Political Parties and Elections Bill

My Lords, the Government have tabled a number of amendments to the individual registration clauses. Many of these, with the exception of Amendments 90, 91, 92, 99, 100, 101, 114 and 117, are minor technical changes that tidy up the way that these clauses are intended to work and I do not propose to say anything about them. There are also a small number of more significant changes that I will describe shortly. I do not think that I need to go into detail at this hour about the importance of the shift to individual registration, which as a principle I know has the support of all the main parties in the House. It marks a significant point in the evolution of our electoral registration processes in Great Britain. I wish to mention briefly five changes. The first concerns Amendment 90, which amends Clause 27(2)(d) to broaden the purposes for which EROs can check information provided from the national insurance number (NINO) database during the voluntary phase of individual registration. The purpose of this amendment is to give EROs more flexibility in using data from the NINO database, while also ensuring that data are used only for appropriate purposes relating to checking a person’s entitlement to vote. Amendment 91 provides for the disclosure of information by the CORE keeper to a registration officer for the purposes of registration. Amendment 101 introduces a requirement for registration officers to provide assistance to the Electoral Commission for the purpose of compiling their reports, and thus is very close to what the Official Opposition are looking for in their Amendment 96. In practice this is likely to cover the provision of information that the commission is likely to require. The Electoral Commission specifically asked if we might include this requirement in our legislation. Amendments 99 and 100 make a number of amendments to the steps the Secretary of State needs to take in the event that there is not a positive endorsement of the shift to individual registration in 2014 by either the Electoral Commission or Parliament. If noble Lords require more detail on those amendments, I shall be happy to give them that information. Those are the government amendments in short. I shall now sit down as I know that there are opposition amendments in this group. I beg to move.