Electoral Administration Bill

My Lords, I do not see how there cannot be at least a one-way link. If you are trying to establish someone’s identity and whether they have the right to vote, you will want to interrogate the national identity register once it is complete and compulsory. It will be a jolly good way of knowing whether someone is who they say they are and whether their claim to be allowed to vote should be taken at face value. Given that under the national identity regulations there will be enormous fines for giving false information about where you live and your main address, the national identity register will, it seems, become the main source of information for who should be on the register. It will be used by local authorities and others to pinpoint who should be on the register in their campaigns for inclusion. On postal voting fraud, I should have thought that, when it is complete, the national identity register will be an essential source of information for drawing the attention of electoral registration officers to likely fraud, because it will be such a complete, accurate and up-to-date database—ha ha. We shall see—it is supposed to be. So the flow of information from the national identity register into CORE seems essential, although I agree with my noble friend that what exactly happens should be under parliamentary control. I share her concerns about the flow of information in the other direction. We should not share electoral information with other systems through government, except under extremely tight control.