Electoral Administration Bill

They would opt out for the reason that I opt out. I do not want my name made available to other bodies, particularly through an exercise that is a civic duty. They should have the right to opt out and not allow their names to be made available when engaging in an exercise that is statutorily required of them for a civic purpose. There is a fundamental principle involved. People should have a right to opt out. As I say, they exercise that with very little publicity given to it. It is right that that is available to them. However, I cannot see why we should persist with creating this separate register, which is available to commercial bodies. It puts a great burden on registration officers. Given that that burden will increase as a consequence of other provisions of this Bill, we should reduce some of the burden and free up space on the canvass form. Let us create space for things like personal identifiers, which is more crucial for electoral registration, than is a box created solely by virtue of the fact that we make registers available for commercial purposes. My view is that there is little case for maintaining an edited register. It is an unnecessary burden. Let us confine the register to one full register, which is available to only those who have a valid civic claim to have copies made available to them. If the Government are not minded to abolish the edited register, the second-best preferences would be to provide for an opt-in rather than an opt-out provision and to restrict its sales to registered charities. The first preference is to get rid of it altogether. I beg to move.