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Mr. Spellar: Yes, indeed. We have commissioned work from the Electoral Commission to discover the
 
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reasons for the continuing fall and the shortfall. We are also undertaking our own work to consider how other jurisdictions ensure the most comprehensive register possible.

The main Northern Ireland parties have been lobbying Ministers hard to introduce measures to alleviate the falling numbers on the register. There is general concern, particularly about the shortfall among younger people, as the hon. Member for East Londonderry said. Therefore, we have decided to re-introduce the carry-forward temporarily until we can put in place new registration arrangements for Northern Ireland in the longer term.

The Bill is important because the electoral register should be accurate and comprehensive. Putting an additional 83,000 electors back on to the register will strengthen the democratic process in Northern Ireland, particularly with important local elections due in May.

Mr. Trimble: I hope that the Minister can respond to a matter that he has not yet touched on. He referred to the desirability of having as many people as possible on the register. It is also desirable to have the register available to people, particularly with the prospect of at least one election. Those involved in political activity need to have the register available as soon as possible. The Bill does not take effect until 1 April. Will a new register be published on 1 April, or is that being too optimistic?

Mr. Spellar: That touches on an amendment that has been tabled by the Liberal Democrats and I shall address the matter when we come to that amendment. We recognise the desire for the comprehensive register to be available as soon as possible and, if it is administratively feasible, I hope that it will be produced before 1 April for that reason. We are considering the possibility of doing that because I recognise the need for political parties to be able to access the electorate as early as possible. I shall deal with the matter in greater detail when we come to the amendment.

I appreciate some of the concerns that were raised during the debate on the programme motion about fast-tracking the Bill and cutting down some of the time available for debate. There has been adequate discussion and consultation since November and we need to implement the Bill because those electors must be able to vote in the forthcoming local elections.

I thank hon. Members for their constructive comments and look forward to responding to any detailed matters that are raised. I commend the Bill to the House.

2.9 pm

Mr. David Lidington (Aylesbury) (Con): The Opposition accept that the Bill has been introduced to try to remedy a real problem. It was made clear during exchanges in response to interventions from Unionist Members that everyone expected the Electoral Fraud (Northern Ireland) Act 2002 to lead to a fall in the number of registered electors in the Province. It certainly did that, because about 120,000 electors, amounting some 10 per cent. of the entire register, were
 
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removed. What was not expected was that that would be followed by a year-on-year decline in the number of people registered to vote.

The Minister has given the Government's assessment that only about 85 per cent. of people in Northern Ireland are now registered to vote compared with about 93 per cent. in the rest of the United Kingdom. Not only the Government but the Electoral Commission and the Select Committee on Northern Ireland have expressed concern about that state of affairs. In its report on the operation of the Electoral Fraud (Northern Ireland) 2002 Act, the commission explicitly pointed to the abolition of the ability to allow names to be carried forward for one year as probably the chief reason for the continuing fall in the number of registered electors.

One has to ask, as others have done already in the debate, why those people have not registered. I suppose that for some it was a matter of deliberate choice. For others it was probably, if we are honest, sheer laziness, or due to the mislaying of a form. I am obviously speculating here, but I suspect that the chief reason is that there are plenty of people who are not terribly interested in politics and for whom the task of re-registering annually is one of those things that they do not regard as a particularly high priority.

Lady Hermon: I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that one of the significant reasons why people do not register every year is that there is an education problem here. The Electoral Commission and the chief electoral officer need to advertise more clearly especially to older voters who enjoy voting and vote regularly that a change has taken place and they are now expected to register every year. That is the main problem.

Mr. Lidington: The hon. Lady makes a perfectly fair point. When I consulted my own party organisation about our approach to this Bill, a comment was made to me by a senior agent that people in Northern Ireland might well have expected that, having once registered with the unique identifier, they had done the job for good and all, and that they would not have to repeat the process annually.

So we have to decide today whether we can make it easier for people who are genuinely entitled to vote to remain on the register without compromising the safeguards against fraud that were built into the 2002 Act. I have a number of questions to ask the Minister which I hope he will be able to answer in due course. Some of the points that I intended to make have already been covered, so I will not labour them at length. The hon. Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Dodds) referred to how deaths influence the composition of the register. The Minister gave us an answer that provided some reassurance that the chief registration officer notifies the chief electoral officer every week of those people in Northern Ireland who have died and provides lists of their unique numbers. I hope that the Minister can confirm exactly the procedure that is followed. It seems a vital safeguard.

Can the Minister be absolutely confident of the reliability of the data set of national insurance numbers? We hear from time to time in the House and in the media about the alleged widespread use of false national insurance numbers and of people who appropriate the
 
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national insurance numbers of citizens who have died. I hope that the Minister can give us some assurance that he can be confident that there is no gap in the anti-fraud regime as a consequence of that.

Mr. John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con): May I ask the Minister through my hon. Friend what alternatives to national insurance numbers were canvassed? My hon. Friend is right to say that worries about accuracy have been raised on occasions in the House. We carry all kinds of other things. National health numbers are an example, but there are many others. How were any alternatives judged to be inferior to national insurance numbers? What test has been made of that? There is a widespread worry in the House about the impermanence of all this and whether we are proceeding without having done that kind of homework. The Minister may be able to assure us that he has done it, but I would like to ask him through my hon. Friend whether he has.

Mr. Lidington: I am sure that the Minister will have taken note of my hon. Friend's comments and that he will respond later.

I move on to questions about people who have changed their address since their original registration. Clause 1(c) makes it unlawful for somebody to be re-registered if the chief electoral officer has information to suggest that that person is no longer resident at the address at which he was previously lawfully registered. What in practice does that safeguard mean? Does the chief electoral officer have the wherewithal to carry out checks on change of residence, or is all we are saying in the Bill that somebody who notifies the officer of a change in address will have his or her electoral registration duly altered? Are there other sources of information to which the chief electoral officer has access that would provide safeguards against the impersonation of somebody who had moved house and as a consequence had not registered at their previous address and had chosen, for whatever reason, not to register at their new address?

I have a particular concern about younger voters. Taking up the point made by the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr. Campbell), I have seen figures that suggest that fewer than a quarter of 17 and 18-year-olds in Northern Ireland are registered to vote. We know that in general young people in their late teens and 20s are likely to be mobile; they may well change address relatively often. So re-registration as proposed in the Bill could put back on the register many people who have moved house but who have not bothered to tell the electoral authorities. If we consider that in the circumstances of Northern Ireland, how likely is it that a paramilitary organisation linked to a political party could work out that at a particular address in Belfast or Londonderry a number of young electors had properly registered in the first instance, subsequently moved away and re-registered under the terms of the new legislation? In such circumstances, will there not be an opportunity for such an organisation to make applications for postal or proxy votes on behalf of those people who have moved away from their original registration address? I know that the right hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) hopes to speak about that issue in later stages of the consideration of the Bill.
 
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I hope that the Minister will be able to come forward with some persuasive reassurances at that stage, if not in response to the Second Reading debate. This is one of the most troublesome aspects of the Bill.

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