Electoral Administration Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. I seem to be setting myself a trend by beginning each of my contributions by paying tribute to the noble Lords who have helped me in understanding these issues. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, to my noble friend Lord Elder, who is not in his place today, and to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard. This significant trio have been extremely helpful in allowing me to think through what we might do. I will briefly recap how we got to where we are at now, and I will explain why I will not accept the amendment. We began by looking at the whole question of personal identifiers in the context of making sure that the democracy that we hold to be one of the most precious things in this country is maintained and robust, and that anything that we do to our system is tried and tested. That is a fundamental principle around anything to do with this legislation or any legislation on elections; after all, the most fundamental thing that we give our citizens is the right to vote in or out their Government, local authorities and so on. To do anything different of which we are unsure of the outcome is very difficult, and something that I could not and do not support. There is a great deal of interest in personal identifiers for good and honourable reasons that I understand completely. Of the eight petitions before the courts, four concern fraud, three of which we believe—on a cursory look, I have to say—would be well assisted by the amendments already made to this legislation, a process led by my noble friend Lord Elder and supported by others. We started off by saying, ““We may want to look more closely at personal identifiers””. In a sense, we were originally presented with two options, particularly in another place. The first was the transitional scheme put forward by the Electoral Commission initially. It was supported by many Members of your Lordships’ House, but the House rejected it in the end primarily for the reason that the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, alluded to. That was that, if you have a voluntary scheme, two things happen: you make the form more difficult to understand because you have to state that people may or may not provide additional information; and it carries all the risks of a self-selecting scheme, in that those who feel comfortable providing the information do so, but it tells you nothing about the people who choose not to provide it. The scheme that came to us from another place was to have pilots in various parts of the country; we talked about having 10. Again, there were real concerns about that, such as who would choose the pilots, whether they would be self-selecting, and the fact that work done on a pilot basis does not necessarily give the results that would happen across the country because of the differences in the way in which different parts of the country might operate. Many reasons were put forward with vigour by Members of your Lordships’ House, both in the House and outside, and I certainly listened carefully to what was said. Then we had the amendment moved by my noble friend, but which I entirely accept came in a sense from this House. It is now incorporated into the part of the legislation concerning postal voters. We have sought to address significant issues in the Bill and, in a range of ways, concerns about postal fraud expressed elsewhere which were dealt with by my right honourable friend Harriet Harman when she had responsibility for this portfolio. We accepted that my noble friend’s amendment helped us in two ways. First, it further and significantly dealt with that issue. Secondly and as importantly, it gave us the best possible way to test the impact of personal identifiers, because it was national—everywhere—and for anybody who wanted a postal vote; they would provide information. We could evaluate it, look at what happened and reach serious and sensible conclusions. In other words, it did not have any of the difficulties with the transitional or pilot schemes that noble Lords rejected, for good reasons one way or another. That is where in a sense I stop, because I am not prepared to go further at this stage. If we recognise the need to be sure about the implications of what we are doing, we must recognise the need to find out what occurs. The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, understandably talks about the Northern Ireland experience. We know that the registration system in Northern Ireland faces significant reform; noble Lords who will be here for the Second Reading later will see that. The Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill scraps the annual canvass. The aim is for the canvass to take place only every 10 years, with more frequent audits if the register becomes inaccurate. Once registered, a person will remain on the register until they change address, with the inclusion of more data to keep the records up to date. It is hoped that that will improve the accuracy of the scheme in Northern Ireland. However, I indicated that there were significant difficulties with the number of people on the register when the scheme was introduced in Northern Ireland. Our elected representatives of all parties in another place have indicated their genuine concerns about the potential for some people to feel unable to supply that additional information for a variety of reasons, which could lead to a significant drop in the number of people on the register. I began by saying that our democracy is precious. That is because we want everyone who can vote to be registered to vote and to exercise their right to do so. That would represent the ultimate healthy democracy. Of course, we want to make sure that only those who are entitled to vote do so and we are looking for a way of achieving all our objectives at the same time. There is a danger in moving directly to a personal identifier scheme, given that the only experience of that demonstrated that there were significant problems, which led to the need for new legislation. It would not be responsible of me, as a government Minister or as an individual, to say that we should move directly to that without testing it. I made it clear on Report, when we accepted my noble friend Lord Elder’s amendments, that we were keen to evaluate and to work closely on these issues with the Electoral Commission, Members of your Lordships’ House, who have an important and significant role to play, and especially elected Members in another place. We want to keep our system free from fraud. I would not wish to accept the amendment and potentially have a serious effect on the number of people who register. For that reason, and only that reason—because I entirely understand the principle behind the amendment and I know the position of the Liberal Democrats—it would be a serious error to move directly to a situation that might seriously damage the register. That view is based on experience that demonstrated that there were significant problems. As the Bill stands, and given all the additional security measures that I have mentioned, we have the potential to evaluate properly and move further forward. So I hope that the noble Baroness will not press her amendment.