Electoral Administration Bill

My Lords, Amendments Nos. 25, 41, 95, 119 and 124 in this group stand in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Rennard. With the leave of the House, I will speak to all of them. In doing so, however, it will also be necessary for me to discuss some issues relating to the next group, which includes Amendments Nos. 45 to 49 and 121 in our name. The Government are now substantially altering their original position on this part of the Bill. Their position was that Clause 13 provided for what is a form of individual registration, because each elector had to provide personal identifiers—their signature and date of birth—before they could be entered on the register. We agreed that it was not necessary to include national insurance numbers as personal identifiers. We accepted that there were special reasons that made it appropriate in Northern Ireland but not in Great Britain. The Government originally made it clear that Clause 13 would not be brought into effect without piloting, as provided for by Clauses 15 to 18. We were unhappy with these proposals in two respects. First, we believed that individual registration, or at least household registration forms signed by each member of the household who was being registered, were essential and should not be delayed pending pilots. We therefore objected to the proposal for pilot schemes, which might take some years to evaluate. The pilots have in fact now disappeared. However, we recognised that some delay was necessary before individual registration for everyone involving personal identifiers could be brought into force. We therefore pressed for transitional arrangements, as proposed by the Electoral Commission, requiring applications for postal or proxy votes to contain identifiers before it was possible to roll out Clause 13 in full. The Government have now dropped Clause 13, and have therefore eliminated from the Bill any provision bringing in individual registration with personal identifiers for all electors. That remains a matter of concern to us. If, as I understand they intend to, the Government accept the noble Lord, Lord Elder’s amendment, they have also agreed that applicants for absent votes must provide personal identifiers. The Government have therefore in effect accepted the transitional arrangements but removed the objective for which the transition was originally proposed: that is, registration with personal identifiers for everyone on the register. Under this Bill, it will be registration only for those who apply for absent votes. We therefore have one step, in the removal of the proposal for pilot schemes, in the right direction, and one step, in the removal of Clause 13, which we see as being in the wrong direction, because it means that further primary legislation will be necessary before it is possible to bring into effect the provision by all people on the electoral register of personal identifiers. There is no doubt that electoral fraud has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished. There were serious problems, which we are all aware of, in the local elections in 2005, and there have been a number of allegations of fraud in this year’s local elections, though investigations into those are still ongoing. Postal voting is the most obvious sources of fraud, and requiring personal identifiers will diminish it. It is not the only cause of fraud, though. For example—and there are a number of other ways of doing this—it is possible to register imaginary people as living at a particular address, and then get someone not on the register in that district or constituency to cast a vote in their name at a polling station. Requiring personal identifiers would not make that impossible, but would make it easier to detect and would deter it. We would therefore have preferred to keep Clauses 13 and 14 on the face of the Bill, while removing Clauses 15 to 18, but to add our own amendments to create the transitional arrangements as proposed by the Electoral Commission. In Grand Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Elder, supported our Amendment No. 41, but has now produced in his own name Amendment No. 26, which leads to the next group and which would require personal identifiers to be given when an absent vote application is made. The amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Elder, would be entirely appropriate, as the Bill abandons the concept of personal identifiers for all registered electors. However, we are seriously concerned about the abandonment of the general requirement for personal identifiers. We have not been consulted by the Government on that, and I would like to know why. If there is no satisfactory answer, we may move our own amendment. If we are satisfied with the Government’s answer, we will support the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Elder, and the government amendments in the following group. I should add that Amendment No. 95 is independent of the other amendments in this group. Clause 37 inserts a new rule into Schedule 1 to the Representation of the People Act 1983, which requires a postal voting statement to be in the prescribed form, including a provision for the form to be signed. Surely, it should also include, as Amendment No. 95 proposes, the voter’s personal identifier and the voter’s date of birth. I am sorry that the noble Baroness is surprised by the fact that I have received no element of consultation on this, but I can assure her that I have not. It is possible that it was sent to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and, as a result of his attendance at a conference abroad, failed to get through to me, but it certainly did not reach me.