UK Parliament / Open data

Political Parties, Elections and Referendums (Civil Sanctions) (Amendment) Order 2013

I thank noble Lords for those comments. I am always extremely happy to listen to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, on why we should become electronic in every single way. I am sorry that he did not read his speech from his iPad. I would have liked to see that. I should declare that I have recently acquired an iPad and am taking advantage of the offer made by a number of noble Lords to assist us in learning how to deal with its quirks. I look forward to being helped by the noble Lord’s noble friend Lord Knight of Weymouth who has offered to assist me in this regard.

As the noble Lord knows, I am very sympathetic to his approach. The question of identity assurance is, of course, the key to all this. The Cabinet Office is discussing with the individual privacy lobby—if I may put it that way—the whole question of how we move forward on identity assurance. We will be bringing forward a draft data sharing Bill in January for discussion and, I stress, pre-legislative scrutiny. At that point there will be plenty for the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, to get his teeth and his iPad into, and we will take it further forward. With the move towards individual electoral registration, we have made it possible to register electronically. That is a step in the right direction. However, as we all understand, the identity assurance issue is very important.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
748 c553GC 
Session
2013-14
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords Grand Committee
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