Miliband: A Million Could Be Denied A Vote

Ed Miliband will today claim a million voters – many of them young people - are in danger of being denied a vote in the general election on 7 May.

He is launching a drive to register voters who have disappeared from the electoral register, particularly in towns and cities with high numbers of students and young people.

His speech, at Sheffield Hallam University Students’ Union, close to Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg’s constituency, coincides with Labour publishing figures suggesting the missing million is the result Government reforms which mean universities and colleges can no longer block register students living in halls of residences to vote.

But his claims have been dismissed as scaremongering by the Liberal Democrats, who say that earlier this month Mr Clegg secured an extra £10m to help boost registration rates among students and other groups at risk.

According to Labour, areas that have seen the number of registered voters fall by more than 10,000 include the university cities of Cardiff, Liverpool, Newcastle, Southampton, Leicester, Nottingham, Brighton, and Hull, while in London, the figure is almost 100,000.

The party says it will contact local government leaders and vice-chancellors over the next two weeks to urge action ahead of the voter registration deadline of 20 April. In the last week 18 Labour staff members have begun work in university towns and cities to help students register ahead of the election.

"In the last year almost one million people have fallen off the electoral register, hundreds of thousands of them young people," Mr Miliband will say.

"This is a direct consequence of the Government’s decision to ignore warnings that rushing through new individual registration reforms would damage democracy. It has.

"Having broken their promises on tuition fees to young people, having failed to build the economy that will work for them, having short-changed their future, this is David Cameron and Nick Clegg's final insult to young people. They are sitting by and watching hundreds of thousands of young people in our country lose their sacred democratic rights.

"We will not allow this scandal to happen and no right-thinking person should either. Labour will now lead a national mission to stop young people being denied a voice at in this election. And today I urge universities, local councils, and young people themselves to play their part. Let’s work together to register young people to vote and make sure they don’t lose their voice."

But the Lib Dems' Deputy Leader of the Commons, Tom Brake, hit back: "Labour must have forgotten they began the policy of individual electoral registration while they were in government and still support it in principle.

"Instead of scaremongering, Labour should be working with their own local authorities to ensure that the large amount of money available is spent helping people, particularly students, register to vote.

"Lots of these people will still be on the electoral register, but would have previously been registered twice. Labour also seem keen to hide the fact that the Coalition Government has made it extremely easy to register to vote - it can be done online in a couple of minutes."

Earlier this week in the Commons the veteran Labour MP David Winnick introduced a Bill to make it a civic obligation either to vote or abstain in elections, which is the law in countries including Australia, Belgium and Luxembourg.

"At the last election, when the total turnout was 65%, only 44% of 18 to 24-year-olds voted," he told MPs.