My Lords, throughout Committee I have kept coming back to the impact assessment. Right there on the front page of the impact assessment it says:
“What are the policy objectives of the action or intervention and the intended effects?”
It is:
“To ensure that those who are entitled to vote should always”—
always—
“be able to exercise that right freely, effectively and in an informed way”.
That is the intended consequence, the stated intention of the Bill before us: that those who are entitled to vote
“should always be able to exercise that right”.
People cannot exercise that right if they are not on the electoral roll. It is an absolute condition of always being able to exercise that right.
The amendments before us are absolutely bang on the money, in terms of what the intended policy of the Bill is in the impact assessment. As citizens of this country, we are all given automatic rights and responsibilities. Through that, we get certain certificates or automated numbers. We get our national insurance number automatically. We do not have to apply; it is automatically granted to us at 16. As the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, said, we are registered for taxation automatically. We get our NHS number automatically. If noble Lords asked the vast majority of the public if they would object to being automatically registered, I have seen no evidence that says people would reject that proposition. Whether people then go to vote is down to the politicians to encourage them, enthuse them and get them to the polling station.
The very fact that the Government’s policy is to “always” ensure that people are able to exercise their vote in an automatic, easy and effective way means that these amendments should be accepted by the Government. If they are not, I would ask the Minister to explain why not having automatic registration, and keeping what is on the face of the Bill, would actually meet their objective to
“ensure that all those who are entitled to vote should always be able”
to do so.