COMMENT
Representation of the People Act 2000 c.2

Representation of the People Act 2000 c.2 (Note)

These notes refer to the Representation of the People Act 2000

which received Royal Assent on 9 March 2000 (c. 2)

REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE ACT 2000

EXPLANATORY NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1. These explanatory notes relate to the Representation of the People Act which received Royal Assent on 9 March 2000. They have been prepared by the Home Office in order to assist the reader in understanding the Act. They do not form part of the Act and have not been endorsed by Parliament.

2. These notes need to be read in conjunction with the Act. They are not, and are not meant to be, a comprehensive description of the Act. So where a section or part of a section does not seem to require any explanation or comment, none is given.

SUMMARY

3. The Act changes electoral procedures in relation to electoral registration and absent voting and allows for experiments involving innovative electoral procedures.

4. It also makes some miscellaneous changes to electoral law to make it easier for the disabled to vote and to create an offence of supplying false particulars on a nomination form.

5. It allows candidates in the first election for the Mayor of London to include an election address in a booklet to be delivered on behalf of the Greater London returning officer.

BACKGROUND

6. The Working Party on Electoral Procedures, a group chaired by the then Home Office Minister, George Howarth, and containing representatives from the main political parties, local government and electoral administrators, published its final report on 19 October 1999 - House of Commons Official Report, col WA434 (though it had published its summary recommendations in July of that year).

7. The Act gives effect to the Working Party's recommendations.

8. Those recommendations fall into several main categories.

9. The Working Party recommended the introduction of a scheme of "rolling" electoral registration to enable people to be added to (and deleted from) the electoral register at any time of the year rather than making registration contingent on residence on a single annual qualifying date.

10. The Working Party recommended changes to electoral registration rules to make it easier for the homeless, remand prisoners, people in mental institutions and service personnel to register. The Working Party recommended that the homeless, remand prisoners and mental patients should be able to register by means of a "declaration of locality", that is a statement that they have a significant link with a locality.

11. Under the existing law, remand prisoners are entitled to vote but should they be in prison on the electoral registration qualifying date are unable to register. The Working Party recommended that remand prisoners should be entitled to register by means of a declaration of locality, in respect of the address at which they were previously living or in respect of the institution at which they are held. The Working Party did not recommend extending the franchise to convicted prisoners.

12. The Working Party recommended that those in mental institutions, whether vol...

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