Individual Voter Registration

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

That point has been made, and I looked at it when I visited Northern Ireland, which, for historical reasons and for the reasons it introduced the system ahead of us, requires people to have a form of photo ID when they vote. When that was introduced, it meant that many people were not able to vote, but it is now working smoothly. It has been suggested to us that we should adopt that system. The Government have decided not to do so, but we will listen to the evidence, as it certainly happens in one part of the United Kingdom. As far as I understand—I stand to be corrected—it currently works pretty smoothly, and for those electors who do not have their own form of photo ID, such as a passport or driving licence, there is a specific and very simple electoral ID card, with no database behind it, which they can use to prove their identity—and their age, for all sorts of other interesting purposes that to young people are probably more attractive than being able to vote.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that the occasions of personation fraud are extremely rare, but that more fraud is thought to exist in postal voting and that, perhaps, more restrictions should be placed on that?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and there was a certain amount of fraud in the early 2000s. That is why the previous Government, to be fair and to their credit, tightened up postal voting and introduced the system of requiring identifiers, whereby an individual has to have their date of birth and provide a signature. We can at least be sure that the person who requested the postal vote is the person casting it, but of course it does not give us any confidence in that person being the real, genuine person who lives in that house, as someone may have created a fictitious identity. We can be sure that the person who requested the postal vote is the person casting it, but they could do so on the basis of a completely fictitious identity. Postal voting has been tightened up, and that is good. It is something that we supported and which the previous Government did.

Another reason for speeding up the system is that running parallel systems—the current system and the new system—was likely to be rather confusing and was, I have to say, going to cost a significant amount. We are investing a significant sum in getting this right—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) just lets me finish, we are going to spend £108 million on moving to the system of registration, so we are fully funding the move, and by not trying to run it in parallel with the current system we have saved £74 million, which, given the state of the economy and the public finances that we inherited, a point that I will not labour, is not an insubstantial factor to bear in mind. But it is not at the expense of ensuring that we have a secure and accurate register.