Electoral Administration Bill

moved Amendment No. 61:"Page 11, line 27, at end insert—" ““(   )   Any elector may at any time make an individual claim to be included in the register of electors or provide any necessary information to the registration officer. (   )   In particular, where a form is being provided to one person in a household for the purpose of listing all the persons entitled to be registered at that address, any other person entitled to be registered at that address may separately provide any personal identifier in a manner that remains confidential.”” The noble Lord said: After that little bit of excitement, we are back to the grindstone and to ploughing our way through the Bill. We are still on personal identifiers. In moving Amendment No. 61, I shall speak also to the other five amendments in the group in my name. This is a mixed bag of amendments and I wondered whether to degroup them all, but I thought that, even though they are about different things, we might make quicker progress if we deal with them all together. We will see. Amendment No. 61 goes back to the interesting and, I think, unresolved question of the relationship between household registration and individual registration, particularly when having to provide personal identifiers. The first of my suggested subsections states:"““Any elector may at any time make an individual claim to be included in the register of electors””." That is the case as regards the rolling register. However, on the annual canvass and the compilation of the definitive register each year, the registration is by household. The household form goes out and is returned by a person in the household—the occupier, the head of household or whomever. In a traditional household that person may be fairly identifiable as being one or two people, but in houses of multiple occupation and similar places it is not at all clear who that person is. It might be the landlord, if the landlord is on the premises. But, if no person exercises supervisory roles, it might be whoever picks the form up or whoever throws it away. The provision therefore states that an individual has the right to make an individual registration to ensure that he is on the register even if that is at the time of the annual canvass. The second provision says that a person has the right, in effect, not to hand over details of his personal identifiers to a person sending in a common registration from a household, particularly in what might be multi-household places—houses in multiple occupation, lots of lodging rooms and so on. People may have very good reasons for not wanting to hand over personal details to the person who just happens to be the person sending the form in. At the moment we are talking about date of birth and a personal signature as the personal identifiers. It could be other things as well. We do not know what other things the Government might bring forward under the provisions for adding further personal identifiers. We understand that at the moment it will not be national insurance numbers.