My Lords, I thank the Committee for the debate; it is a debate we had two years ago when we were discussing a previous Bill. If applying to vote was difficult or time-consuming, the Government might have more sympathy for this proposal, but it is not. It can be done online, by paper and post, in person, or by telephone, where the registration officer offers these services. Online, it takes five minutes and can be done anywhere, anytime, on a smartphone or a tablet; I have done this recently myself.
As a small but very positive step to encourage young people to vote, HMRC now includes additional information on registering to vote on letters issuing the national insurance numbers, and this practice has been in place since the end of September 2021.
These amendments contradict the principle that underpins individual electoral registration: that individuals should have ownership of, and responsibility for, their own registration. At this point, I say that some members of our communities do not want to register—we have all probably met people who do not want to go on the electoral register. Automatic registration would threaten the accuracy of the register and, in doing so, enable voting and political donations by those who are ineligible.
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Registration officers are responsible for maintaining complete and accurate registers. They have broad powers to request information from anyone or any organisation to support the maintenance of their electoral register. They have a duty to identify individuals who may be eligible to register and invite them to do so. The recent canvass reforms have relieved some of the pressures that EROs previously faced, and introducing a form of automatic registration would undermine the success of the reforms thus far.
Relying on the services listed in these amendments would be costly and time-consuming. I am unaware of any single public service that, as part of its application procedures, captures all the data required to determine eligibility to register to vote: name, address, age, nationality and immigration status.