Electoral Registration

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Maxton

Tuesday 3rd March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the evidence that a large number of EROs are not doing their job is not there. Five of the six EROs who were rated last year as not having achieved their performance standards were in Devon and Somerset, rather to my surprise, and not in Labour-held areas—in Devon and Somerset, it tends to be either Liberal Democrat or Conservative seats. The question of training is one that we are well aware of. The Electoral Commission works with the Association of Electoral Administrators and others to ensure that EROs are well trained and do their job as well as they can.

[Lord Maxton (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the best way of ensuring that we have full registration is a compulsory ID card with a biological identifier, which would then allow all people to be registered from the word go and to then vote electronically as well with that card? That would ensure the fullest participation in registration and in the election.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I agree with the noble Lord that there are some very large questions about how much data the Government already have about people who are or are not registered and how much they are allowed by current law to pull those data together. I very much hope that, in the new Parliament, we shall debate actively what changes in the law we need for that. Moves towards compulsory registration and the sort of unique individual identifier that he suggests—a lighter form of ID card—may be coming, but that is something that we all need to discuss very carefully.

Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Maxton

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

We understand that we are dealing with some fairly fundamental principles. The noble Lord, Lord Maxton, made an extremely important point about the denigration of democracy, and the depths of public disillusionment which we now face and how we come to terms with that. The defence of democracy is not necessarily the defence of Westminster as it is now, let alone as it was 40 years ago.

[Lord Maxton]

It is the link between politics and the public—the media—which is the cause of the problem, not the public itself. People can only go with what they receive from the media.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I wish I could entirely agree with the noble Lord. There are many good aspects of the end of deference. People question the elite and the establishment much more than they did. We have to be very careful not to think that the preservation of Westminster in aspic is the way to regain or rebuild public trust in politics. I see that I have provoked a few noble Lords. I call upon the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, to withdraw his amendment.

Representation of the People (Supply of Information) Regulations 2014

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Maxton

Monday 16th June 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his comments, but I am not sure that I can say with confidence what the attitude of the Electoral Commission is to political parties. They play a very obvious and important part in all of this. I am informed that a minor political party is something like the rate payers’ association in a local authority, the south Somerset independents, or whatever. Anything else that is nationwide is a national political party. Political parties have a very important role to play in democracy. One thing that I deeply regret about the current state of British democracy is that the membership of all major political parties has fallen. That worries all of us, and we all wish to turn it back.

We recognise that there are a number of people who are not on the register, and the Electoral Commission’s research demonstrates that the strongest reason for that is that people want nothing to do with politics and not much to do with the state if they can avoid it—apart from receiving benefits in a number of instances. We have a severe problem of political alienation. When I saw the latest audit of political engagement produced by the Hansard Society, which has only 24% of citizens between the ages of 18 and 25 thinking that politics has any useful connection with their own lives, that is a real problem for all of us. It suggests that we have to work particularly hard at getting young people to re-engage with politics.

[Lord Maxton]

Is not one of the reasons—I emphasise only one of the reasons—is that young people in particular see politics as somehow divorced from the trends and the movement of technology in our country? That is why they have switched off from it.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

That is one of the reasons why we hope that online voting will make it more attractive to them. I also think there is a case for encouraging more activity by all parties and by all Members of both Houses of Parliament, on a cross-party basis, to make sure that as we approach the next election young people are re-energised to take part in politics because they are, on the whole, switched off. We have a very large problem here, but there are a number of things that we can do about it. I have no doubt that the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, will be going out to many schools across his patch to energise them. I am told that the pick-up among 16 year-olds in schools in Scotland has been good and that registration is much higher than expected. That is partly because something is coming up which immediately involves them.

On ID cards, I look forward to many continuing conversations with the noble Lord, Lord Maxton. We had a Question this afternoon on digital information, digital sharing and digital privacy. The Government intend to publish a White Paper before the end of this year with clauses for a draft Bill on data sharing and data privacy. There are some very large issues here which all of us who remember the ID cards debate are scarred by. The intention of the White Paper will be precisely to try to float a more informed debate about the trade-offs between privacy and data sharing and how we address that. We have to change the legislation in this area because different departments have different legal frameworks for the collection, use and sharing of information. That is therefore a question to which we will return.

In response to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, the transition timetable does allow for the decision on whether to carry on or to delay has to be taken by the incoming Government and Parliament. These are all failsafes to make sure that we have the maximum amount of confidence by all concerned in the transition to individual electoral registration. I hope I have managed to answer all the questions.

I have become more and more committed to a successful transition. It was something that the previous Government set out on. We recognise that there are bound to be a number of problems, but so far the transition has gone much better than some of us were initially confident about, but nevertheless we have some way to go. I again flag the problems of making sure that attainers—the rising 18 year-olds—are fully on the register. We will be returning with further instruments as we go forward just to make sure that we utilise every single possibility to maximise registration.

Electoral Registration

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Maxton

Wednesday 22nd January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, my right honourable friend Greg Clark made a speech to the Association of Local Authority Chief Executives only last week in which he spoke about the provision of targeted additional funding to those local authorities that are shown in the confirmation dry run to have the greatest difficulties. There are now a number of local authorities where, on the data matching, we are already above 85% confirmation, and that is much better than we had initially thought.

[Lord Maxton (Lab)]

My Lords, while it is too late for this for the next general election, surely the Government have to wake up to the fact that we need electronic registration, done with ID cards, and that, by 2020, the general election will be held not only with a register based on ID cards but will be electronic itself.

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

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Maxton

Tuesday 29th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, in moving this Motion, I shall speak also to the next Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper—that is, on the Representation of the People (Ballot Paper) Regulations 2013. I shall speak to those regulations first. They amend provisions in the parliamentary elections rules set out in the Representation of the People Act 1983 to make changes to the form of the ballot paper used at UK parliamentary elections. The changes are being made following widespread consultation involving a programme of public user testing and are designed to make the ballot paper clearer and easier to use, and so to facilitate electors’ engagement with the voting process. The intention is for the new ballot paper to take effect for any UK parliamentary by-election arising on or after 22 May 2014, and for the general election scheduled for May 2015.

The draft regulations are being made as part of a wider exercise that will see the introduction through secondary legislation of a set of up-to-date forms and notices to be used by voters—including poll cards, postal voting statements and the ballot paper—at UK parliamentary, European parliamentary and local elections and also other statutory elections and referendums, which are intended to make the voting process more accessible. This reflects moves in recent years to modernise the appearance of forms used by voters at newly created polls, such as the police and crime commissioner elections and the 2011 referendum on the parliamentary voting system.

The revised material—including the ballot paper we are considering today—has been produced following a programme of public user testing and consultation with the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators, territorial offices, electoral services suppliers and with Scope. The regulations make changes to the layout of the ballot paper. They do this, first, by, for example, providing for the left alignment of candidates’ details, which reflects the way in which people read English—that is, left to right. Secondly, they introduce a requirement for the ballot paper to display the title of the election. The title of the election must also be printed inside a box to give it prominence. This helps to remind people which election they are voting in, which is particularly important if the election is combined with another poll.

Thirdly, the regulations replace the traditional grid pattern on the ballot paper with horizontal rules that allow the voting box to float freely between them. This will help electors with certain eyesight problems who found the old design difficult to use. Additionally, the regulations require a final bold horizontal rule to be added to delineate strongly the end of the ballot paper. The regulations amend the directions for the printing of the ballot paper to support the changes being made to the layout, wording and design of the ballot paper.

As I have indicated, the Government have consulted the Electoral Commission and other stakeholders over the new ballot paper. Further, in line with what has become established practice for new voting forms, the ballot paper has been subject to public user testing. Representative samples of members of the public in different parts of the UK have therefore had the opportunity to input their views on the clarity and accessibility of the current ballot paper and the proposed new ballot paper, and to influence the proposed changes. This resulted, for example, in the pictorial depiction of the cross to be put by the voter in the box next to their choice of candidate to be more prominent in the guidance to voters on the ballot paper. The Electoral Commission, stakeholders and members of the public involved in the user testing have all been supportive of the proposed changes, agreeing that they are an improvement on the current design.

The Government are committed to supporting electors’ participation in elections and effective electoral administration. The proposed changes to the form of the ballot paper provided by the regulations will make it clearer and easier to use and therefore will improve electors’ experience of voting in UK parliamentary elections. I commend the regulations to the Committee.

I turn now to the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums (Civil Sanctions) (Amendment) Order 2013. The Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 places a number of requirements on parties and officers. These include the provision of quarterly donation reports and annual accounts. The Political Parties and Elections Act 2009 provided the Electoral Commission with new investigatory and civil sanction powers. These powers were introduced to remedy the practical difficulties the Electoral Commission found with the limited investigative and sanctioning powers provided for by the 2000 Act. The Electoral Commission has been able to use these additional powers since 2010. They include fixed or variable monetary penalties, compliance notices and stop notices. The Political Parties, Elections and Referendums (Civil Sanctions) (Amendment) Order 2013 makes two technical amendments to this regime. These changes have been requested by the Electoral Commission in the light of its experience of using these civil sanctions.

First, the order allows the Electoral Commission to impose a fixed monetary penalty or discretionary requirements on a registered political party and similar bodies in circumstances where a party office holder or responsible person has committed a prescribed offence. The Electoral Commission has highlighted a concern that it is unable to sanction a party for breach where an individual has committed an offence; only the individual. In certain circumstances it is more appropriate to sanction the party, for example, where the individuals responsible for compliance are frequently changed or where the breach arises from the individual following a party policy.

Secondly, the Electoral Commission will be able to recover a non-compliance penalty in England and Wales as though it was payable under a court order. This means that if such a penalty is unpaid, the Electoral Commission does not need to make a claim in the courts in order to enforce payment. Instead, it can proceed straight to taking enforcement action as though it had already obtained a judgment following such a claim. Presently, this power is available to the Electoral Commission for various financial penalties under the civil sanctions regime, but not in relation to non-compliance penalties, which the order seeks to rectify.

The Electoral Commission has discussed these changes with all the political parties, which have raised no concerns. The Government have consulted the Electoral Commission on the draft order, which responded on 3 June 2013 to say that it is content that the drafting achieves the policy objectives set out in the Explanatory Note. I beg to move.

[Lord Maxton (Lab)]

My Lords, I will be brief. I welcome the order and the regulations because any changes that make it easier for people to vote are to be welcomed. However, we live in an electronic age, we no longer live in a paper age, and we certainly do not live in an age where we use a pencil. As I said in an earlier debate, the last place where an adult actually uses a pencil will be when they put a cross on a ballot paper. Even golfers will have turned to electronic means to keep their scores rather than recording them on a piece of paper. Surely it is time to wake up to the fact that our younger generation, who we are concerned to get involved in the political process, are moving further and further away from us in terms of how we carry on our democracy. This building is an example of how far behind the times we are in that we still practise our democracy in a building that is so out of date, being 18th or 19th century in its design.

If we are going to involve younger people, not only do we have to educate them, we have to change our democracy so that it takes them into account. They now use electronic means to do a variety of different things, as do some elderly people such as me, and use all forms of electronic devices. Why on earth are we not moving, rapidly, towards electronic voting and using ID cards—which this Government of course stopped—or smart card technology in order to ensure that the right people vote and the register is automatic? If we had some form of smart card, anybody could simply turn up and vote anywhere—eventually, even at home, by putting their card into their computer or their finger on their iPad, or whatever it might be, to prove who they are and then voting.

That would be quite possible these days and it should be part of the process. I hope that the Minister, having put these regulations through, will go away and at least start to think about where we go next.

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

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.

[Lord Maxton]

At the moment, we can do this electronically, but we can confirm only. Is this a new way of registering? Am I correct in thinking that you can now register online?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That is my understanding. I will write and contradict myself if I discover that I am mistaken. Listening to the noble Lord, I recalled that at each Liberal Democrat party conference we sing the Land Song during which we all wave papers and sing, “Why should we be beggars with the ballot in our hand?”. It would not be quite the same if we were waving our iPhones. There is something tactile about the old-style ballot.

As regards the Welsh version, bilingual forms will be brought forward in due course before the polls in 2014. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, understands the subtle differences between “soon”, “in due course”, and “in good time”. The political parties have been made aware of the proposed changes to the ballot paper and other forms. We understand that Scope represented a number of disabled bodies, so we have consulted widely with those who have particular difficulties in this regard.

I hope that I have answered all the questions on these SIs. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, raised a number of wily issues about another Bill, which she and I need to discuss in the Corridor before we move to Committee stage. I have no doubt that we will have plenty of opportunities to discuss the question she raised over the next few weeks and months.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Maxton

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this amendment is part of a group tabled in my name along with Amendments 5, 8, 10, 14 and 15. Together, they provide for an extended carry-forward of non-individually registered electors unless this is deemed unnecessary.

This group of amendments is one that I hope noble Lords on all sides of this House will welcome—indeed, names from the Labour Front Bench are attached to one of them. The amendments aim to give reassurance that the electoral register following the implementation of individual electoral registration will be as complete and accurate as possible.

My noble friends and I have set out the steps incorporated into the plan for implementation of individual electoral registration under the Bill that will help to achieve this outcome. These include: the confirmation of around 70% of existing electors through data matching; a transition period that includes the general election, when non-canvass-period registrations are likely to peak; and the numerous steps to encourage registration that are built into electoral registration officers’ duties.

However, having listened to arguments in this House and elsewhere, we can see that there is a desire for a further safeguard such as that proposed in the amendments. Their effect is to postpone to December 2016 the final date for the transition to a register made up entirely of individually registered electors following a third canvass under the new system.

The Secretary of State will, however, have a power to take that final step in 2015—in keeping with existing plans for implementation of IER—if he is satisfied that the transition to IER can be concluded at that point. Perhaps I might stress, mischievously, that this will be after the election, and the question as to who the Secretary of State will be and which party or parties he represents is of course a matter which none of us at this point knows. Let me be clear that it is this Government’s intention to continue to work towards concluding implementation in 2015, but we will review that position ahead of making a decision.

If the decision is made to conclude the transition to IER in 2015, an order subject to the negative procedure will be made by the then Secretary of State in the three months after 1 June 2015. When the annual canvass period concludes that autumn, those entries carried forward from the pre-transition register published in spring 2014, where the elector has not been confirmed through data matching or successfully applied under IER, will be removed from the register. The revised register published on 1 December 2015 will then be made up only of individually registered electors, as under the current plans for the implementation of IER.

If the order is not made, this process will be delayed by a year and will take place following the 2016 canvass, with the December 2016 register containing only individually registered electors.

I have mentioned some of the factors built into the transition to IER which the Government feel will support the maintenance of the current level of completeness. I remind noble Lords that we intend, with the encouragement of the Electoral Commission, to move through the transition and complete it as rapidly as possible, subject to confidence being built that we have successfully managed to capture the maximum possible number of individual electors.

The amendments enable the change to an IER-only register to be left until 2016, but we are confident that the Secretary of State of the day will feel able to make the order to take the final step of transition in 2015. However, we recognise the hesitations in the House and have thus provided that additional safeguard. I beg to move.

[Lord Maxton]

My Lords, I shall be very brief, except to say that sometimes I sit here, as I have today, wondering what world it is that we think that we live in. The world around us is changing a lot faster than we are prepared to change the electoral system, apparently. As I have said before and will say only briefly again, what we really need is a national register based on every individual getting benefits, et cetera, only if they are on the register, backed up with an ID card—sorry, a smartcard. I had better not use the term ID card as I know that it sometimes causes frissons down people’s backs. Smartcard technology is now very advanced. Although I am grateful to the Minister for calling my name in aid in the previous debate, the fact is that 10 years is now a very long time in technological terms. If you look only at the two years since this Government came into power, when we abolished—wrongly, in my view—ID cards, the way in which smartcard technology has moved in those two years now makes it very feasible to have one register and to divide it up into the constituencies. Everybody who is on the national register and is a holder of an ID card will then be entitled to vote.

Personally, I think that we ought to be moving to a system whereby the actual voting is done electronically as well, using that smartcard. That will come, but, at the moment, it would appear that the last place in which we will be using a pencil will be to mark a cross on a ballot paper in some school, where people have to go out in the cold and wet to do it. I think that even golfers will give up the pencil before this Government are prepared to give up the pencil for ballots under the electoral system. Please, please, will the Government take this slight delay as an opportunity to look again at how we can introduce a national register to ensure that every citizen of this country is entitled to vote in the next general election?

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[Lord Maxton]

My Lords, I intervene only to make a rather mundane point. The register is a great historical document as well as being useful for electoral purposes. Perhaps my question is for the noble Lord, Lord Norton, rather than for the Minister, but is there a timescale for this? Is there a point at which the full register would become available to those who wish to study this particular period in history?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That is an excellent question to which I cannot give an immediate answer, but I promise to write to the noble Lord. However, that in turn raises the question about the future of the census, another historical document that we will have to come back to. We are beginning to move away from a paper register that is maintained locally and therefore not easily accessible, to online registration, which in the future will make it much easier for those interested in family history to access.

The Government take the handling of personal information seriously and are keen to ensure, in the context of the move to individual electoral registration, that electors are able to make a fully informed choice on the edited register. There should be sufficient balanced and impartial information on electoral registration forms to ensure that electors understand what the different versions of the registers are and the purposes for which their data may be used.

Electoral Register: Young People

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Maxton

Thursday 17th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I can remember the history sixth form when I was at school. As we got closer to the coming general election, the history teacher’s interpretation of the characters of Mr Disraeli and Mr Gladstone moved towards Mr Disraeli being better and better and Mr Gladstone being more wicked than he had been before. The idea of neutral school teaching is not one that is very easy. Citizenship education is important. The national curriculum is currently being reviewed and the issue of what role citizenship education plays both in the national curriculum and in sixth-form activity in schools throughout the country is one that clearly we need to consider further.

[Lord Maxton]

My Lords, given the advances in smartcard technology in recent years, is it not time that we looked again at the idea of compulsory registration of all children from the age of nought, to ensure that everyone is automatically on the register from the age of 18 without filling in forms or anything else?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government intend to introduce the option of online registration as from 2014. How far we go towards what would in effect be a sort of ID card for each child born is a matter on which we will have to have further debate. The noble Lord will of course have seen the discussion in some of the press about whether parents wish to put microchips in their children, so that they know where they are all the time.

Electoral Registration Data Schemes (No. 2) Order 2012

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Maxton

Tuesday 27th November 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

As I have discovered, the world of electoral registration officers and their staff is a wonderful subculture of its own. They interrelate across the board, and they know which are the good local authorities and which are not. I am less worried than I was when I started in this process after having discovered this wonderful population of people, for whom I have a great deal of respect, having been briefed by a number of them.

My noble friend Lord Rennard asked me for an assurance that the databases chosen are properly representative of the UK population. We are pursuing the greatest diversity possible in databases, which is why I take on board what has been said about the DVLA; the wider the collection of databases that we use, the more likely it is that we will catch students, attainers, rapid house-movers and others. That is precisely what we are trying to do.

The noble Lord, Lord Maxton, made an interesting comment that he might perhaps wish to pursue further: he would like an opt-out electoral registration system rather than an opt-in one. That is a point of some significance that would bear some consideration and further thinking. There are some large issues there on voluntary registration and the balance between voluntary and compulsory, which are not currently within our remit in the Bill.

[Lord Maxton]

It is right that registration should be compulsory, but voting should not.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

These sorts of interesting questions are considered by the behavioural insight team at the Cabinet Office, which plays around with tipping people’s balance in favour of doing one thing rather than another, and the noble Lord is certainly beginning to touch on them.

No, we do not rue the day when ID cards were dropped, but we are persuaded that developments in the computing and electronic world, and the way in which it is possible to use digital databases and compare among them, is opening up the possibility of providing identity assurance and a simpler relationship between the citizen and state, which would not only be more efficient but astonishingly cheaper than the original ID scheme. Again, this is something that needs further exploration, and I will do my best to provide one or more briefings for interested Peers.

On the question of whether we have discussed this with political parties, the answer is yes, of course, on a number of occasions. I particularly enjoyed the meeting which Chloe Smith, myself and a number of others had with the HS Chapman Society—a body of electoral agents chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Gould—at which we had some fairly sharp questions, including some to registration officers about the particular details in the Bill. We fully understand that political parties have a great deal of expertise. I am told that the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, has a little expertise in this area himself.

I was asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, about the lessons that the Government have learnt from the low turnout in the PCC elections: I would want to add from the low turnout in by-elections as well. The lesson that we all need to learn from the declining turnout—this is a matter which all political parties need to talk about—is that people are less and less engaged in politics, and that we have to fight very hard, which necessarily means on an all-party basis, to re-engage our disillusioned electorate and persuade them that it is worthwhile to support candidates for election and to take part in the political process. We should also recognise that we have to overcome the barriers which an increasingly cynical media place in front of us as we attempt to do that.

I was asked to comment on the Northern Ireland report out today. I recognise that it is a sobering report, which raises a number of questions. I take the point made by several Peers about the relevance of the annual canvass for this. We will, of course, as well as the Electoral Commission, take that into account. I think it shows just how difficult the task is to maintain a complete and accurate electoral register. As we go through this transition, we have to make sure that we make every effort possible to arrive at as complete a register as we can. Having made those points I hope that the Committee will accept this order.

Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Maxton

Monday 29th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

In allowing 16 year-olds to vote in a Scottish referendum, we are making an exception. That is evident; that is part of what has now happened. We have a register which has various people on it with different circumstances. There are those EU citizens who are entitled to vote in local and European elections but not national elections; there are Members of this House, who are entitled to vote, similarly, in European and local but not in national elections. So there are already some variations between categories on the register. I will check as thoroughly as I can on this to ensure that I am entirely accurate on a point which, I fully understand, is important.

Perhaps I may now turn to the three important amendments. The issue at stake for all of us is how confident we are that we will manage the two-year transition and what we do when we reach the end to ensure that we have gone all the way through the transition. The reason for having a two-year transition is precisely to ensure that we are successful as we come to the outcome. The Electoral Commission will be following that very closely. We will be reporting back to the House on how the new system operates, so we are confident that by the autumn of 2015—with, as the noble Lord, Lord Wills, correctly pointed out, a different Government, or certainly a new Government, in place—we will be able to make a full transition.

Amendment 1 asks for guidance to be maintained for registration officers beyond the five-year period. Again, we are into questions about central direction and local autonomy for registration officers. Having spoken to a number of electoral administrators, I have considerable sympathy for the strains under which they work and the efforts which they put in to maintain as complete and accurate a register as possible. We will come back to the issue of how electoral registration is maintained on our third day in Committee.

We will of course continue to monitor and assess the effectiveness of the system during the five-year period, but we are confident that at the end of it the transition will have been fully taken through and we will have achieved a relatively stable system. When I say “stable system”, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, that I am also confident that we will have moved to a considerable extent towards an online system. I recall telling the House some months ago that the DWP expects that the number of its customers who interact with it online will have moved from some 20% to some 80% over the next 10 to 15 years, so we are in a system in which we will be moving from paper and letters to online interaction. I am also confident that we will find that data matching and data checking will become more and more constructive and accurate as a means of checking whether someone who registers is precisely who she says she is.

[Lord Maxton]

Surely the point about data matching and so on ought to be that people go on the register rather than the other way round. Rather than checking whether or not someone is accurate, there ought to be a way of putting people on to a register and then saying to them, “Are you the person who the register says you are?”.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The noble Lord is asking some very large questions that of course relate to his preference for having a central register for all citizens, which would mean an ID card. That is rather larger than the remit of the Bill, as he well knows. Over the two years we will be conducting some further data matching and data mining to confirm existing electors. There will be individual invitations to those who are not confirmed by this process—in other words, concentrated individual canvassing rather than an overall individual canvass—a full household canvass in 2015 and a carry-forward to protect those who have not been contacted by the 2015 general election. There will be a civil penalty to encourage applications and the change will take place at the time of the next election when there will be the highest amount of popular interest in politics. I think I recall correctly that in the run-up to the previous general election some 500,000 additional voters registered in the two to three months before the election. That will bring a number of people back on to the register. We are confident that the efforts that will be made during the period of transition will complement each other to a point where we have reached at least the current level and, we hope, a great deal more.

On Amendment 36, as we go through this transition, the Electoral Commission will be carrying out research to give us measures of how well we are doing and to give us an after-measure using the December 2015 measures. We are confident that we can rely on the Electoral Commission to give us the figures that we need.

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are getting into some of the technical complexities of the Bill. One of the reasons for preferring national insurance numbers is that it is possible to buy off the web electricity bills that are specially designed for you. We are looking for ways of ensuring as far possible that we have accurate identifiers.

The noble Lord, like many of us in this Chamber, is one of the difficult exemptions of people who wish to be registered in two different places because they have two different homes and therefore do not entirely match with the first identifier, which is that your national insurance number is likely to have your current address attached to it; these naturally go together. I am told that some voters do not have their date of birth in their head either. There is a tendency in some of our ethnic communities to assume that your date of birth was 1 January of whatever year it was that you were born.

None of these things entirely matches everyone’s predicament and we are therefore attempting to design something which is as flexible as possible while recognising the importance of parliamentary scrutiny. The changes we have made between the draft legislation in 2011 and the Bill’s introduction into the other place in May this year and these further amendments acknowledge the concerns raised most recently by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee that we need to make sure that there is some parliamentary scrutiny. However, when it comes to the alternative evidence provided, we believe that, because of the changing circumstances in which we are operating, some flexibility is needed. We do not wish to box everyone into simply the NINo and the date of birth. I can almost remember my national insurance number—there are two numbers in the middle that I cannot quite get straight—but I must learn it off by heart.

The noble Lord, Lord Maxton, as he did earlier, wants to raise some much wider questions. I have considerable sympathy with where he is coming from. In 20 years’ time it is unlikely that we will vote using pencil and paper in polling stations, but that is a larger concern for the longer term, and as we have seen in some other countries, on occasion electronic voting is not without its own problems. We are retaining the principle of local registers. When talking to electoral administrations, something I am told immediately is that they have for many years used council tax registration as a means of checking where people live and whether these are accurately placed on the register. The council tax, of course, only gives the head of the household. Indeed, perhaps I should have said in responding to the previous debate that one of the reasons given in recent research for incomplete registration is that the single person’s discount for council tax encourages some people not to put down the others living in the household because that would raise the level of council tax. We have moved on from the poll tax as a disincentive, but the single person’s discount is, we are told, is a disincentive in a number of ways. There is a whole range of different factors to look at as we go into the details of the register.

The noble Lord, Lord Maxton, and the rest of us will enjoy debating the impact of the data revolution on the way the citizen interacts with the state. I find it fascinating myself, and I think that it will revolutionise that interaction over the next 10 years. However, noble Lords in this House may be among those who are slower to take part. I am sorry that the noble Lord was unable to come to our demonstration of online registration. The Government are considering many other options in terms of how one puts various things online. For example, some experiments show that if, when someone reregisters their car online, they are also offered the choice of transferring to their local authority and checking for a parking ticket, that increases radically the number of people who apply for a ticket.

[Lord Maxton]

As someone who is of the age where they have to renew their driving licence every three years, I can inform the noble Lord that when I do so, all I have to give is my passport number. The photograph that is used on my passport is then automatically used on my driving licence as well.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The noble Lord makes a useful point. That is precisely the sort of direction in which we wish to go. The noble Lord will also know, of course, that a large proportion of our population does not hold a passport.

I hope that the Committee will be happy to accept these government amendments. We think that they strike the right balance between flexibility and scrutiny. I hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, will also accept that while we understand the direction in which his amendment is going, it threatens to make us a little too inflexible. It is important to retain a degree of flexibility in terms of the alternative forms of evidence because the most appropriate alternatives may well change over time.