griffiths and families with a few other names. That may seem a flippant point, but in many constituencies in the land, Asian, Greek Cypriot or other communities might produce many identical names. I hope that the Minister will say that dates of birth will make it possible to draw distinctions between them, but I am anxious about digital communications, because they do not have the wisdom of the human brain. 

Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab):  This is a matter of considerable interest in my constituency, where R. Patel and the surname Shah are the most prevalent on my parliamentary constituency database. 

Chris Bryant:  Any community with a large number of Sikhs is likely to have an awful lot of identical male and female names. There is concern that some communities will feel a little disturbed by the process. Someone might feel that the data that are handed over effectively disfranchise them, because that individual is told that they are living at five different properties in the same street, when there are five different people with that name. 

My final point is tangential, but I hope that you will let me get away with this, Mr Caton. The Minister referred to the Electoral Commission, which will evaluate the process. Some of us are concerned that the Electoral Commission gets to do an evaluation of its own work too often. That is the fault of legislation that the Labour Government introduced. In the referendum on the alternative vote, for instance, the Electoral Commission evaluates whether the Electoral Commission did a good job. Some of us might like to see a slightly more independent body doing that. Will the Minster consider the proposal that the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission should have a role in evaluating that work? Other than that, we support the broad thrust of the measures. I want to praise the Minister for his ability to read out the names of the two measures and all the clauses without, so far as I could tell, making a mistake, but I might be wrong. 

4.51 pm 

Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con):  I shall be brief. The hon. Member for Rhondda will not be surprised to hear me challenge what he has just said about consensus before the general election. I appreciate that that is his interpretation of the discussions—I was going to say arguments—that we had at great length in the Chamber during consideration of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill. I recall speaking on behalf of the then Opposition and saying over and over again that it would always be our intention, when given the chance, to speed up the process of individual voter registration. 

Chris Bryant:  I am grateful to the hon. Lady for stating that our discussions went on at inordinate length, because I recall her complaining that there was not enough time as a result of the Government’s programming, so I take her words with a little pinch of salt. 

The Chair:  Order. We are moving away from the measures that we are here to discuss. I hope that the hon. Member for Epping Forest will focus on the measures now. 

Mrs Laing:  The length of the discussions is not absolutely relevant. The vehemence of the discussions is not at issue. There were very different points of view. The hon. Member for Rhondda had one point of view, I had another, and it seems we still do. I merely point out for the record that it was always the intention of my party to move these matters on more quickly rather than more slowly, as the then Government wished to do. I therefore welcome the introduction of the orders by the Minister today. 

I will not detain the Committee, but I want to ask the Minister a couple of short questions. Will he be able to report figures to the House showing the comparison between the number of people registered to vote in an area and the number of people known by way of other databases—as placed before us this afternoon—to live in that area? Once that comparison has been undertaken and we have figures for the people who are known through the other databases to live in a particular district but who are not registered, will action be taken to encourage them to register to vote? And if that has been done, after a reasonable period has elapsed—let us say a year—will information then be available that the Minister can put before the House? Will he be able to show how many people have been identified as not registered, but living in a particular area, who have been contacted to point out to them the fact that they are not registered, and even though they have been encouraged to register, they have still not registered to vote? 

A year from now, will the Minister be able to come to the House and say that the discrepancy between the number of people registered to vote and the perceived population is such and such a number, and that after a reasonable amount of time a certain number of people have been encouraged to register to vote but have still not done so? The House will therefore be able consider the percentage of the population who have the opportunity to register to vote but who voluntarily decide not to do so. 

4.54 pm 

Mr Harper:  I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest for her contribution. Her comments mean that I can deal more briefly with the point made by the hon. Member for Rhondda about our speeding the process up. I shall not dwell on that at length, Mr Caton, because you will rule me out of order. However, since the hon. Gentleman mentioned it, we speeded the process up because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest said, we were not terribly keen on the speed at which it had originally been going, for perfectly sensible reasons. In addition, there was an opportunity to save £70 million of taxpayers’

money by getting rid of the voluntary phase, which I spelled out when I gave my oral statement to the House in September. 

The hon. Member for Rhondda will know that we were careful to set out some checks to deal with legitimate concerns about the state of the register before the next election. That is why, for example, we will keep people who are currently on the register—who fail to register individually and are not proposing to use an absent vote—during the general election period to ensure that we do not get a drop-off, as happened in Northern Ireland when individual registration was introduced overnight. I was careful to lay that matter out, and I set out to the House why we thought it was best to proceed in this direction more quickly. The benefit of saving £70 million of taxpayers’ money is not insubstantial. 

The hon. Member for Rhondda asked several questions. The differences in data-holding authorities in different areas partly arise because the pilots are not prescriptive. I wrote to every local authority, inviting them to take part, and those that expressed an interest had discussions with my officials. In particular, we asked the different electoral registration officers what data sources they thought would help them most, in their particular areas, to improve their register. The basis on which we implemented the pilots is not prescriptive, which means that we are doing different things in different places. People might argue that an alternative approach would have been to say, “We are doing the same things everywhere.” We decided, however, that electoral registration officers know what is best for their areas. 

Electoral registration officers had to volunteer for the process. We were concerned that if we were too prescriptive and asked them to include many things that they did not think had any value in improving their registers, they would not want to participate. That is why we have ended up with a mix. 

Chris Bryant:  But I note that in Wales and Scotland, education data do not feature, so information about people who are coming up to their 18th birthdays, for instance—which schools will know—will not be available. Is that because those local authorities are not run by Westminster—they are devolved—or is it because they did not ask for that information? 

Mr Harper:  I think I am right in saying that information on education is not included because those local authorities did not feel it would be helpful to them. 

The hon. Member for Rhondda asked a specific question about Renfrewshire. The improvement service company is a company limited by guarantee, but it is actually owned by Scottish local authorities. That company holds and manages local authorities’ data as part of the Citizen Account process and the Customer First initiative. Although the company is limited by guarantee, it is effectively a company in the public sector, because it is owned by that group of local authorities. Renfrewshire local authority thought that that company would be the most helpful for it to deal with. 

The hon. Members for Rhondda and for Brent North made a point about date of birth. We are using date of birth exactly so that we have an extra piece of data in addition to name and address. Both hon. Gentlemen were concerned about identifying inaccurate data in the process. Of course, this is only the first stage of the

measure, but all it does, for both completeness and accuracy, is provide the electoral registration officer with a starting point from which to make further inquiries. Electoral registration officers know their areas, so I suspect that those in the hon. Gentlemen’s areas of Rhondda and Brent are well aware that a number of similar names are on their registers, so they will not make that elementary mistake. However, there will be no automaticity in carrying out a data match, finding duplication and then throwing people off the register; inquiries will have to take place. All the measure does is give the electoral registration officer somewhere to start. 

Barry Gardiner:  Can the Minister therefore assure us that no one will be taken off the register as a result of the process until such inquiries have been concluded, communicated to that person, and the person has had the opportunity to make representations? 

Mr Harper:  That is exactly how we envisage the process. The data matching will take place and then the matching report will be passed back to the electoral registration officers. If it is on the completeness side, where they have identified some people who appear to exist, but are not on the register, the officer will approach them and explain where they got the information, what they are doing, why they are approaching them and give them the option to be registered to vote. If they do not want to be registered, that is fine, but they will have the option.

In the same way, if the electoral registration officer, having looked at the name, address and date of birth, identifies some people who may be registered more than once or have duplicate registrations, they will approach the person again, explain where they have got the data and carry out their inquiries. There will obviously be the normal process whereby the electoral registration officer can ask for information and the person can pass it back. This exercise is to try to get the database to be more accurate. That does not include excluding people who are entitled to vote. 

The two aspects of this, which I have emphasised whenever I have spoken about it, are equally important. There is accuracy, which is about ensuring that no one is on the electoral register who is not entitled to be. There is also completeness, which is about ensuring that everyone who is entitled to vote is on the register. Both parts are equally important and will be for conducting the pilots. I hope that that reassures the hon. Gentleman. 

The final point that the hon. Member for Rhondda raised was on evaluation. He may well be right about the referendum. He makes the reasonable point that the chief counting officer runs the Electoral Commission as well. That is why the Government will receive evidence and input from the Association of Electoral Administrators and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives, who will give their feedback on how effectively the process runs. I hope he is satisfied on that issue. 

On the Electoral Commission evaluating the pilots, it is an external body, looking from the outside at how the pilots run. It does not manage local authority electoral registration officers directly. It gives an extra external check, rather than the pilots just being evaluated by the

Government. If that were the case, hon. Members might have concerns about the conclusions reached. I hope that having the Electoral Commission evaluating the pilots as well will give hon. Members some extra comfort. 

My hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest made a point about reporting to the House. The pilots are taking place only in 22 areas. Her wider point, which I think she was getting at, was on how many people around the country are eligible to vote, but have chosen not to register to vote. As we implement the order to introduce individual registration, one of the questions that will come up in the House—if it was not going to before, it will now—and one of the things to which I am putting my mind is: what does success look like? In terms of accuracy, that is about asking how many names on the registers today should not be there. In other words, when we clean it up, how many people will correctly disappear? 

It is also about how many people are out there who are eligible to vote, but are not on the electoral register. We have some data on that. The number that was bandied about in previous debates was 3.5 million, but those are old data. We do not have robust data. One of the things that my hon. Friend will expect me to bring before the House is some more robust research data on those two facilities. I am sure that will come up in debate. It will also be important for the Government as we measure the success of individual voter registration overall. 

Chris Bryant:  The Minister just referred to cleaning up the register. Can he put an estimate on how dirty he thinks the register is? What percentage of names on the electoral register should not be there? 

Mr Harper:  I shall be frank with the hon. Gentleman: I have no idea. There are no robust data on accuracy. There is an old study about completeness, which suggests that there may be 3.5 million people who are eligible to vote, but are not on the register. As my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest said, however, some of those people have chosen not to be registered, which is their choice. Some of them may not have registered because they find the process complex and do not understand it, and some might not connect registration and their ability to vote. There may be a multiplicity of reasons. We have some idea of the reasons, such as inertia, with people not getting round to it until the annual canvas. On accuracy, however, there are much less data. That is one of the things that we need to correct. 

It was one of the problems that they had in Northern Ireland. When individual voter registration was introduced, there was a 10% drop in registrations. I think that the best guess that was made was that about half of that accounted for what they were attempting to do, which was get rid of people who should not have been on the register—in some cases, there were people registered who did not even exist. However, some of it was people who had been dissuaded from registration but were eligible to vote. We need better data—some data, in fact—on that so that we have a good way of assessing how successful this process has been. No doubt that is the sort of issue that we will discuss both when we publish the draft clauses and as the legislation proceeds through the House.

I realise that I have not addressed the point about MOD pilot schemes. We are conducting those pilots so that we can examine how the MOD will communicate with EROs across Great Britain. We think that about 50% of service personnel are in the pilots that we are conducting, because of the areas where the schemes are taking place. We therefore believe that those pilot schemes will give us a good idea of how effective the MOD data are in improving the electoral register. 

Inspiration has struck me about the point on similar names. There is a pilot scheme taking place in Newham. One of the things that that scheme is looking at specifically is people with multiple similar names. The organisers want to improve the accuracy by being able to distinguish between people who have similar names. Where the only data that they have at the moment are name and address, and it is very difficult to tell whether those people are different people, the organisers want to use some of the data matching so that they can be sure that they are dealing with different people. They are very

alive to that issue and they want to ensure that they can improve the accuracy of their database accordingly, ensuring that it is complete. 

I hope that that has dealt with the questions that the hon. Members for Rhondda and for Brent North put, and those asked by my hon. Friends. With that, I hope that the Committee will approve the orders. 

Question put and agreed to.  

Resolved,  

That the Committee has considered the draft Representation of the People (Electoral Registration Data Schemes) Regulations 2011. 

DRAFT ELECTORAL REGISTRATION DATA SCHEMES ORDER 2011  

Resolved,  

That the Committee has considered the draft Electoral Registration Data Schemes Order 2011.—(Mr Harper.)  

5.7 pm 

Committee rose.