Electoral Administration Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for helping to resolve this. Confusion is not involved; it is simply that there is a big debate to be had. I want to say a couple of things for the benefit of any noble Lord who, perhaps, was not around in Grand Committee, and who is possibly slightly confused about what the different issues are. The principle addressed by the Bill, and in the debates in your Lordships’ House and in another place, is about how one uses personal identifiers—which could be signatures or, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, proposed, national insurance numbers—to enable us to tackle this fundamental problem of fraud. A number of ways of doing this have arisen in our deliberations, as have a number of ways of how we test or roll out these ideas. Noble Lords will know that the Government’s position was that we felt very strongly about the impact of putting a personal identifier across the board for the registration of voting, having consulted with a range of people, particularly those in another place who are elected and who understand the issues well but also many others. There was a genuine concern that, unless remedial action was taken against it, we could find that the numbers of those who would register would fall. That is not something we wish to see happen in a democracy. The Government’s original answer was to pilot it to see what they can find out. Noble Lords will know that there were many debates about how one got the right kind of pilot in the right kind of area to get a genuine reflection of what would happen if there was a national roll-out. There were great difficulties—I will not go into the detail—which noble Lords explored fully in Grand Committee. The other proposal from the Electoral Commission, supported in your Lordships’ House, was the idea of the transitional system. That was, essentially, a voluntary system, where you could choose to put down your personal identifier. I have always felt a difficulty with that because, as it is voluntary, you cannot test it; those people who are quite comfortable with putting down additional information will do so, while those who are not will not. Also, at a time when we are trying to simplify the process—not least for the forms that people receive—we would have the situation where, instead of saying on the form, ““Please fill in the following information””, it would say, ““Please fill in the following information, but not if you do not want to””. It did not actually get us very far—I feel very strongly about this—it involves genuine, proper research into understanding what people do. The only argument for it would be that people might get used to it. The people who might get used to it, however, are those who would do it anyway. It does not give us what we really need. In all our discussions, we return time and again to the critical issue of postal voting. The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, again raised this issue with us today. I know that there is great concern right across the House about these issues. The noble Lord, Lord Elder, tabled his amendment, which I know is an amendment that transmogrified from that of the noble Lord, Lord Rennard—he is not with us today as he is visiting exotic places, I understand—and the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham. This is, in a sense, a collective amendment. I hope that my noble friend will not mind my saying that, but it is based on what has been done across all the political parties in the best tradition of our parliamentary system. The amendment is of great interest to us. We have discussed it with the Electoral Commission and have also had the benefit of discussing it with noble Lords. It tackles the question of postal voting by putting in additional safeguards. I agree with my noble friend that, to begin with, the system should be checked 100 per cent but, if it becomes obvious that we do not need to do so in the future, we should have the capacity to reconsider that and save electoral registration officers time and energy. But certainly we must begin the process from that presumption. The amendment gives us a fantastic test-bed in looking at how personal identifiers work in a particular way and then looking at the system again. So, in responding to that point and to the large amount of criticism surrounding the pilot schemes, we accept the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Elder. We know that there is a great deal of support for the amendment in your Lordships’ House and we recognise that it should be seen to be accepted by Parliament, as opposed to merely the Government. The system should be evaluated properly as it has the potential to tell us about the use of personal identifiers. We need to address how to tackle registration if people are concerned or confused about what they have to do, and the amendment would enable us to move forward in the right and appropriate way. As this issue is so important, we felt that that was how it should be pursued. We would be able to come back at another stage with further legislation, if appropriate, to bring in any schemes that we felt were right and proper. That is where we have got to in approaching this matter. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart—he is right to say that I did not discuss these issues with him properly. I hope he will accept that I discussed them with his noble friend Lord Rennard on a number of occasions before I realised that he would not be present for this stage of the Bill. However, I did not do what I should have done, and which I hope the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, will accept I usually do—that is, to pursue them with him. I think that his noble friend will agree that I tried to go through these matters in detail; none the less, it is not good enough and I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart. That is the basic principle behind these groups of amendments. The noble Baroness has indicated that she will not pursue the issue of the national insurance number at this point, so I shall not go into why we think there would be difficulties with that. We can refer to that issue on another occasion. I hope that I have identified for the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, the approach that we have taken and our reasons for following this route. I genuinely believe that, by accepting the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Elder—if your Lordships agree to do so—we will have done something extremely important in dealing with fraud in an area where people are greatly and rightly concerned. I know that the Electoral Commission will, with our support, consider the information very carefully to ensure that in future we can come back to the very important issue of personal identifiers and deal with it properly in legislation before your Lordships’ House, if that seems to be the right thing to do.