To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps his Department is taking to link National Insurance numbering systems with voter registration to improve registration levels.

Under Individual Electoral Registration (IER) applicants provide two personal identifiers including a national insurance number which are checked against Government records to help verify the person is who they say they are. As part of the transition to IER in 2014, 87% of the existing electorate was automatically re-registered under the new system after being data matched against Government and local authority data. Data matching continues to be integral to IER, in verifying new applications, but also locally in identifying and verifying applications from eligible electors. We will keep under review the scope for data to further improve voter registration.