My Lords, as always, the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, made a compelling case. However, it would be wrong to suggest that the current situation is in place not because of a very long, very careful,
very extensive and very thoughtful process. The edited register is the result not just of some quick legal judgment but of a long political process, started by the previous Labour Administration.
The electoral register has been available for sale in one form or another since 1832. In 1999, Labour rightly recognised—before the register was challenged in the courts—that there was a case for changing the Victorian arrangements. In 1999 a Home Office working group recommended, first, that electors should be allowed to decide whether their personal details should be included in a register that was made commercially available and, secondly, that the full register should continue to be available to electoral users, while a licensing arrangement should be agreed to ensure that its use was restricted to electoral purposes only.
As far as I am aware, that recommendation was by broad agreement across the parties. The situation resulted in Section 9 of the Representation of the People Act 2000, which created the so-called “edited register”. It was only when the Government consulted on how to implement the new principle that they were challenged in court about the old system. In 2001, Brian Robertson from Pontefract won his case when the judge concluded that the compulsory disclosure to commercial organisations of data given for electoral purposes was in breach of the Data Protection Act and of the newly passed Human Rights Act. He won the legal point in court, but it appears that the political and moral point had already been acknowledged by the Labour Government in 1999, and here in Parliament in 2000. The edited register was finally implemented in regulations in 2002. The problem that the amendment before your Lordships seeks to solve is one that has already been dealt with in the 2000 Act and the 2002 regulations.
Your Lordships’ House is always rightly concerned about the unintended consequences of legislation that we scrutinise. We should be particularly alert to the unintended consequences of this amendment. The edited register does not just have a commercial purpose; it is also used by a great many charitable organisations. The suggestion from my noble friend that it was only commercial reasons that the government Front Bench advanced last week may or may not be true, but those reasons certainly are not my concern. My concern is that a large number of highly reputable, very public-spirited actions by very public-spirited organisations could be impeded by the removal of the edited register, or by it becoming ineffective. For example, the Salvation Army is a particular advocate for its retention. Each year it finds and reunites some 3,000 families by using the edited register. That is as much an issue of principle as of practice. The edited register underpins efforts to locate and connect organ donors—which, again, is very important—and even bone marrow donors.
5.45 pm
Local government uses it for purposes for which, even as the compiler of the register, it cannot use the full register. In particular, councils use it for debt recovery. That function in local government draws attention to another wider cause—its use by credit reference agencies to find people who have abandoned their debts. It would be odd for us to be pressing hard
for the banks and other lenders to increase the flow of credit and, at the same time, say to them, “If people don’t pay back, we’ll hinder your efforts to find them”.
I recognise that the Select Committee in the other place has made recommendations but it also said that the opt-in version of the edited register, which the noble Lord, Lord Norton, seems to be advocating,
“might well make the edited register too incomplete to be of much use”.
That is the weakness of the amendment: it neither abolishes the edited register nor leaves it as a useful resource for the proper purposes that I have described.
The balance is about right already as the result of a long, consequential and careful consideration by the previous Administration and the present Government of not only its immediate purpose but its unintended consequences if there were a major change. If someone wants to avoid contact by commercial or charitable organisations, they can opt out on the electoral registration form. When individual registration is fully introduced, every individual will get that opportunity; they will no longer have to rely on sub-contracting it to another member of their household.
I would welcome assurances from the Minister that we can look, for example, at how the edited register is described. I do not believe that “edited register” is an especially transparent description, and clearly we could change it.
However, for most who do not mind the simple fact of their name and address being registered locally, there remains a compelling case for retaining an edited register. It assists charities, it assists in the flow of credit, it can reunite families, it can even bring about organ donations and, in a modern market economy, it can provide a useful way for people to market their products to consumers. I find it difficult to understand why that is such an objectionable objective.
The previous Government got the regulations broadly right. As such, my noble friend Lord Rennard and I will oppose the amendment this evening if it is taken to a Division.