I entirely take the noble Lord’s point, and add that an information campaign is clearly an important part of the transition to get to those who think that they might be on the register but may not. I would be entirely happy for noble Lords to press us further on the question of attainers, education in schools and civic education, which must be part of the transition process.
We resist the exact terminology in the amendments, and ask for more flexibility on the terms that we are looking at all these areas. We do not want to limit such schemes to the organisations named; we are experimenting with the range of datasets that can be helpful in this regard.
As we stated in our response to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee:
“The Government feels that the categories of persons should not be prescribed in primary legislation in this regard—
because—
“the Government does not intend to introduce an amendment to restrict the categories of persons that may be authorised or required to provide information, but will listen carefully to the views of the House on this issue during Parliamentary debate”.
The Government will reflect carefully on all those points and make clearer our intention on Report. So we are considering the precise detail of the alternative verification procedure beyond the immediate, primary identifiers and will consider a range of options to provide an accessible but secure approach.
Amendment 11 would require local authorities to share their data with electoral registration officers. That already takes place. Electoral administrators are part of local authorities and have for some time accessed relevant other local authority databases for the purposes of checking names and addresses together. The Bill would allow for such data sharing if it were decided that it was necessary and valuable in addition to that which already takes place. The next phase of government data-matching pilots will look at which datasets are most useful for electoral registration officers to carry out their duties. Some of the pilots will target students; some will target recent home-movers, which the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, flagged up as particularly important; others will explore how sharing data between two-tier local authorities, in those parts of the country where they exist, may assist them further.
However, on local authority data, I repeat that registration officers are already authorised to inspect records held by the authority that appointed them and are required to inspect records where they are permitted to do so both under the 1983 Act and the Representation of the People Act 2001.
On Amendment 15 and the whole question of students, we are already working with the National Union of Students, which represents students, and organisations with which students interact, such as the Student Loan Company and universities, to establish ways in which the registration process and the transition for those groups can be as simple and accessible as possible, building on the changes that we are enabling to the registration system, which will make registering to vote more convenient for all. Again, that work is under way; we are discussing and consulting with the other relevant public and private stakeholders.
Similarly, as for sheltered accommodation, which is the subject of Amendment 16, registration officers already have the power to require information from an individual to maintain their election register. That would include requiring managers of sheltered accommodation to provide the names of residents. Once registration officers are aware of that information, Clause 5 would require them to write to each individual who was not already registered at that address to invite them to register to vote. Amending the legislation is therefore unnecessary to empower registration officers to obtain information about individuals in sheltered accommodation or to require a registration officer to invite them to register.
As noble Lords will gather, the Cabinet Office is already actively engaged in a programme of work with groups which represent students, helping to provide alternative channels of registration, looking at the elderly in sheltered accommodation and how we could signpost people towards registration as they come into contact with other government agencies.
Amendment 17 addresses the question of private landlords. The real question here is whether a requirement on private landlords adds sufficiently to the toolkit of electoral registration officers to be worth the additional burden being placed on private landlords. That, again, is something that we are investigating further but our current view is that the marginal benefits of that measure over, to take just one example, the canvassable properties in the area do not justify imposing that additional burden.
Amendment 18 talks about the local authority providing additional information on council tax and other documents. Again, the Cabinet Office is testing out where it is most valuable and useful to provide additional information and, as the behavioural unit puts it, to prompt people to consider more actively ensuring that they are registered to vote. There are some questions about the complexity of the council tax document. I am not entirely sure that I read the whole of my council tax documents either in Bradford or in Wandsworth last year, but I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, read his in great detail from cover to cover. We are therefore not entirely sure that this is the best document to use for these purposes.
Amendment 19 requires local authorities to invite individuals to register to vote when they first register and begin paying council tax. This idea has a certain amount of utility and there is certainly no reason why local councils should not do that on the initial council tax form, but of course this would capture only the bill payer. There is a need for additional mechanisms to be in place to capture other people living inside the same property.
On Amendment 20, on the whole question of awareness-raising in other, wider government services and other transactions, we are looking with organisations from the public, voluntary and private sectors—I emphasise that it is not just in government agencies—to see where we can identify a potential benefit to introducing, for example, some form of prompting or signposting during the course of a transaction. We will test the different options to establish the extent to which they will assist the citizen.
On Amendment 24, to provide the explanation of the other uses of the register, opinions might differ on whether that was a plus or a minus. There have been one or two suggestions that there are those who wish not to be on the register so that they avoid jury service; it is not one of the most popular aspects of civic duty. That is another issue that we should perhaps explore further.
To sum up after this very large discussion of different ways of using and accessing databases and encouraging people to register, this is very much what we as a Government are already engaged in. We are happy to brief people further on what we are doing, how the data-matching pilots are going and how the information
campaigns will be planned. We hope that on that basis the noble Baroness and the noble Lord will be willing to withdraw their amendment at this stage, and we will be happy to have further discussions on how we go forward to ensure that our shared aim, which is to maximise the number of people who register under individual electoral registration, will be achieved to the satisfaction of all.