Electoral Administration Bill

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for raising this issue. In many areas I agree with the spirit of what she is seeking to do. The CORE scheme order will set out the rules appropriately and it will be subject to affirmative resolution in your Lordships’ House and another place. We agree completely with the principle of ensuring that that is appropriately done. My noble and learned friend has already advised the Joint Committee on Human Rights that the CORE scheme will not affect the protection of privacy and data protection rights in the disclosure of electoral material. That is important in this context and I hope that it goes some way towards reassuring the noble Baroness. The reason why we cannot replicate this completely—although I accept that we should try to get many of the principles established—is that we would end up having to do things in a slightly odd way, because there will be different schemes in place. We are able categorically to say that the CORE will not change the information that is collected or the people or the organisations to which it may be provided. So we are very clear about data protection and we are very clear that we are not changing the information that is currently collected. The purpose for which the information is used by the people and organisations to which it is provided would be the same. Our proposals are designed in part to make sure that those who need to collect the data on a large-scale basis, particularly the Electoral Commission or political parties, would benefit. For example, organisations that need to look at donation checking would be able to do so without the current requirement to consult more than 400 local registers. As I have indicated, the reason why things will not be exactly the same is because registers work slightly differently at local level. The most obvious example is that a full set of the core data would need to be made available for public inspection, which we do not think appropriate. We think it much more appropriate for public inspection to be on a local basis. As we move towards regulations, noble Lords will see something similar with the safeguards already given to the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the categoric reassurances about what we propose to do. Where it looks different, that will be because regulations that cover a number of schemes will be different from regulations that cover one scheme. I hope that that reassures the noble Baroness.