Political Parties and Elections Bill

Amendment 122 introduces a new clause substituting a revised paragraph into Regulation 93(2) of the Representation of the People (England and Wales) Regulations 2001. That regulation currently states that the edited version of the electoral register should omit those persons who have made a request to be excluded, commonly referred to as opting out. The edited version of the register came into existence as a result of the Representation of the People Act Regulations 2000, which enacted the recommendations of the Howarth working party report on electoral law and practice, as published in October 1999. Previously, there was only one electoral register and that was made available to anyone for any purpose. It was the present Government who offered some protection of electors' details by allowing an opt-out for those who did not want their details sold and that lead to the creation of two versions of the register, the full and the edited. This amendment would reverse the current arrangements by requiring electors to proactively state on a canvass form or an individual rolling registration form that they wanted to be included in the edited register, effectively introducing the need to opt in. Opt-out rather than opt-in was based on a recommendation of the Data Protection Registrar at the time of a Government consultation that helped inform our decision to create the edited register. Amendment 124 allows for the Secretary of State to lay a statutory instrument before Parliament that will cease to allow the compilation and publication of the edited version of the electoral register. This instrument would require resolution by both Houses. Noble Lords may recall that in his speech to Liberty on 25 October 2007, the Prime Minister announced that he had asked Dr Mark Walport and Richard Thomas to undertake an independent review of the framework for the use of personal information in the public and private sectors. On 11 July 2008, Dr Walport and Mr Thomas published their final report, the Data Sharing Review, which makes a number of recommendations to the Government. Recommendation No. 19 of the report calls for the edited version of the register to be abolished. The Government clearly understand the concerns around the sale of personal details through the supply of the edited register but, before deciding whether or not to take forward Recommendation 19, we need to establish how removing the provisions would impact on the UK economy, businesses, charities and the general public. We emphasise that this is particularly true at a time of economic difficulty, when the impact of such changes would need to be carefully considered in the light of all relevant factors. It would be most unfortunate if such amendments had a demonstrably negative impact on the activities of local small businesses, while not being thought to be necessary by the public. It is for this reason that in our response to the Recommendation 19 we announced that we would hold a public consultation. The consultation will enable us to build a firmer evidence base about the advantages and disadvantages of the edited register and consider the way forward on the basis of the responses received.