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Mr. Mark Oaten (Winchester) (LD): I beg to move amendment No. 101, in clause 12, page 11, line 11, at end add—
'(7) The Secretary of State shall make no charge for changes to the Register required by this section.'.
It is a pleasure to be a member of the Committee and to be serving under your chairmanship, Ms Anderson. I do not intend to detain the Committee for long.
The purpose of tabling the amendment is to establish a couple of issues about the clause and the way in which the notification of any changes affecting the accuracy of the register would take place. I have some simple questions for the Minister. Will there be any impact on the costs involved for individuals who comply? In other words, are any charges planned as part of a notification where someone has to submit a change of address or name? However, would any charge be incurred for notifying the register of changes?
Secondly, I should like to get a sense of the Minister's estimate of how many annual changes are likely to be required under the clause. What are we looking at? What kind of roll change will there be, and how many individuals will have to notify the register of changes? I am assuming that we are dealing in this clause with people who change their names or move house and that an individual would have to notify for those two main reasons.
I have looked at the electoral roll, as many Members are suddenly doing with greater interest at the moment, and I noticed a churn in my constituency. In parts of London, that churn can involve up to a quarter of the population. Many people move or get married each year. It would be interesting to know the
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Government's estimate of how many individuals will need to make a change to the register. How do the Government think that number can be managed and coped with on top of those individuals coming on stream—on to the register and having ID cards—day to day anyway?
Those are my questions: will there be any costs and charges involved for individuals and what will the churn effect be? How many notifications and changes will have to take place? I hope that the Minister can answer that latter point, which is significant for the ability of the system to operate effectively.
Mr. Taylor: I ought to offer an apology to the hon. Gentleman for my unintentional inadvertence. I asked my hon. Friend the Member for Woking whether he would comment on the interaction between amendments Nos. 117 and 100. At that moment, I had not realised the authorship of amendment No. 100. Perhaps it would have been more courteous for me to have addressed my comments to the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten).
I content myself by saying the following, as a modest contribution to the very real concept of churn. Every year in this country, we issue 1 million new driving licences that did not exist before. The numerical changes can be very substantial indeed.
Mr. Browne: I am grateful for the brevity with which the hon. Member for Winchester introduced his amendment. I shall try to reflect that same brevity in my response. I understand the wishes behind this amendment, which would provide that no charges would be levied for modifications to the register.
Our intention is that when details are changed in the register and no new card is issued, there should be no charge to the individual. However, it is right that the maintenance processes should ensure that payment could be collected, in particular in cases when a new card needs to be issued. Any charging scheme is still to be finalised, and the actual charges will depend on the circumstances in which any notification relevant to an individual's entry needs to be made.
It is not uncommon for charges to be made in such circumstances. For example, the DVLA levy a charge for the replacement of a lost driving licence and the Passport Service does the same for lost or stolen passports, except in exceptional circumstances. I reassure Committee members, for the sake of their constituents and others, that we agreed with great alacrity not to levy any charge on those who lost their passports in that tragic event, the tsunami. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Winchester raises his eyebrows from a sedentary position.
Mr. Chris Mole (Ipswich) (Lab): That is quite a trick.
Mr. Browne: Perhaps the Official Report should put, ''From his sedentary position, he raises his eyebrows.'' I personally assure the hon. Member for Winchester—I am sure that he will take this from me—that immediately that the issue was brought to my attention, I decided that no charges should be levied and issued an instruction to that effect. If I was remiss
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at all, it was in not anticipating for a couple of days that that would be an issue.
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Some official who took a phone call from a distressed relative or individual may have been unable to develop the policy at that point. That is no criticism of the official. Once brought to my attention—by one of my hon. Friends, in a short conversation—I immediately took the decision that we would not be allowing a charge. The decision was not a difficult one and I am not looking for credit, but it was made as quickly as it could have been. Members will understand that a number of decisions had to be made around Government very quickly about that time. If there was any inconvenience to any constituents, I apologise to them for those few days in which perhaps the decision had not been made.
This is quite common. The hon. Member for Winchester seeks a specific answer to another question. I deeply regret that I am unable to answer that question. At this stage of the development of the scheme, we have not yet decided exactly what changes will be notifiable or how notifications are to be made. As that decision has not been made, I cannot tell him how many notifications we estimate will need to be made. He can rest assured that there will be a substantial number of them. From our own experience of constituents moving, as reflected in the voters register, he is quite right that there are significant changes. I recollect from my period of responsibility for that area of policy in Northern Ireland, in some places up to a quarter of people can change their address in an electoral registration area in a Parliament.
Mr. David Curry (Skipton and Ripon) (Con): It is quite common that when professional ladies get married they maintain their maiden name for the purposes of continuing work, but adopt their married name in a more social environment. When somebody is quite legitimately operating under two surnames, what would be the position on identity cards?
Mr. Browne: This is off the top of my head and, if I am inaccurate, I will communicate with the Committee as I have done over the past 24 hours, but my understanding of the scheme is that people will be able to register under any particular identity. If for legitimate, not fraudulent, reasons they wish to use another name, then that fact could be registered and recorded on the register. We will not be issuing two cards to anyone. People will have to decide for the card. That is my immediate response. I will come back to the right hon. Gentleman. [Interruption.] As I stand here, inspiration arrives—in my head. Interestingly, what I have been given is what I just told the Committee. Both names will have to be registered, but individuals can choose which of the names goes on the card. It will be a matter of choice for the individual.
I do not think that I have anything to add. I have made myself clear to the hon. Member for Winchester.
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He will express a degree of dissatisfaction—I expect that—probably merited given his view of the scheme.
Mr. Oaten: I am extremely grateful for the Minister's comments on passports for those involved in the tsunami tragedy. Someone did contact me and I raised those concerns with the Home Office, which responded in that way, for which the whole Committee will be grateful.
I take some comfort from the response of the Minister on the charges that could not be imposed on an individual who has to notify a change on the register. However, the Committee will note that he did not rule out the possibility that there could be some admin charges involved in that process. He has not categorically said that there would be no charges.
If we take the figure from this morning—a family of two adults and two teenage children—we are looking at an initial cost of about £500 to put the scheme in place. If, after they have registered and got their cards, six months later they choose to move house, they will be interested to know whether there will be charges involved as a consequence. That could be a considerable figure, particularly on that scale—four individuals in an adult household.
We may want to revisit that point. I am useless at false outrage, but having got this far into the Bill, I am outraged that the Minister does not yet know the churn effect. The Government are working on how the scheme will operate, so they should know how many additional individuals will need to make changes during the year, because that will be significant. That strikes me as odd, and I am mildly flabbergasted that they do not have the figures.
Mr. Browne: The hon. Gentleman may be flabbergasted, but I may have misinterpreted his question. I thought that he was asking for specific figures. If he wanted to know the rate, I can tell him that we are operating on a churn rate of addresses of 14 per cent. per annum and a churn rate of names of 0.5 per cent. per annum.
Mr. Oaten: No, I wanted to know whether the Government have made an estimate of the impact. I am surprised that the name change figure is as low as it is, but obviously the Home Office has carried out research on that. I am also slightly surprised that the churn rate of individuals moving addresses is only 14 per cent. That does not ring true compared with the electoral roll. However, at least it was helpful to receive the figures. I hope that we will have the reassurance that, when the Government are examining the implementation of the provision, they will have factored all that into account.
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