Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-96)
25 JANUARY 2005
MR FRANCIS
ALDHOUSE AND
MR JONATHAN
BAMFORD
Q80 Mr Clelland: That is very interesting.
For an organisation which, at the outset you said, seemed fairly
keen on the idea of new technology and new ways of doing things,
you do not seem to have thought through very clearly what the
implications of all this are in security terms.
Mr Aldhouse: I think I said that
we are committed, as a general approach, to try to encourage and
use the new technologies. It is extremely difficult for us to
propound a specific set of security controls in the absence of
a specifically designed system. We would be extremely reluctant
to propound the system. We can comment on the sorts of considerations
that people might bear in mind and the security ones are not actually
very different from the points that I was making about identification
of the individual and how you would seek to protect the information.
Q81 Mr Betts: In some countries such
as Australia, they use other data sources, the postal authorities,
the registration of deaths, the licensing authorities and utility
companies, to provide the Electoral Commission with information
about people's change of address so the Commission can then follow
them up, hopefully to update and keep accurate the register. In
your opinion, would it be proper to use any other data sources
like these or National Insurance or council tax information to
keep our registers up to date. If it would not, would you be prepared
to support any changes of legislation to allow that to be the
case? Whether you would or would not support change of legislation,
what safeguards would you be looking at, if that were the way
parliament chose to go?
Mr Aldhouse: This is an issue
which, some time ago, the Cabinet Office looked at and more recently,
the Department for Constitutional Affairs have been looking at,
that is the question of data sharing between government departments
for different purposes. We certainly do not say on data protection
grounds that information should never be shared. We do start from
the point of view that in order to protect individuals, you should
collect information for a specific purpose and confine it to that
purpose, but there are sometimes very good important public policy
reasons for overriding that principle. This might be one of them.
That access to information should be made available in order to
ensure a good and accurate electoral roll, we would not want to
dispute. There is an issue about whether other government departments
and organisations have the statutory powers to provide that information.
It might well be that legislation is necessary. If it is necessary,
we would want to see it as narrow and specific legislation authorising
the transfer of the information for a specific and identifiable
and justifiable public purpose. We certainly do not say that this
is objectionable in principle and should be ruled out; absolutely
not.
Q82 Mr Betts: If everyone knew, when
they were filling in a council tax form, that that information
could also be used for electoral registration purposes and the
law had been changed to allow that, and that was narrowly drawn,
you then would feel that was something that would be reasonable
to do.
Mr Aldhouse: May I put it the
other way? I should like to say that it is certainly something
the Information Commissioner would not object to. I put it that
way because I do not actually think it is for the Information
Commissioner to promote the particular way of doing it, as someone
who would want to perhaps comment on data protection safeguards,
but the proposal that you are putting forward is a perfectly reasonable
proposal and not one the Information Commissioner would want to
object to. It is not really for our office to be promoting one
way of doing electoral registration.
Q83 Mr Betts: May I just take it on to
another related issue? Obviously national identity cards must
be exercising your thoughts to a degree. If we had a comprehensive
system brought in where effectively there was a list of all citizens
in the country with details of them, would it then to your mind
be appropriate if that information were collected at the same
time for electoral registration purposes? One of the things the
public often objects to is having to provide the same information
for two purposes, when they assume government ought to be doing
a little bit of sharing in a common-sense way.
Mr Aldhouse: Two points of principle.
Sometimes it is a very good idea to collect what seems to be very
similar information separately, partly because individuals might,
for entirely legitimate reasons, want to use a different name
or a different address and we have come across examples of that
in the past. In this particular case, and I have not attempted
to think through all the implications of this, that problem might
not arise and you might well want to say that the list of people
on the national identity register is to all intents and purposes
the list of those entitled to vote in elections. I could see the
strength of that argument.
Mr Bamford: Could I just add something
to that answer? One of the problems with the national identity
registration scheme which is proposed will be enrolling people
and understanding on what basis they are there. I think it would
be very clear that the actual people who are entitled to a national
identity registration number and a card would not actually be
entitled to vote in some instances. So you would be involved in
adding an extra level of difficulty to the enrolment process,
of then actually determining the eligibility for certain services
at the point of enrolment.
Q84 Mr Betts: So that is a matter of
practical objection, rather that a principle objection.
Mr Bamford: It would be a significant
practical problem for the Home Office to try to achieve that objective
at the same time as enrolling people.
Q85 Mr Betts: More immediately, the government
is, and we are waiting for a strategy paper very soon I understand,
trying to get the CORE project under way for a national database
of electoral registers which would be formed by the information
collected by electoral registration officers at local level. Again,
have you been in discussion with government about that? Have you
thought about the necessary safeguards or are you generally relaxed
about that?
Mr Aldhouse: We have not been
consulted on it.
Q86 Mr Betts: Do you know about it?
Mr Aldhouse: We know about it.
Q87 Mr Betts: You have not been consulted.
Would you have expected to be consulted about it before the project
actually is implemented?
Mr Aldhouse: We should have thought
that this was a project which had data protection implications
and we normally expect government departments to consult us when
they have such a proposal.
Q88 Chairman: Very tactful, but you are
a bit unhappy, is that right?
Mr Aldhouse: I should prefer it
if the Commissioner had been consulted.
Q89 Dr Whitehead: In paragraph 29 of
your memorandum to the Committee, you raise some concerns about
the targeting of voter profiles by political parties as a result
of use of the marked register. You suggest that by the use of
a number of other techniques, which gather different amounts of
information, very accurate profiles can be produced. You expressed
concern that that is not in your view, an appropriate use of the
marked register. On the other hand, the existence of the marked
register as a public document historically, to ensure that a check
against impersonation for example can be undertaken, seems to
be a rather important element of the process. How would you reconcile
those two positions and particularly meet your concerns about
profiling whilst allowing people to inspect the marked register
as far as potential fraud is concerned?
Mr Aldhouse: By a purely expedient
practical process, I am afraid; the sort of process which was
adopted with the poll tax arrangements. Yes, there is a need and
a pressing public policy reason to inspect the register and allow
it to be inspected. That should be permitted, but that is not
the same as providing copies of it. Inspection must be permitted.
We do not believe that copies should be made available.
Q90 Chairman: Should not be made available
to whom?
Mr Aldhouse: Complete copies should
not be published, although a member of the public, and in this
respect probably political parties would be exercising the greatest
interest, should be able to inspect marked copies of the register
in order to ensure against impersonation and any other electoral
fraud.
Q91 Dr Whitehead: A sort of chained bible
method.
Mr Aldhouse: That is our practical
expedient.
Q92 Adrian Sanders: What would there
be to stop somebody going in with a copy register and simply copying
onto their register what they see on the marked register? There
is no offence.
Mr Aldhouse: You could put together
rules about the ways in which people should inspect the register.
If somebody is really determined, I suppose there is nothing to
stop somebody going to inspect a marked-up register, copying out
five items every day and going back and doing it again. The experience
in other areas is that people will understand the principle and
respect the principle which is being demonstrated.
Q93 Adrian Sanders: On what do you base
that?
Mr Aldhouse: Our experience of
the community charge and council tax.
Mr Bamford: May I say, without
being expert on the subject, that my understanding with the existing
full register and the edited register, is that you potentially
have the same situation as well. Somebody could go in and inspect
the full register, which everybody can, but they had actually
brought a copy of the edited register with them and therefore
could annotate it with the extra details. My understanding is
that at the moment electoral registration officers do not allow
that to take place.
Q94 Adrian Sanders: There is not much
point to doing that if there is no endgame. However, there is
clearly an endgame, an interest in using a marked register in
terms of parties targeting their message at those voters who are
most likely to vote, who would be the ones recorded as having
voted in the past. It is actually a very valuable document for
any political organisation which contests elections.
Mr Aldhouse: I think I used the
community charge example before, where some rules like this were
constructed. In that sense the document was extremely valuable
to direct marketers and others and the practical inconvenience
of copying out by hand small quantities at a time conveyed the
message that this was not acceptable. Yes, it is possible that
someone would attach such importance to it that this would not
be a successful expedient: at the moment that is the expedient
we would recommend.
Q95 Dr Whitehead: Does the same principle
not apply to the concern that the credit reference agencies have
access to a full copy of the register and indeed they quite often
use that access for a purpose which does not relate to elections
but relates to some other purpose entirely?
Mr Aldhouse: That is absolutely
right. The Commissioner's position in principle was and still
is that the electoral register exists to aid the conduct of elections.
That is why, for 15 years now—to put it in the rather strong
words of the first Data Protection Registrar—he could not
see why anybody should be under a statutory duty to report their
changes of address to direct marketers. The credit reference agencies
advanced a strong argument that for the avoidance of fraud and
similar reasons they should be able to have access to the electoral
register in order to assist the identification of individuals.
This is one of those issues where you have a competing public
interest which the government and the courts indeed accepted should
override the narrow data protection view. I do not dispute that.
Our starting point was that there is a narrow purpose for the
electoral register.
Q96 Chairman: As I understand it, the
mobile phone companies are actually improving registration amongst
youngsters because you cannot now easily buy a mobile phone on
one of these arrangements where you get the phone free and pay
for our charges unless you can prove your address. I understand
the mobile phone companies, via the credit rating people, are
checking whether you are on the electoral register. If you are
on the electoral register you can get mobile phones. So there
is a certain incentive, is there not, for young people to get
on the electoral register.
Mr Aldhouse: I suppose unintended
consequences can sometimes be good as well as bad.
Chairman: On that note, may I thank you
very much for your evidence?
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