Representation of the People (England and Wales) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2006

I am grateful to noble Lords who have spoken in this short debate, and I am delighted that I have light with which to find my answers. I begin by addressing the two points raised on both sides of the Committee concerning the percentages that we have chosen to use to begin the work on personal identifiers, and the issue of service voters. The noble Baroness is absolutely right about the 12-month review of the anonymity requirement. On personal identifiers, the first thing to say is that 20 per cent is the minimum. It has been decided in conjunction with electoral administrators and the Electoral Commission. We expect that in some areas they will want to look at many more. It is statistically an important percentage, and it will be done randomly at all stages, therefore acting as a deterrent to those who wish to try to defraud the system. It does not prevent, in any circumstances, those electoral officers who wish to go much further from so doing. That obviously depends to a degree on the individual circumstances in an area and the electoral officer’s view of whether more should be done. We share the ambition held on both sides of the Committee to move towards 100 per cent as swiftly as possible, and we have made funding available to try to achieve that as swiftly as we can. Obviously, that is dependent on timescales for general elections—as noble Lords know, I know nothing about those, ever. That would certainly be our ambition, and we want to do it as quickly as we can. We felt that it was important, having talked to the administrators, to bring this in in a way that could tackle the issue but that would make it possible to achieve as quickly as possible a minimum of 20 per cent. Funding of over £4 million is available, and those who wish to go much further than that minimum could and should. I hope, recognising that noble Lords want to move as swiftly as possible, that they will feel comforted by that explanation. I rather thought that the valiant battle on service voters was won, not least because the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, and the noble Lord, Lord Garden, who is not with us this afternoon, fought it extraordinarily well. I completely accept that noble Lords want us to go further, and I agree with the principle that we have to see at the next election whether the plans that we have put in place have been successful in achieving what we all agreed we wanted to achieve. I say again, as noble Lords would expect me to, that it is not only this part of the process that matters; the other work that the Ministry of Defence is doing matters, too, not least in the registration days, some of which have already taken place. I hope that the combination of things that it wanted to do and is keen to do will make a difference. The period of three years was chosen in consultation again by the Electoral Commission with the Ministry of Defence. It is the minimum length of time that service personnel sign up for, and that felt about right, but it will be kept under review. Although I understand that noble Lords would like us to go further, the proof inevitably is in the eating of whether this works, and we will continue to work with our colleagues in the Ministry of Defence to make sure that it is as effective as possible. We share completely the ambitions of noble Lords. I will try to deal with a number of detailed comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. He began by asking me about the polling district and what the word ““publish”” meant. Regulation 3, on the review of polling districts and polling places, states that the relevant authority, "““must … publish … by posting a copy of them at its office and in at least one conspicuous place in their area; and … if the authority maintains a website, by placing a copy on the authority’s website””."