Clause 1 - Registration: provision of signature and date of birth
Electoral Fraud (Northern Ireland)
11:00 am
I join in the earlier felicitations to you, Mr. Hood, and good wishes for your chairmanship, which I know from reputation, will be exemplary. I also welcome the Minister to his first tryst at such an occasion. We have met many other times, but not in this arena.
I endorse entirely the comments of the hon. Member for Belfast, East and lend whatever support I can to his amendment and the consequential amendments. Hon. Members must be clear about the importance of the Bill to Northern Ireland. The old system was a bit of a joke: people impersonating family members who could not get out to vote were tolerated and had no great impact on the results. However, we see now organised and militarised fraud of the electoral system, which produces results against the wishes of the electorate. Those results have been significant enough to change perhaps the political direction of Northern Ireland, which is why the Bill is so important. The legislation will attempt by every means possible to clamp down on fraudulent voting, which is under a systematic, paramilitary dictatorship. It is essential that we address all aspects of fraud, however cumbersome and difficult that may be.
I had a brief conversation with the Minister about introducing national insurance numbers as a means of identification. I did not receive any encouragement, but I am determined to press forward with other hon. Members to implement this provision. As has been said already, the national insurance number is unique to each individual in Northern Ireland. It has a built-in age bracketing, and is easily available on many official letters and tax forms. People identify with it and, as a unique number, it is ascribed to one person and one address only.
A national insurance number is much more traceable than a signature or date of birth, the use of which I also support. A database is readily available. The technology is already there. A number quoted can immediately be checked via a central database and the person confirmed yea or nay. Certainly there will be some loopholes with people using fictitious national insurance numbers, or even duplicate ones, although that would be rather stupid. But such loopholes would be miniscule in the scheme of things and would be no more rampant than fictitious dates of birth or forged signatures, which are much harder to identify.
The universality of the information, the common use it has in everyday life and its particular allocation to the elector mean that the national insurance number should be required in all aspects of voting. It should be required on registration and on all absent voter applications. On polling day, the name and national insurance number should be presented to the presiding officer. It is simple to refer to the central database to verify the information. It will cut out an enormous amount of fraud. Hopefully, it will be included in the new electoral ID card that is proposed only in part in the Bill. The clause dealing with that is simply permissive and not mandatory, which is disappointing.
I shall be guided by you, Mr. Hood, about speaking to the other amendments in my name about national insurance number information. Suffice it to say they deal with various matters such as registration, absent voter application or polling day questions, and would amend the data or the questions to provide for national insurance numbers to be required or requested. Amendment No. 10 would add ``National Insurance numbers'' to the title of the Bill.