Electoral Administration Bill

I do not know whether the noble Lord is asking me a question or if he is waiting for the Minister to reply. I can do some of the Minister’s business for her. The Bill proposes individual registration; that is, every person who registers will have to either sign the form or will have to sign a separate form. They will have to declare that. That is what individual registration is about. There have been enough examples already of voter fraud that might have been prevented if someone had been able to check the information. Frankly, I agree with the noble Lord about signatures; they are a nightmare. They would have to be checked by the EROs; that would be part of the requirement. How they would make sense of them, I do not know. That is why we have suggested introducing a complete identifier—a national insurance number. Your national insurance number identifies you immediately. No one else has the same number and it is probably quite difficult to forge. If two people turn up with the same number, that indicates that there is a problem. I do not see how you can go for individual registration—which I support because I think it makes sense—if you do not have some means of identifying that that registration is correct.