Select Committee on Constitutional Affairs Written Evidence


Memorandum by The Home Office (VOT 31)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

  This memorandum is confined to how the ID cards scheme—legislation for which is currently before Parliament—and the Home Office led work on reducing identity fraud might contribute to improving the verification of identity for the purposes of electoral registration and voting. The Government's position on individual registration is set out in the Memorandum to the Committee by the Department for Constitutional Affairs and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

  2.  The Government does not believe that people should be required to register with the ID cards scheme or produce an ID card before they are able to register on the electoral register or to cast a vote. The Identity Cards Bill currently before Parliament provides for registration with the ID cards scheme to be linked to the issuing of designated documents such as passports and residence permits. As 80% of the adult population has a passport, the database which will hold details of those issued with ID cards (the National Identity Register) should become increasing useful as a means of checking the accuracy of the electoral register. There is also a provision for registration with the ID cards scheme to be made compulsory at some future date. Should it become compulsory to register with the scheme, the Government will want to examine whether the ID cards scheme can offer benefits in terms of:

    (i)    providing a simple means to check the authenticity of information supplied during the electoral registration process; and

    (ii)    facilitating ways of voting remotely.

  3.  In considering these issues however, it should be noted that:

    (i)    there will be people eligible to vote who will not be required to be registered with the ID cards scheme, even if ID cards become compulsory. Chiefly, these are British citizens resident abroad; and

    (ii)  the personal information which can be held on the ID cards scheme is strictly controlled by statute and would not include a person's eligibility to vote, though in many cases this may be derived from information held by the scheme.

  4.  The Home Office co-ordinates a cross-public and private sector initiative to reduce identity fraud. While some of this work would undoubtedly improve the verification of identity for electoral registration purposes, none of the projects is sufficiently universal in coverage to apply to everyone entitled to vote.

INTRODUCTION

  5.  The Clerk of the ODPM Committee invited the Home Secretary to provide written evidence on the subject of electoral registration, with particular reference to the verification of identity. This memorandum discusses two areas of the Home Office's work which are of relevance:

    (i)    the introduction of a national ID cards scheme including the establishment of a National Identity Register. Legislation for this is currently before Parliament; and

    (ii)    the cross-public and private sector programme to reduce identity fraud which is co-ordinated by the Home Office.

  6.  In each of these areas, the memorandum discusses the contribution which may be made to improving the security of the electoral registration process and the process of voting itself.

IDENTITY CARDS AND THE NATIONAL IDENTITY REGISTER

  7.  The Government introduced legislation to establish a national ID cards scheme on 29 November 2004. This memorandum refers to the contents of the Identity Cards Bill which received its Second Reading in the House of Commons on 20 December 2004. Prior to the introduction of this legislation, the Government conducted two public consultation exercises in 2002-03 and 2004. The first consultation exercise sought views on whether what was then referred to as an entitlement card scheme would benefit the maintenance of the electoral register and facilitate new ways of voting. Responses were received from the Electoral Commission, the Association of Electoral Administrators and some local authorities. The Commission suggested that a card scheme could help address some of the security issues and problems presented by remote electronic voting for example a card could be used to generate specific voter identifiers or to confirm identity when casting a vote.[64]

ELECTORAL REGISTRATION

  8.  The Government does not believe it is appropriate that people must have an ID card before they can register to vote or cast a vote. Therefore any role for the National Identity Register or the Identity Cards scheme to enhance the maintenance of the electoral register should only be decided after it became compulsory to register under the ID cards legislation. This is likely to be some years in the future as the first registrations under the scheme will probably not take place until 2008, subject to Parliament approving the Identity Cards Bill in the current Session. Clauses 6 and 7 of the Bill provide for registration to be made compulsory subject to the agreement of both Houses of Parliament via a "super affirmative" process.

  9.  If registration under the Identity Cards legislation became compulsory and ID cards were universally held, the ID cards scheme could offer a means of verifying personal information which was submitted to the electoral register during the process of registration. The information which could be confirmed by the ID cards scheme is set out at Annex A. Given that electoral registration is not done face-to-face, the ID cards scheme would only be able to confirm that the information held/entered on the electoral register matched the information held on the National Identity Register. It would not be able to verify that the person who submitted the details on a registration form was in fact that person. However the National Identity Register information will be recorded to a much higher degree of assurance than the electoral register as the process of registering for an ID card will involve:

   (i)  a personal visit;

   (ii)  the checking of personal details against other sources of information eg National Insurance records; and

  (iii)  associating each person's record with unique biometric information such as fingerprints to guard against people trying to establish multiple identities.

  10.  While there will be a considerable degree of overlap between those who will be required to be entered on the National Identity Register and those who are required to be entered on the electoral register, there would not a complete overlap. The most important difference is that there is no obligation on those resident abroad who may be entitled to vote in the UK to be registered in the National Identity Register. In addition, the information which may be held on the National Identity Register will be strictly limited by statute[65] and, in the current version of the Bill, does not include entitlement to vote, though it may be possible to deduce entitlement to vote from the other information held on the National Identity Register. There may therefore be efficiency benefits in utilising information held on the National Identity Register to help compile local electoral registers .

VOTING

  11.  Everyone whose application to be entered on the National Identity Register is approved will be issued with an ID card. The precise format of ID cards is not specified in the Identity Cards Bill, though the format of each card issued under the legislation will require the approval of Parliament. It is likely that ID cards will be plastic, credit-card sized cards which will incorporate a photograph and signature of the holder, some printed information eg name and a micro-chip which may contain some information and security features. As discussed in paragraph 9 above, information held on the National Identity Register can be verified without requiring the production of a card. In circumstances where a card can be produced, the identity check can take four general forms:

    (a)

    visual check eg comparing the photograph to the likeness of the person presenting it;

    (b)

    validation using a card reader which would confirm that there was a matching, valid record on the National Identity Register;

    (c)

    in addition to (b) some information not shown on the card but held on the National Identity Register could be provided by the card holder and its validity confirmed with the National Identity Register eg address; and

    (d)

    in addition to (b) or (c) some information not shown on the card could be provided from the record held on the National Identity Register eg whether the person's immigration status placed restrictions on his eligibility to work.

  For (b) to (d) above, confirmation that the person producing the card is the person to whom it was issued could be achieved via the card holder entering a PIN. If a higher level of assurance is required, biometric information such as the card holder's thumbprint could be matched against that held on the National Identity Register.

  12.  An ID card could therefore play a part in more secure and convenient means of voting, though the Government believes that this should not be the case until the ID cards scheme itself is compulsory.

CHECKING THE ACCURACY OF THE ELECTORAL REGISTER

  13.  The National Identity Register could be another means for electoral registration officers to check the accuracy of the electoral register. This could be a useful facility once a significant proportion of the population had registered on the National Identity Register, rather than waiting until the ID cards scheme was compulsory. The Identity Cards Bill would require specific regulations to be approved by Parliament for the National Identity Register to be used in this way (see paragraph 15 below).

LEGISLATION

  14.  Registration and issuing of ID cards will operate on a UK-wide basis and regulations setting out required identity checks for public services can be made in the Westminster Parliament for non-devolved functions. The Identity Cards Bill includes provisions which allow regulations to be made specifying how ID cards or checks against the National Identity Register may be required for public services.[66] Therefore should it be decided—after the ID cards scheme itself became compulsory—that the scheme had a role in either electoral registration or voting, the Identity Cards Bill includes the necessary provisions to allow Parliament to make regulations setting out precisely how the scheme would be used for this purpose.

  15  The Identity Cards Bill also allows regulations to be made which would allow organisations to make checks on the National Identity Register without the consent of the person registered.[67] These powers could be used to help identify people who had registered with the National Identity Register and appeared to be entitled to vote (eg because of their age and nationality), but who were not on the electoral register. They could also be used to help compile local electoral registers more efficiently than at present (see paragraph 10 above). As with the public service checks discussed in paragraph 14 above, Parliament would need to approve specific regulations to enable either of these uses.

REDUCING IDENTITY FRAUD

  16.  The Home Office leads a cross-public and private sector initiative to reduce identity fraud which is defined as the use of fictitious or other people's identities to facilitate crime such as financial fraud or the obtaining of false documents eg passports. Part of this work involves evaluating whether there would be a benefit in being able to check the validity of documents such as passports on-line eg by enquiring whether some of the attributes shown on a passport eg passport number are associated with a valid passport on the passport-issuing database. While this may improve identity checks for the more economically active population, it would not be sufficiently universal for enhancing the security of the electoral registration process as only 80% of the adult population in the UK holds a passport.

Annex A

PERSONAL INFORMATION WHICH MAY BE RECORDED IN THE NATIONAL IDENTITY REGISTER

  The principal items of personal information which may be recorded in the National Identity Register—not all of which may be relevant for the purposes of electoral registration—are as follows. A person's:

    (a)

    full name;

    (b)

    other names by which he is or has been known;

    (c)

    his date of birth;

    (d)

    his place of birth;

    (e)

    his gender;

    (f)

    the address of his principal place of residence in the United Kingdom;

    (g)

    the address of every other place in the United Kingdom where he has a place of residence;

    (h)

    addresses (whether in the United Kingdom or elsewhere) where he has previously resided at any time during a prescribed period;

    (i)

    his nationality;

    (j)

    his entitlement to remain in the United Kingdom and where that entitlement derives from a grant of leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom, the terms and conditions of that leave;

    (k)

    his National Identity Registration Number;

    (l)

    the number of any ID card issued to him; and

    (m)

    his date of death.






64   Identity Cards-A Summary of Findings from the Consultation Exercise on Entitlement Cards and Identity Fraud (CM 6019) page 74. Back

65   Clauses 1(5), 1(6), 1(7) and Schedule 1 of the Identity Cards Bill. Back

66   Clauses 15-17 of the Identity Cards Bill. Back

67   Clause 22 of the Identity Cards Bill. Back


 
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