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Electoral Administration Bill

The hon. Gentleman must decide whether people would not remain on the register if they were invited to provide their national insurance number. That is profoundly unlikely. I agree entirely that there are serious problems in this country concerning people who are not on the register but should be. If their national insurance number were an additional requirement, I do not think that that would put them off. There are far more fundamental problems that we must address, but the national insurance number is not one of them. Finally, I want to touch on one other point—pilot schemes, rather than a national roll-out scheme. I put this as charitably as I can: we all know that Government timetables tend to slip from what they hope to achieve. It is highly likely that if the Government were to roll out a pilot scheme, followed potentially by a national roll-out, that would not occur before the next general election. I come back to the point with which I began. The House has an obligation to all those who require the register to have integrity to give them confidence to use the electoral system. We owe it to them to provide for improvements to the system to be made soon.