Gloria De Piero
Main Page: Gloria De Piero (Labour - Ashfield)Department Debates - View all Gloria De Piero's debates with the Cabinet Office
(9 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
John Penrose
At the moment, the proof of ID when registering includes information such as a date of birth and a national insurance number. Photographic ID is not required, although I believe that the situation in Northern Ireland might be slightly stricter and that there are tighter rules there, given the history of the Province. Of course, individual electoral registration was introduced in Northern Ireland many years ago and it has been extremely successful. There was no transitional period at all there; it all happened in one day and the system moved across to IER very swiftly.
Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)
The Electoral Commission’s advice is clear: do not bring forward the full transition to individual electoral registration. What is the point of Parliament setting up this body if Ministers are simply going to ignore its advice?
John Penrose
May I put right an inadvertent omission from a debate in Westminster Hall yesterday? I omitted to welcome the hon. Lady to her new position and I would like to do that now. She is absolutely right to say that the Electoral Commission made that recommendation. However, it is not impossible to disagree with its reasoning. Indeed, others including the Association of Electoral Administrators—the people who actually run the elections in our democracy—believe that this is the right thing to do.