Electoral Administration Bill

I support these amendments. At the moment we are addressing the CORE register as a national coming-together of all the registers, but we have to start looking at what the proposals for the national register are and why the registers are being brought together. This proposal is not an airy-fairy way of getting everybody’s names in one place; it is to prepare the base for moving into e-voting, voting in supermarkets and other kinds of voting round the country. It could begin to move the requirement to vote away from the local area. I know that that is desirable in many ways, but it raises security concerns, which the noble Lord has begun to touch on. We need to pick up on the purpose of the co-ordinated online register of electors. What the register is for is not stated in the Bill. It is just about stated in the consultation paper, which refers to,"““the essential building blocks on which multi-channel, e-enabled elections will be built””." We are not talking about an ephemeral scheme; we are talking about something that could set the base for the way in which elections take place in future. We should bear that in mind, because the co-ordinated register could, potentially, have wide use. Furthermore, there are all the difficulties associated with computers and the ability of computers to exchange information. We have had lots of discussions on identity cards and on computer programs. The Government are not brilliant at computer schemes. In her reply, the Minister may like to expand a bit more and not pretend that this is a conglomeration of registers. The registers are coming together for a greater purpose than has been identified so far this afternoon.