Policy Background Candidate names and addresses
Current nomination rules for candidates standing at parliamentary elections contain some inconsistencies with other provisions in legislation and with current practice over details around names and addresses that candidates need to provide. The Act therefore updates these rules to ensure greater consistency.
	Presently, a person who is nominated as a candidate must give their full names on the nomination paper, and may also provide a commonly used forename or surname, which must be different to any of the names already given, which they would like to have included on the ballot paper. This is not sufficiently flexible to allow all names that candidates may wish to use - for instance a candidate cannot currently provide their middle name as a commonly used name. The Act broadens this to allow a candidate to include on their nomination paper (and therefore on the ballot paper) as their name, any name that they commonly use as a forename or surname, including their middle name.
	Currently, candidates at Parliamentary elections are required to provide their home address in full on the "home address" nomination form, and choose whether to make it public for the statement of persons nominated (i.e., the published list of candidates standing at the election) and on the ballot paper. If they do not wish for their home address to be made public, they can instead indicate the constituency within which their address is located. These requirements were introduced by the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009 and were intended to provide security and/or privacy for candidates, while still ensuring electors can see if a candidate has demonstrated a local connection to where they are standing. However, the rules mean that a candidate who lives just outside the constituency boundary may feel that electors might not recognise the name of their neighbouring constituency, so may feel pressured to publish their full address. The Act therefore provides candidates at UK Parliamentary elections with another option - to choose to have the name of the local authority area in which their home address is located included on the ballot paper and other election documents, as an alternative to displaying either their home address or the constituency in which their home address is located. This is an option that is already available to candidates standing in local elections. The change thus fulfils the requirements of ensuring candidates are familiar to electors, and to enable electors to identify a local connection, while ensuring consistent rules across elections in the UK .