I bang on quite a bit about the need for charities to make sure that their address lists are up to date. Some, patently, are at least seven or eight years out of date – simply because letters are sent to me at an address I left many years ago.

Is the electoral register the answer for checking addresses? In theory, the answer must be yes. After all, this is one of the methods used by credit rating agencies, and the financial world in general, to help check that we are who we say we are. But they (quite rightly) have access to the unexpurgated electoral register. Charities and others have to use an edited version. Anybody on the main register can choose not to be on the edited version which is available to any Tom, Dick or Harry. I, personally, have made such a choice.

I am told that the edited version has only about half the names which are on the main register. And yet charities are up in arms about the proposal to withdraw it. In practice, there are other databases, maintained by organisations in the direct mail business. And my guess would be that some of them are likely to be better, overall, than the edited electoral register.

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