My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for bringing forward this amendment. As I understand it, the amendment seeks to provide that those electors who remain on the register following the canvass would retain their existing electoral number if an election were to take place within 30 days of the publication of the register.
The amendment raises a number of practical considerations and could make the process for compiling the register, and the register itself, more complex. It may also result in additional costs for electoral registration officers if their IT systems have to be adjusted to meet these new requirements.
It is not certain that the amendment would necessarily address the concerns that were quite rightly raised by the noble Baroness, especially as implementing the proposed change could take up the time of EROs that could more usefully be spent on other matters arising from their registration duties. Of course, individual electoral registration is being introduced to tackle electoral fraud and to improve the integrity of our electoral system, in particular the electoral register.
The proposed change could lead to confusion in the data being included on the register; for example, it is not clear what would happen when electors are removed from the register following an annual canvass. If it is intended that the numbers for such electors are not to be used on the new register, this would result in gaps in the numbering of electors on the register. It is not clear how electors who are added to the register would be numbered; it may mean that a different numbering system would be used for new electors. This could mean that persons living at the same address are subject to different numbering systems and their names could appear on different parts of the register, which I understand could be an issue for the logistics of producing and distributing poll cards. When a revised register is published, parties will in any event need to update the data they hold to reflect changes to the register; that is, persons removed and added to the register.
On the face of it, this amendment could bring added complexity and cost to the electoral registration process without bringing the obvious benefit that I know the noble Baroness is focused on, which is the reduction of electoral fraud. For those reasons, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.