Electoral Administration Bill

moved Amendment No. 8:"Page 2, line 7, at end insert—" ““(   )   A scheme shall not cross a boundary between England and Wales, or between England and Scotland.”” The noble Lord said: This group of amendments does a little gentle probing about the areas that may be covered by the pilot schemes that the Government are proposing for an initial CORE scheme. When I say ““pilot schemes””, I mean the Government’s proposal that the initial CORE scheme will be an experiment to see whether it works. I have no idea how big the initial CORE scheme will be and one reason for these amendments is to try to probe that. Amendment No. 8 is designed to see whether the initial CORE area could cross the borders of England and Wales or England and Scotland. It was tabled at the request of a Welsh friend of mine who is a little concerned that that may be possible. Amendment No. 9 tests whether the initial CORE area has to be a contiguous geographical area or whether it could be a dozen constituencies scattered all over the country. My assumption is that it would be a contiguous area—a region, a county, a town, a city or whatever—but the reason for tabling the amendment is to get an answer from the Government about whether they have made a decision on that. Amendment No. 34 tests a provision that occurs in Clause 5, which refers to a ““constituency””. Clause 5 states:"““A CORE scheme may make provision as to the steps to be taken . . . in circumstances where a constituency is not wholly situated in the area for which an ERO whose area is specified in the scheme acts””." I assume that that refers to a Westminster constituency, but perhaps it does not; it may refer to a Scottish constituency or a European constituency. Clearly there are other electoral areas, such as the multi-member electoral areas in Wales and Scotland that form part of the additional member system in those elections. Of course, if the local wards or county divisions have not been aligned with constituencies, it is even conceivable that there may be an overlap with local authority electoral divisions. So I propose that in the Bill we make provision for the steps to be taken if there are other sorts of electoral areas than just Westminster constituencies. Again, I should be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about that. The final amendment in the group would introduce a definition of the word ““area”” at the end of Part 1 in Clause 8, which concerns the interpretation of Part 1. Amendment No. 41 would insert a definition of an area as being an area of an electoral registration authority—in other words, the area covered by a local ERO. It is not clear to me whether ““area”” means any old area or whether the Government are thinking of building blocks of the relevant areas for electoral registration, which are areas where the work takes place. If that is not the case, then what does it mean? Clause 1(2) states:"““The electoral registration officer (ERO) who acts for an area specified in a scheme must provide the CORE keeper with the specified electoral registration information””," and so on. The implication is that the area is that administered or covered by the ERO, but it is not clear and I am not sure whether that is the case. My purpose in tabling the amendment is to find out the answer. Having said that, I beg to move.