Electoral Register

Lord Grocott Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I have just emphasised that nearly 3 million have applied to register since December. There is movement on and off the voting register all the time, as the noble Lord well knows. We are doing everything we can to make sure that movement in the next few weeks, as over the past three months, continues to be positive.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, since this is all about establishing the identity of people who are eligible to vote, at this stage in the Parliament, five years in, will the Minister acknowledge that one of the numerous mistakes this coalition Government have made—it would take too long to list them—was the early decision to get rid of national identity cards, which would have solved this and many other problems relating to migration and other matters about which this Government have made such a mess?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I thank the noble Lord for his normally generous comments. The sheer heavy weight of the Labour Government’s ID proposals seemed to me and many of my colleagues to make it an unavoidable failure. There is a debate about the shift to a digital relationship between the citizen and the state, which we will have to have, and about convenience against privacy, which we need to have as we move forward. My right honourable friend Francis Maude and others working on the Government Digital Service have made a good deal of progress in that regard.