Electoral Administration Bill

If someone knew somebody else’s national insurance number or date of birth, they would be able fraudulently to add the signature. The point concerns what the rules should be, and how they should be enforced. We want not only the right rules, but effective operational enforcement. Whether we stick with the current system whereby one person signs on behalf of a whole household, whether we move to one person signing for themselves and adding their date of birth as a result of successful pilots or whether we include national insurance numbers in addition to individual signatures and dates of birth, we must be sure that fraud does not occur. I have started to meet the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives on a monthly basis. We are discussing how to provide effective fraud enforcement for whatever system the House chooses in its wisdom and after lengthy debate.