Political Parties and Elections Bill

My Lords, this is the first amendment I have moved that has been the subject of a campaign; I have received a number of e-mails urging me to oppose it. I fear I must disappoint the correspondents. The purpose of the amendment is to get rid of the edited version of the electoral register, though providing time to do so. In seeking to abolish the edited register, as I explained in Committee, I am in good company. Support for abolishing it comes from the Association of Electoral Administrators, the Electoral Commission and the Information Commissioner. The Thomas-Walport report last year on data sharing recommended that it be brought to an end, stating, ""we feel that selling the edited register is an unsatisfactory way for local authorities to treat personal information. It sends a particularly poor message to the public that personal information collected for something as vital as participation in the democratic process can be sold to ‘anyone for any purpose’. And there is a belief that the sale of the electoral register deters some people from registering at all. We are sympathetic to the strong arguments made by the Association of Electoral Administrators and the Electoral Commission that the primary purpose of the electoral register is for electoral purposes"." The arguments for abolishing the edited version rest on principle and practice. The principled argument is, to my mind, compelling. Heads of households are required, by law, each year to complete an electoral registration form in order for those in the household to be registered to vote. That is a fundamental part of our democratic process. Yet at the same time they have to decide whether they wish to have their name withdrawn from a register that is compiled for sale to any body that wishes to purchase it. People can exercise their option to opt out—it is opt-out, rather than opt-in—but why should they be required, by law, to make such a determination? It completely sullies the integrity of the electoral process. The electoral registration form should be solely for the purpose of compiling the electoral register. I thus have a principled objection to using the force of law to impose this burden on citizens. The practical argument is that the present situation imposes a major and, to my mind, unnecessary burden on electoral registration officers. They are required to compile the information and then sell it. They make no profit in doing so—rather the reverse. There is no benefit to the local authority. There is certainly no benefit to electoral registration officers; it has no relevance to their role. Compiling the edited version of the register imposes a major burden. It will become even more of a burden as electoral registration officers prepare for the move to individual registration. We should be facilitating that move, not maintaining a significant burden. On practical grounds, the case for getting rid of the edited register is thus greater than ever before. What are the arguments against? In Grand Committee, the Minister focused solely on practical arguments. There was no engagement with the issue of principle. The argument related solely to the benefit for organisations that purchase the register. Abolishing the edited register may create problems for them. The Government plan to consult on the issue. There are two, related responses to this. First, my amendment provides for the edited register to cease after the 2011 edition. There is thus time to prepare, and indeed to consult. The Government can utilise their proposed consultation on the best way to ensure a smooth transition. The principal objections to abolishing the edited register appear to come from debt collection agencies that use it to track down debtors who have moved. Given that 40 per cent of electors opt out of the register—one suspects that those in debt may be among them—that strikes me as an inefficient way of proceeding. Credit reference agencies already have access to the full register to check the names of people applying for credit. As the Credit Services Association points out, it is illogical that the Ministry of Justice supports the continued use of the full register by credit reference agencies to check the names and addresses of people applying for credit, so helping them to get into debt, but not for the process of recovering sums borrowed and helping people to get out of debt. I am not against agencies being able to utilise the full register for that purpose. As the Credit Services Association quite justifiably points out in its briefing: ""Desired access to the electoral roll by the direct mailing and marketing industry should not be linked with the completely different requirements of the debt collection industry"." I concur. I would be content for the agencies to have access to the full register and would support the Government in making the necessary adjustments for that purpose. Secondly, as my noble friend Lord Bates observed in Committee, if there is demand for such a product by direct mailing and marketing bodies, market forces will take care of it. My amendment allows time for the market to operate. This is clearly something appropriate to the market and not to misusing statutory provisions for commercial purposes. My basic point is straightforward. The process of employing the force of law to compile the electoral register should be confined to that task. Electoral registration officers should be allowed to get on with their tasks as electoral registration officers. They are not, or rather should not be, in the business of helping junk mail companies. Given that the costs of compiling the edited register are not wholly recovered, we are in effect subsidising commercial concerns. We are doing so through the use of statute, through the use of a provision that is fundamental to the democratic process. Requiring people to decide whether they wish to remove their name from the edited register is a misuse of that process. We should restore the integrity of our electoral registration process. We certainly should not use it to subsidise commercial concerns. Other democracies manage to survive without such an edited register. Their economies do not appear to be undermined by the absence of such a register. We should get rid of it. It is in principle objectionable and it imposes an unnecessary burden. I beg to move.