Electoral Administration Bill

I apologise for my personal failing of not being better known and not plugging my constituency multiple times in every debate. Signatures are useful when people meet face to face, but photo ID could be more useful in the longer term as a personal identifier that would allow us to move away entirely from national insurance numbers and signatures. I hope that I am not broadening the debate too much, but many people have talked about fraud regarding information that is provided. National insurance numbers could be used in such a way. It would be of benefit to consider holding a pilot using some of the fraud prevention systems that the banks use to examine spurious information that is provided as a personal identifier. That would alleviate the problem of having anagrams of ““I’m a made-up voter”” and the ubiquitous Mickey Mouse-type submission on electoral forms and, as we see as Members of Parliament, on petitions. It could be useful, and I am mindful of the Minister’s comments about a centralised web-based computer system that would facilitate a form of interaction at a national level to validate and spot trends. I know that it is late in the debate to raise issues on personal identifiers, but there is an opportunity to consider some of the pilots. Although I am not bold enough to disagree entirely with my Front Bench—[Interruption.] Perhaps I will do so just this once, to create a reputation so that my constituency of Rochford and Southend, East is known. We could flip things on the head and in one pilot severely reduce the amount of information that is needed to get on to the register while severely increasing the information we need, in banking terms, at the point of sale—the point of voting. That would be useful when people sign up remotely and by different methods, and it would increase overall registration, which I would welcome.