Political Parties and Elections Bill

I shall be brief. I have listened to the noble Lord, Lord Norton, speak on this subject before and I concur with his general principle on data management—that the principle ought always to be opt-in rather than opt-out. I am sympathetic to the argument that who in their right mind would tick a box on the forms to opt in to receive unlimited junk mail? We receive representations from those engaged in the direct mail business and perhaps it seems a little hypocritical of political parties to say that they want to be able to mail people but they do not want commercial companies to do so. However, the purpose of the electoral register is democracy and the purpose of political parties is to promote their messages legitimately. It is not right that someone who registers to vote should then have to consider whether they should receive junk mail. I do not always agree with the views expressed by the Association of Electoral Administrators and other bodies with which I have discussed election campaigns. I feel that they would prefer there to be no leaflets, posters, tellers at polling stations or canvassing because in their mind that gets in the way of elections, which they consider would be much simpler without those things. However, as regards the matter we are discussing I have considerable sympathy with it because we are imposing increasing burdens on it. We shall shortly discuss the introduction of personal identifiers. We appear to be saying to local authorities that they have much more work to do to improve the accuracy and completeness of the electoral register. Perhaps this measure represents a burden that we should drop.