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Political Parties and Elections Bill

If my hon. Friend bears with me for two or three minutes, I will come to that point, because the two things are linked, although not quite in the way that he suggests. In the early stages, to ensure that we take time to acclimatise the electorate to the radical change that is proposed, there would be no distinction drawn between those people who were registered to vote through having been included on a household form, and those who had voluntarily provided their identifiers. Household registration would effectively remain in place, but a base of identifier data would be being built up alongside it. I will work closely with electoral administrators and the Electoral Commission to ensure that the lessons of the Gould report are applied during the initial, permissive period. Under the Bill, the provision of identifiers will become compulsory at the time of the autumn 2015 annual canvass. That lead-in would give the Electoral Commission time to consider the full weight of evidence on the collection of identifiers, help electoral registration officers to identify why certain groups might have difficulty providing them, and allow the Electoral Commission to start addressing those problems before any move to full individual registration.