Electoral Administration Bill

moved Amendment No. 82A:"Page 14, line 26, leave out paragraph (b)." The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 82A I shall speak also to Amendment No. 83. These are the amendments to which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, noticed, I tried to speak earlier and then rapidly moved on from, realising I was in the wrong place. This part of the Bill deals with the areas the pilots might cover. Amendment No. 82A seeks to leave out paragraph (b) of Clause 15(2). It states that the pilot may take place,"““in relation to so much of the area of the local authority as is so specified””." The amendment probes under what circumstances only part of a local authority might be included. Amendment No. 83 would insert the words,"““but a piloting proposal may only be made for either the whole of a local authority area, or the whole of one or more parliamentary constituencies””." These are both probing amendments to point out that there could well be unintended consequences by including either parts of a local authority area or part of a parliamentary constituency, depending on which election was taking place. In most places it is true that local authorities and parliamentary constituencies are not contiguous. In the part of the world where I live, Pendle and Burnley, we are very fortunate that the district is the constituency. It is ideal, but in most places because we try and match up numbers evenly that does not happen. The unintended consequences could occur as a result of the impact of piloting proposals for personal identifier schemes on the actual election results. If the effect of introducing these schemes is indeed that some electors are no longer registered and the proportion of people on the register goes down, it could have a disproportionate effect if the areas being piloted and the areas not being piloted either within a local authority or within a constituency vote in different ways. I can think of a couple of constituencies in the north-west that straddle local authority boundaries where the part of the constituency in one local authority is on the face of it more ““Conservative”” and the part in the other local authority is more ““Labour””—one is more middle class and one is more working class. However, I know that nowadays in many places the middles classes vote New Labour and the working classes vote Liberal Democrat. However, in parliamentary terms there is still basically a correlation between socio-economic class and the party that people vote for, although it is obviously not absolute. When it comes to choosing pilots, it is very important indeed to look not just at getting a fair representation of the different things that have already been talked about—different sorts of areas, different sorts of ethnicity, different parties controlling the local authority—but also to make sure that there will be no unintended consequences which severely affect the election result. If one half of a constituency is in a pilot but the other half is not, it may well change the result. Equally, if you pilot one part of a local authority that might be full of council estates and do not pilot another part that may comprise a prosperous rural area and suburbs, or vice versa, it could have that consequence. I do not think it is possible to put in the Bill what I am asking for; that is, sensible area pilots. Nevertheless, it is very important indeed that this issue is looked at. If there are allegations afterwards that the process has affected the election results, it will discredit the whole pilot. I beg to move.