Written evidence submitted by Lord Freud,
Minister for Welfare Reform, Department for Work and Pensions
1. Thank you for your letter[55]
regarding the methods that the Department for Work and Pensions
uses to validate address and record nationality details.
2. With regard to the point about using the Local
Land and Property Gazeteer (LLPG), the repository for our information,
the Customer Information System (CIS), provides information for
the whole of the UK.
3. The Department considered options as to the
best source of data to validate addresses taking into account
the need for national coverage. However, the LLPG only covers
England and Wales. To ensure national coverage and accuracy we
use the QAS Pro system by Experian (which covers England, Wales,
Scotland and Northern Ireland) to validate addresses against the
Royal Mail Postal Address File.
4. As for the feasibility of recording nationality,
the Department is reviewing its requirements to collect nationality
data for the purpose of paying social security benefits. I am
unable to comment at this stage on the scope for such data to
be used for matching eligible voters.
5. If you have any further queries, please do
not hesitate to contact me.
October 2011
55 Not printed Back
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