Electoral Administration Bill

When I sat down after my last intervention I was passed a note by a Commissioner of Her Majesty’s Treasury, at least that is what I think a Whip—in this case my noble friend Lord Evans of Temple Guiting—is called. The note is particularly interesting. It states:"““When I was running Faber & Faber I signed all the cheques and the bank had a list of 10 different signatures of mine””." That shows the scale of the problem that we are talking about. I asked my noble friend whether he minded if I read out the note and he seemed to assent. If the bank required 10 signatures for the cheques signed by my noble friend, what possible use would these signatures be as national identifiers if the system were ultimately rolled out throughout the United Kingdom? It seems to me that they are a waste of space, a waste of time and a waste of money.