Electoral Administration Bill

The Bill, as the hon. Gentleman will know, allows us to pilot the use of national insurance numbers as a condition for registration. It is not our intention to proceed with such a piloting. We will commence with a pilot making someone’s signature and date of birth a condition of registration, but it is possible, under the law in the Bill, to pilot national insurance numbers. As for national insurance numbers and Northern Ireland, may I deal with those matters by responding to amendments Nos. 16 and 17, which were tabled by the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald)? They would require all electors to provide their national insurance number when registering to vote. Postal and proxy voters, too, would need to provide their national insurance number when applying for an absent vote. Our position on the amendments has not changed since we discussed the issue in the Committee of the whole House. We understand the arguments about the Northern Ireland precedent on both data sharing and security. However, hon. Members will appreciate that Northern Ireland has only just over a million electors and one electoral register. The rest of the UK has about 43 million electors and over 400 electoral registers.