Clause 1 - Registration: provision of signature anddate of birth
Electoral Fraud (Northern Ireland) Bill
4:30 pm
Mr Des Browne (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Northern Ireland Office; Kilmarnock and Loudoun, Labour)
I am grateful for the opportunity to share with the Committee various facts that I have had checked, taking advantage of the Committee's adjournment. I hope not to prolong the debate significantly but to provide those who return to the debate with some practical information that may inform their contributions.
It is true that everybody has the right to vote, but not everybody has the right to a national insurance number. That may come as a surprise to some people. I have listened to hon. Members saying confidently—presumably they researched it—that people who do not know their national insurance number can find it out for the purpose of electoral registration. That is simply untrue. To obtain a national insurance number, people must meet one of two criteria: they must either claim benefit or pay tax. National insurance numbers will not be given to those who do not fulfil those criteria. Those people would be disenfranchised as a consequence of the amendments.
I can give the Committee a recent example of someone who would be entitled to vote but was not entitled to a national insurance number—indeed the Inland Revenue refused to give her one. A British family moved to South Africa some years ago when their daughter was very young; at the age of 18 she returned to Britain to study at university. She wanted to apply for a student loan but was unable to do so because she did not have a national insurance number and, moreover, was not entitled to one. Normally, children of 16 or over receive a national insurance number, but only if they are receiving child benefit, as that satisfies one of the criteria. The student was not receiving any benefit and was not entitled to a national insurance number, but she was entitled to vote. She was a British citizen who applied to the Inland Revenue and was rightly denied a national insurance number on the grounds that she was not intending to claim benefit or to work while studying at university.
I admit that that is an unusual case, but I use it to illustrate a serious point. A grave flaw in the argument is that we should just require national insurance numbers to be used for qualification for being on the electoral register. We do not, presumably, expect people to start claiming benefit or having to work so that they are entitled to a national insurance number in order to get a vote. That would be ludicrous, and that argument is not being made.
A further example is a childless French woman who is married to a Northern Ireland resident. That is not beyond the bounds of possibility. If the woman did not work or claim benefit, she would not be entitled to a national insurance number. However, she would be entitled to register to vote so that she could exercise her democratic right to vote in the European, parliamentary, local government and Assembly elections. She could not go on the electoral register if the amendments were accepted.
I acknowledge that the number of people living in Northern Ireland who meet such a description is likely to be relatively small but, as a Minister, I cannot accept the amendments if they mean that one person in Northern Ireland would be denied their right to vote. That would undoubtably be the case for at least those two examples.
Mr. Blunt rose—