Electoral Registration Data Schemes (No. 2) Order 2012

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Tuesday 27th November 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Tyler]

On the point about the DVLA, I wonder whether my noble friend would accept that the Committee would like to strengthen his arm in any discussions with the Department for Transport and the DVLA. It is extremely important that the Cabinet Office recognises that the priority must be people who are not sufficiently well attended to in the registration process. As he said, the current register is deteriorating fast, particularly for those who are young and mobile in the inner cities. The priority must be to go to those databases that tend to pick out those individuals. Clearly the DVLA is one of them, but so, too, are the tenancy deposit scheme and the credit agency schemes. I hope that the Minister and his colleagues in the Cabinet Office will accept that those must be the priorities. There is a democratic deficit among young people in inner cities, who are the most mobile part of the population. It is natural that they should be the priority, and that is where we should put most emphasis. I hope that the Minister will take back from the Committee’s proceedings that we would like to strengthen his arm, and those of his colleagues, in dealing with the Department for Transport and the DVLA.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am very happy to take that back. I will report back to my colleagues on the strongly held sentiments. Perhaps I may take the questions about tenancy and deposit schemes and credit agencies at the same time. The initial assessment by the Cabinet Office of the suggestion from my noble friend Lady Berridge that tenancy deposit schemes might be used was that it was not sufficiently obvious that the processes of these databases could be adapted to support IER. However, that does not exclude renewed consideration.

Of course, the question of credit agencies takes us over the boundary between public and private. Credit agencies are part of the private sector. The issue is part of a broader discussion that we all need to have with the likes of the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, and others, about the extent to which, as we move into a new world of data transmission and availability, private and public databases can be used for identity assurance. That was the basis for the briefing I received this morning from the government digital service. It would be helpful to organise a meeting for Peers as a whole on the work that it is doing—for longer-term and wider purposes than this Bill alone—on these issues. Private databases are increasingly useful, but their use raises questions about civil liberties and public and private interests with which we need to be concerned.