Electoral Administration Bill

moved Amendment No. 70:"Page 12, line 36, at end insert—" ““(2A)   In relation to England and Wales and Scotland— (a)   in respect of any person wishing to be included in an absent voters list, personal identifiers in accordance with subsection (2) must be provided to the registration officer either at registration or subsequently in relation to an absent vote application, (b)   in respect of any person wishing to vote in person, personal identifiers in accordance with subsection (2) may be provided to a registration officer, but will not be required to be provided unless the Secretary of State by order so provides.”” The noble Lord said: In moving this amendment, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 74 to 78. I will split them into two sections: Amendments Nos. 74 to 76, which provide for the introduction of a personal identifier adoption scheme; and Amendments Nos. 77 and 78, which provide for personal identifier individual registration schemes. Let me explain where I am coming from on all this. I am totally opposed to the pilots; I believe that the Bill is, in the main, unnecessary. However, there is a real problem, repeatedly identified by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, which I accept we have to deal with. My view is that the whole principle of national roll-out is unnecessary, and a burden, nationally, on the elector. That is my starting position. The pilots set the background to my amendments. I am opposed to them, first, because the Electoral Commission, the Electoral Reform Society, Members of Parliament, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives have all expressed opposition to them. I completely agree with those people, who are a fairly mixed bag—I am part of that bag, by the way. Secondly, voluntary arrangements will attract all the wrong applicants, for the reasons that we set out the other day. Some might seek to manipulate registration downwards, and others might seek to manipulate it up, with a view to impressing whomever they wish. Thirdly, once we get into this pilots rut, national roll-out is inevitable. As I am opposed to national roll-out, I am therefore opposed to the pilots. I am also concerned about the collapse in the vote. I take as my text the Electoral Commission research report of September 2005, which I hope everyone has read. It sets out the groups that will be penalised under a system of national roll-out: first, deprived groups in areas of deprivation; secondly, people living in metropolitan areas; thirdly, unemployed groups; fourthly, certain housing tenancy groups; and, finally, people who live in houses in multiple occupation. I do not want to read out all these sections, but I hope, just for the record—in case there are people who read our proceedings—that people have read paragraphs 2.34, 2.37, 2.42, 2.44, 2.45, 2.48, 2.51 and 2.54. Academics and others reading this debate should also read that very important document from the Electoral Commission, which shows that there will be a drop in registration in many parts of the United Kingdom arising from the introduction of national roll-out registration on the basis that is being advocated. I am also concerned about the pilots, because the EROs are worried about what they are doing. Many of them believe that a system based on signatures, unless very closely scrutinised in any particular area, is beyond their resources—even the resources that are to be made available to them. Those are my reasons. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has always impressed me with his argument, because he has been very persistent on this issue. I recognise that there is a real problem. I had been only briefly in this House and was sitting at the Long Table having dinner when we had a conversation in which he first drew it to my attention. There is a problem. At first glimpse, my amendments do not appear very palatable. However, they bear close scrutiny because, although they raise issues—to be absolutely blunt—of voting in ethnic minority communities, the reality is that the agenda with which we are dealing here today arises from problems that exist in very few parts of the United Kingdom, essentially in areas where there are substantial ethnic minority populations. I do not want to get into issues of race, but I think that I should place that on the record because that is the conversation that is going on behind the scenes when we discuss this issue. There is essentially a problem in particular areas. The question is: how do we deal with that problem in those few areas without getting into discussions about ethnicity? My amendments deal with the problem, because they avoid the state saying: ““You have a problem. We are going to resolve it. We will sort out your problem””. They avoid the state being identified as the agency to address the problem in an area where there is a substantial ethnic minority population. My amendments place a responsibility on the local authority that has a problem with corruption of the electorate to say: ““We have a problem. We want to sort it out. We do not have the power to sort out the problem locally. We need that power. We want a scheme and you, the state, need to confirm whatever arrangements we decide on for ourselves””. So I am turning it away from the state saying to a community, ““Sort out the problem””, to the local community saying, ““We want to sort out the problem ourselves and we want you, the state, to give us the power to do so””. When I have discussed my amendments outside the Committee, it has been put to me that, whatever happens, we may find ourselves discussing ethnicity in particular areas. I keep coming back to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, because I know that he lives in one of the areas where there is a problem of that nature that he has been trying to address for several years. He will correct me if I am wrong, because he may be the only Member in this Room today who has first-hand experience of the problem. There is a debate in those communities. It is not necessarily a debate between the communities; rather, it is one within the ethnic minority community itself. These are intra-community debates. One part of the community is losing out to another part because within it are people representing all the political parties. So within ethnic minority communities in parts of the United Kingdom there are debates on how to resolve the problem whereby one side of the community objects to the other side being engaged in these practices. I await an intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, because, as I have said, I believe that he has great knowledge of these matters and the problem I am referring to.