Electoral Administration Bill

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for raising that point. The consultation document tries to set out where one might go, if one wished to, in thinking through the opportunities that a record of the registers would make available. As the noble Baroness will recognise, when we talked about the background in the consultation document, we described what the objectives of CORE would be: to help to improve the integrity of electoral registers; to give convenient national access to those who are entitled to look at the information; and to help to support modernisation of the voting process. I am absolutely clear that, in order to move in the direction that the noble Baroness and I have just debated, we would need additional primary legislation. With the consultation, we are flagging up the potential if people want to go down that route. For obvious reasons, Members of the Committee are raising their particular concerns. It is right and proper that Parliament should make a decision that it wished to move in that direction, which would have to be through primary legislation. I can give a categoric assurance to the noble Baroness on that point. I will formally set that out in a letter to her and copy it to Members of the Committee to make it crystal clear that there would need to be further legislation. However, we are also trying to indicate that a national record may give rise to opportunities for the future. For example, there is the potential for preparing reports on the national data set in a different way. It is right and proper that we should point that out. Amendment No. 15 is at the heart of this matter, too. I make it clear that there is no question but that the information held by the local ERO is the definitive version; the local register is the definitive version. Of course I will say, as noble Lords expect me to, that the amendment is unnecessary. In the consultation paper, we made it clear that the locally maintained register should continue to be the definitive source of information. However, the paper is only a consultation document, so we have been back and checked that the existing statutory provisions are clear that the register is the definitive source of data on which to run an election. While CORE holds a copy of electoral register data, no part of the Bill elevates the status of the information that it holds to that of the information on a register. The register will remain that which is maintained directly by the local EROs. That is the position. I would be very grateful if the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, would look at what the statutory provisions say to ensure that he is satisfied with that answer, which I am very happy to discuss further with him. There is absolute clarity that the provisions stand: the local register is the definitive document. We are talking merely about information copied into a record. I hope that that addresses the concerns that noble Lords have raised on this group of amendments.