Electoral Administration Bill

The noble Lord has, as usual, raised an important point. I do not have any examples for him of how we might use this, and I am not going to pretend to the Committee that I do. This is part of the consultation process. We do not have any particular intention to use this power. There are probably circumstances that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and I could cobble together ourselves, where something might be done by CORE which assisted an ERO, for which there might be a charge paid. If those circumstances arose and if in the consultation people said, ““Well, actually, if CORE were able to perform this function in the future, that might be of some benefit””, then we would want to keep the flexibility within the legislation to do that. If the noble Lord could not think of any examples, he will not be surprised that I cannot think of any either. However, it is part of the consultation and there might be a case for it. The measure should stay in the Bill because in the future it would enable us to recognise something that CORE was providing for EROs. But it is not there for us to be able to levy charges in an obscure way; it is simply that there might come a point when CORE is able to offer a service for an ERO for which it should be able to have some recompense.