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Electoral Administration Bill

I add my voice to the argument. As regards dates of birth changing, they change all the time. My late wife was 24 when I married her and when she died she was 25. The only reason she had advanced a year was that her eldest daughter was 24 at the time. Indeed, the dates on her tombstone and on her passport were both false dates. This is a problem which we face with all numbering systems, or anything like that. A number is an entirely impersonal thing. Checking it, whatever system of checking you have, is difficult. We know that there are a lot of false national insurance numbers. An identity card, if it comes in, is merely another number because we shall not impress an iris scan on our postal voting form. Indeed, I suspect that it will not require fingerprints either as few of us are equipped to give a proper fingerprint in a home environment. A signature is about the only personal identifier that we can inscribe ourselves on a document and which can be checked and traced back to us. Most of us recognise our own signatures. If it is a question of fraud, we can be presented with a document and asked: ““Is this yours?”” It would be obvious when it is a real fraud and any of us are capable of identifying whether we have made a particular signature. I think it is absolutely the best identifier in practical terms for identifying fraud.