Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord McKenzie of Luton and Lord Wallace of Tankerness

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I hope that the Scottish Government would be as keen as the parties in this House on trying to improve electoral registration. I hope to be able to indicate what engagement there has been with the Scottish Government in trying to ensure that that is the case. I am not sure that setting up another committee is necessarily the best way to do it.

I have mentioned data matching. The kind of publicly available data that would be relevant to this amendment, although they would not be specific to private tenants, could be national insurance data, information from the DVLA and, specifically, housing benefit data. Those are the areas we would look at, via proactive pilot schemes, to try to ensure that that particular category of person, who I accept is underregistered on the electoral roll, is better identified than at the moment. Against that background, I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his response and to my noble friend Lord Soley and my noble and learned friend Lord Falconer for their support. I do not intend to press the amendment tonight; I am grateful for the information that has been given around the prospect of data matching and the expanded scope for that in relation to private sector tenants. It would have been good to hear a little more from the Minister about issues of local authority funding, given the huge constraints that they are under and the real risk that one of the things that will not get the priority that it should in the current climate is effective electoral registration.

The Minister suggested that the amendment was indeterminate in its timeframe. If he would be happy in due course, possibly at a subsequent stage, to accept an amendment with a more specific timeframe, we would be very happy to reflect on that. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.