Electoral Administration Bill

I was a little aghast initially when I looked at subsections (8) and (9). It seems that the Secretary of State has a tremendous amount of power. Those of us who do not instinctively always trust every Secretary of State on every occasion on every matter to do with electoral administration think it a little peculiar for the Secretary of State to have such wide-ranging powers. But there were some problems with establishing the CORE scheme in the first instance. While some of us are very enthusiastic about the overall project, we know that there will be difficulties. We do not entirely trust IT in the same way as we do not always trust Secretaries of State. There are bound to be IT problems and there is a need to experiment and vary. This power being so wide-ranging, I am a little fearful of it. With hindsight, perhaps at the very least we need a provision for consultation with the Electoral Commission—I can think of no other body. It would not be right for the Secretary of State to have such wide-ranging powers without at the very least specifying in the Bill something to which we will come back—the provision for public consultation with the Electoral Commission before there are any variations along these lines. If a Secretary of State were to do something rather draconian with the pilot projects, we would at least know publicly that he or she had done so in the teeth of opposition or advice from others, including the Electoral Commission.