Electoral Administration Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, for tabling the amendment. While I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, that the Delegated Powers Committee might blanche at the breadth of this—and noble Lords would be right to be concerned about the breadth of it—it is important that we have the debate. The Government have said that we accept the principle behind individual registration. We have accepted the practical value that the use of personal identifiers might have in combating fraud. But we have also said—and I think I indicated this in my comments on the earlier group—that it is an important part of how we operate in our democracy that we make sure that everyone who is entitled to register to vote is registered. We know—do we not?—that under-registration disenfranchises individuals and sometimes skews the map of political representation. The Northern Ireland example is often cited on both sides of this debate. It is often seen as a tried and tested system of individual registration, and it has led to benefits, particularly in terms of the perceived security of the electoral process. But it is not true to say that the experience in Northern Ireland argues for the system in place there to be extended to the rest of the UK. In fact, due to concerns about under-registration in Northern Ireland, a Bill is currently in the other place to amend its registration system to ensure that the electoral register is made both secure and comprehensive. The Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill would abolish the annual canvass. Once registered, a person would remain on the register until he changed address. Increased data-sharing would help keep the register up-to-date, but if it became inaccurate, the Electoral Office for Northern Ireland would conduct a full canvass. We hope that these proposals will improve the quality of the electoral register, responding to the lessons learnt about individual registration in Northern Ireland. However, we also believe that the need for this legislation shows clearly that we need to do more work before we extend it to the rest of the UK. The Electoral Commission found that 3.5 million people in England and Wales cannot vote in elections because they are not registered; and we believe that if we do not get implementation of electoral registration right now we could make the situation worse. When individual registration was introduced in Northern Ireland, the registration levels dropped by around 10 per cent In one Belfast ward the registration dropped from an already low 41 per cent to just 23 per cent Such a situation is unacceptable. Although this is an extreme example, and I am always wary of quoting extreme examples, it is worth making the point that we have to do this very carefully. This is about our democracy, which I believe is the most precious thing we have. We cannot allow a situation in which areas are almost ““democracy deserts”” to continue in that vein. I understand that individual registration has benefits in relation to security; in particular through the collection of personal identifiers such as a signature and date of birth. Because we can see the benefit, we believe the way forward is to adopt the amendment of my noble friend Lord Elder, as the House has, to look at the situation very carefully and to see what we can learn from it. We want to pursue the issues of under-registration and personal identification in a measured way with, I hope, as much support on all sides of your Lordships’ House as we possibly can. For that reason we have taken the approach that we have. I fully accept and understand the concerns of noble Lords and where they would wish us to be. However, we are now in a good and positive place with this legislation and can say that we have a way forward that will give us greater security in postal voting and a greater understanding of personal identification that will enable us to come back to this matter either with other legislation or in debates in your Lordships’ House.