Pensions Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for his full and thoughtful reply. However, I was slightly taken aback by the response of the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, who said—I think that I quote him accurately—that the measure was ““a waste of time”” and ““completely undemocratic””. Perhaps I did not make this sufficiently clear, in which case it is entirely my own fault, but the amendment seeks to keep options open for a future democratically elected Government to make a democratic decision. However, they would not be able to do so unless the prior information tools were already in place. Given that this is a nil-cost amendment and given that local authorities already have 15 years’ worth of these data now, as required by law, for the life of me I cannot see why it would be expensive, why it would be a waste of time or why it would be undemocratic. The noble Lord’s comments may have been addressed to an amendment that I did not actually move. My noble friend made several comments. First, I do not think that the amendment is so much about the Government collecting information; they would bring together the information held by local authorities and keep it under review. He made the valid point that the existing electoral register does not provide a unique identifier. However, this has not proved an insuperable problem for verifying information relating to overseas electors, largely because the onus is on the applicant to provide sufficient information for the verification to take place. That would remain the same in any such system. Secondly, on residency, Section 4 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 says that the individual is entitled to be registered if on the relevant date he is resident in the constituency. Sections 5 to 7 deal in considerable detail with the issues relating to residence. It would not be difficult to amend those. Finally, although the Minister says that the registers are held locally by individual local authorities, it is also true—and my noble friend did not mention this—that the Government have taken new powers in the Electoral Administration Act 2006. I wonder whether the DWP is fully aware of what is going on in what is now the Ministry of Justice on some of these issues to create—I was not aware of this until I went into the matter—the equivalent of a central record through the CORE project. Provided that the necessary legal provisions are in place, which is done easily by regulations, there is no reason why CORE could not be used for this purpose. Most of the quasi-administrative, quasi-technical arguments that my noble friend advanced can be easily overcome, as I am assured by the society of electoral registration officers.