Baroness Suttie (LD)

My Lords, this has been an interesting short debate that strayed a little beyond these regulations, here and there. I thank the Minister for her introduction and the Electoral Commission for the briefing it provided ahead of this debate. I shall be extremely brief. We support these regulations and see them as a necessary short-term fix to ensure that we do not lose the 87,000 electors from the register. However, I hope the Minister will accept that we probably have to revisit comprehensive, long-term reform of the electoral registration process in Northern Ireland. It is now essential that we modernise the system, perhaps especially ahead of the next scheduled canvass in 2030. Could the Minister say whether the Government intend at some point to introduce automatic or automated voter registration, whether they intend to use enhanced government or local government datasets for a more targeted canvass in Northern Ireland and whether they intend to incorporate electoral registration into other public service transactions to improve efficiency and accessibility? I agree with the questions asked by the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, to get a government response on the increased use of online registration. It is an extremely important point and I look forward to the Minister’s reply. As other noble Lords have said, confidence in the accuracy and completeness of the electoral registration processes in Northern Ireland is a key part of the democratic process. This measure, although a short-term fix, is important to allow 87,000 electors not to fall off, but I hope that we will look at this more comprehensively in future.