Lord Shamash (Lab)

My Lords, first of all I congratulate my noble friend Lord Macintosh on his maiden speech. I also wish the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield very well in his retirement; I hope he has planned it properly so he will have a lot of fun. The message I want to convey is the issue about underregistration, which people have discussed during the course of this debate. Before I do that, I decided I would get a printed copy of the Representation of the People Act—something I have lived with for many years—and it is that thick. There are 536 pages in this bit of legislation—536. I remember in 2001, when I was a young lawyer, going to a meeting about the creation of the Electoral Commission. That was 25 years ago. One of the issues we discussed was consolidation, which is a matter I have raised with my noble friend the Minister. It is desperately called for. It is a nonsense that we have been through this—25 years and we are still waiting for consolidation. I do not think I will live to see it, the way we are going. It is quite extraordinary. What a way of carrying on, frankly. We have had the figure of 8 million people not on the register. Just think of it this way: that is every single person in London. That is the population of London. That is 8 million people who are not on the register who should be. I wish to address underregistration, covered by Clauses 17 to 24 and Schedule 2, which set out the mechanisms for automatic voter registration—AVR—without an application. Clause 20 goes on to set out the provisions for a pilot scheme. I urge the Minister to take speedy action to implement the pilot in as short a time as possible, so that the scheme will be ready for the next general election, not the one after. The measures seek to introduce more automated forms of voter registration and could help enfranchise the millions of private renters, and other underrepresented groups, who face barriers to both registering to vote and remaining registered when they move home, for example. Datasets could lead to more than nine in 10 private renters being registered to vote. Of the 9.41 million private renters over 16 in England and Wales at the 2021 census, 8.5 million lived in households likely to interact with the council for council tax, HMRC for self-assessment tax returns, DVLA for driving licences, and DWP for universal credit, state pensions or other means-tested benefits. Automatic registration would update electoral records when people update their address with trusted public services such as local authorities for council tax, et cetera. Research has found that AVR could increase private renter registration from 65% to 90%—a dramatic increase—by removing these key barriers to registration. However, the Bill currently contains no clear legal duty or timeline for the nationwide rollout of automatic voter registration. Without this, there is a risk that this reform will be fully effective only for a general election in the 2030s, rather than the next one. The Government should commit to laying regulations by a specific date and to ensuring adequate resourcing and equality impact monitoring. My view is that to deal with this now is very urgent if we are serious about getting our electoral law into some sort of proper shape. Therefore, will my noble friend the Minister give a clear indication that the AVR system, via the pilot, will be implemented quickly, as set out in the Bill?