Electoral Administration Bill

I am always delighted to talk about any issue in Committee, and I am grateful to my noble friend. Noble Lords will know from the consultation paper that we looked at a number of different models. The ones that found greatest favour—those that we felt were most appropriate—had estimations ranging from, in model 4, £7.4 million at the low end and £15.1 million at the high end and, in model 5, £11.1 million at the low end and £22 million at the high end. I shall not dwell on this now and my noble friend will obviously need to look at the detail, but at the moment my department has a budget of about £10 million for this. We will have to consider what arises from the consultation paper—that is, where people feel we should be and what we believe is an appropriate way forward at present. But that is the kind of budget that we are looking at and I hope that those figures are useful. I turn to the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves—I nearly called him ““my noble friend”” as well; friendship is breaking out everywhere. In the consultation, we indicated that we are thinking of taking a region as the starting point for the CORE work and developing that. We might decide to do things slightly differently in that region. We might decide ultimately to take two regions or to develop the CORE more quickly or slowly depending on the issues that arise. A region is probably about the right level at which to begin. As for Wales, Scotland and England, our ambition is to end up with one record. It is important that we develop CORE to enable us to do that. That would not prevent—I am not sure that this is what the noble Lord was getting at, but it is important to say it—an individual or organisation that is entitled to obtain the information available from getting the Scottish, Welsh or English register from CORE. One could break down the record nationally if that were of use or interest, but our ambition is to have one CORE record, not three, at the end of the process. I hope that I have addressed that point. Our current ambition is probably a regional scheme, but if we are looking at an incremental approach, we need the flexibility in the legislation to enable us to do that in the most appropriate way. The CORE scheme will be based on Westminster constituencies. That is clear. We do not intend to deal with areas that are smaller than the size of a principal area of a local authority when specifying or adding to the geographical coverage of a CORE scheme. I am grateful for the noble Lord’s definition in his Amendment No. 41. We do not think that it is necessary, but if the noble Lord feels strongly about it, I am happy to discuss with parliamentary counsel whether it would add something further to the Bill. I hope that he will withdraw his amendment on that basis.