Electoral Administration Bill

moved Amendment No. 5:"Page 1, line 18, leave out ““is specified by or under the scheme”” and insert ““provided for in existing regulations to which electoral registration officers must conform””" The noble Baroness said: The amendment will ensure that the CORE keepers are subject to the same stringent rules as electoral registration officers. Both roles will incur similar responsibilities and it makes sense that the CORE keeper should be subject to rules that are as similar to those for electoral registration officers as possible. Perhaps the rules may need to be more stringent, given the potential vulnerability of the information being held online. The fact that the schemes will be set out in secondary legislation makes debate about them at this point extremely difficult. How are we supposed to know what kind of provisions will be made for the CORE scheme and how well protected will the sensitive data of the electoral register be? The Financial Services Authority recently published statistics that show that online fraud is rising at 300 per cent a year. That makes the Internet the most vulnerable medium available. Given the volatile position of Internet data, I am surprised that the Bill does not go further in placing safeguards in primary legislation. Guiding regulations for those who will control the register are surely paramount to the success of the CORE scheme. Given that the establishment of the scheme will be subject to less rigorous parliamentary scrutiny than the Bill, it makes sense to try to ensure that the CORE keepers act alongside the tried and tested lines of the electoral registration officers and that we at least get that into primary legislation. I beg to move.