Electoral Administration Bill

I was not seeking to mitigate against the data, but to mitigate against the concerns raised by, for example, what we know about the Northern Ireland experience. When we move to a different system, some people do not get on to the register. That is what I seek to mitigate against, not the data. If you are trying to conduct a controlled experiment, you know the factors you are seeking to control and you have a way of dealing with them. That is how I see it in terms of piloting, but I know that I will never convince my noble friend on that, for reasons I understand completely. But that is why the Government have sought to move in this direction rather than to take the route of transitional arrangements. We do not believe that, in everyone’s interests, we can balance the two objectives. I shall discuss briefly the proposal of my noble friend Lord Elder because I have had the benefit of being able to hold a conversation with him about it. I am very interested in the balance he seeks to strike. Because we would have the date of birth and the signature, all the comments related to using one or the other would be dealt with by having both. If people do not give their correct date of birth, they will give their signature. While my noble friend Lord Evans may be able to produce 10 different signatures, I hope that he has only one date of birth. There are ways to balance it. Further, my noble friend described the issue that most concerns us. I know that noble Lords are alive to the other ways we have sought to address some of the issues raised by my right honourable friend Harriet Harman in secondary legislation that was put through another place and your Lordships’ House earlier this month. We are seeking to address the question of postal voting. I shall not go into the details because noble Lords know them well, but I mention the acknowledgment of receipt of applications so that people understand that they have applied for a postal vote. I am keen to find ways of exploring further with my noble friend the issues he has raised, so that we can look at whether something in his amendment might find support across the Committee. I am grateful to noble Lords for this debate, although sadly we have not been able to move on to the next group, which is what I had hoped to achieve. We could have had a longer debate on the details of these issues, but we shall begin with them next week. We are committed to achieving the same objectives. We are looking at what needs to be dealt with now: how to identify the questions that must be answered most quickly. We need to recognise that a balance must be struck. To do something that would create turbulence and result in the number of people registering falling dramatically—or in my view at all—must be avoided. We also need to ensure that the problem is addressed in a way that gives us a short-term, and perhaps a longer-term, view. That has involved us in a number of conversations and I pay tribute to Sam Younger for the time he has been willing to give me personally to talk through some of these issues; not least because whatever ultimately we decide to do, the Electoral Commission will have an important role to play. However, noble Lords as Members of your Lordships’ House and as representatives of political parties also have an important role in ensuring that we achieve what we want here and that we have a plan for the future. In my view, this debate has been incredibly helpful. I now need to think further and I look forward to debating the next group when we return to our discussions. By the next stage of the Bill, I hope that we will have addressed some of the underlying issues and perhaps have moved on to a good place.