Electoral Administration Bill

Before my noble friend responds, my concern with that is that the Minister’s response would be fine if there were areas in which participation were perfect. There is no such area, however, and there should be a requirement. What is written in so far is more in the form of incentives than requirements. I come back to this point: they have to have regard to guidance given by the Electoral Commission, but ““have regard to”” is extremely soft in legal terms. It means no more than that you have read something. So long as you can show you have read it, you can then ignore the guidance that is given. I would like to see this provision firmed up; it is central to the Bill, and we may need to come back to it to firm up the clause.