Electoral Administration Bill

I am very grateful. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, are absolutely right about the critical importance of discussing the issue of consultation. I agree that that is very important. I have been musing about how to approach the issue. We have sought to create a scheme that is primarily about an amalgamation of lots of different registers. At one level it is a very simple administrative process. That is the fundamental basis—I keep wanting to say the ““core”” of it. My instinct is to say that if you are doing that there are clearly people who need consulting about issues around data protection, and people such as those in the Electoral Commission who have a view on elections. I would argue that the EROs should also be consulted, because they have the responsibility for how the electoral register is maintained. That is a matter for them, in the sense of their being statutorily independent when they do that. So those are the obvious people to be statutory consultees. The way in which we have designed this list is by asking who it is most important to put in legislation that we consult in is process. We sought to do that while recognising what CORE is and is not, and that it does not detract from the local register; it is an overarching scheme that brings things together for certain purposes, some of which noble Lords love and some of which noble Lords do not like—but people are getting a reasonably warm glow about one or other aspect at the moment. It is not something fundamentally radical to do with how we have our register, because it is not a register but a record. That is the basis on which we believe that we have got right the list of statutory consultees. It is not something beyond that. Of course, noble Lords are right in saying that we may well want to talk to local authorities for the reasons that noble Lords recognise in setting something up, to talk to them about what we are doing and take their views. But it is actually about pulling together registers into a record, so we do not want to make them statutory consultees because we do not think that that is appropriate—and certainly not at the expense of the EROs. I heard what the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said about not being particularly bothered on that either way, but it is very important that the EROs are part of the process. That is the fundamental difference between us—on the statutory nature of the consultation and the relevance of that consultation to what this thing is that we are seeking to do. Even when a consultation seems quite straightforward, it inevitably means that we are adding on hundreds and hundreds of new consultees to a scheme that is essentially fairly straightforward. We are not going to consult the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Executive because this is a reserved matter. We shall be in dialogue and discussion with them, but we believe that statutory consultation would be inappropriate and would blur the distinction in this case. We would want the major political parties to be able to comment and, because the provisions have to go through Parliament, the major political parties have the final say about what happens with any scheme, because the draft instrument must come before Parliament for approval. So in a sense it puts them completely in the driving seat. The noble Lord will know that I could not possibly resist pointing out that in his amendment he suggests that we should consult all political parties. We dug out the list of political parties that we have; there are 317 on the GB register, and I might hold a short quiz later to see how many noble Lords recognise them. I have no idea what these political parties are, but I love them. There is the British Unicorn Party, the Church of the Militant Elvis Party, the Grumpy Old Men Political Party, the Idle Toad Party, the Fancy Dress Party, and the Make Politicians History Party, which is a particular favourite of mine. There are many, including the Rock and Roll Loony Party and the Short Fat Solicitor Party. They will all write to me as a consequence of my reading out their names. There are many interesting parties, and I know that the noble Lord did not intend that—but he will know that I could not resist the opportunity to read out the names of some of the more interesting parties. There are 51 parties in Northern Ireland on the register as well. I come to my principal difference with the noble Lord and the noble Baroness. In taking information from the local register, which we have described as being the fundamental part of how we collect information and keep the register, and transferring it to a database, we think that we have identified the right consultees in statutory terms to make sure that we do it properly. We do not rule out talking to other people, but we do not want to put it in statute that we have to consult a whole range of people for whom this not necessarily a primary purpose. They will of course have an interest and we would want to talk to them, but there is a difference between them and statutory consultees. Given what are seeking to do and the importance of who are the right people to consult, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.