Political Parties and Elections Bill

I start by expressing my thanks to the Minister for moving his amendment at some length; we are grateful for the comprehensive nature of the explanation that he gave of the amendments. We were also grateful for the explanation that we had from him and his officials the day before of the purpose of the amendments. Having said that, I will repeat the point that we made on Second Reading and which has also been made by the spokesmen for the Liberal Democrat party; that it would have been helpful if we could have seen the amendments, or at least a draft of them, at a much earlier stage. I understand that the Government had agreed two amendments of this sort on Report in another place, and I think that is now probably two or three months ago. If we could have seen the amendments, or drafts of them, on Second Reading or before, that would have helped. As it is, we will have to spend quite a long time on them on Report, particularly dealing with the concerns that we, and I suspect the Liberal Democrats, have about them. Those concerns largely reflect the question of timing. The noble Lord has put into his amendments something that is very unusual; a suggestion that the earliest possible date that this can come into effect is 2014, even if the Government, the Electoral Commission and all others in the run-up to that date think that everything is in place and ready to go. If the amendments go through as they are now, we cannot go any earlier than 2014 without amending primary legislation. I give notice that I have a strong suspicion that we will be tabling amendments, which I suspect will be supported by the Liberal Democrats, or the Liberal Democrats will table some similar amendment that will suggest not having a cast-iron date in the Bill but leaving it to such a moment when it is felt by the Electoral Commission and others who have an interest that we are ready to move forward with individual voter registration. I make it clear to the Minister that we are not happy with the timing, and we will certainly seek an amendment on that. It seems very odd to have in statute a hard and fast rule with a time limit of this sort that binds the Electoral Commission and the Government, whomsoever they might be, to stick to that. It looks slightly as if the current Government, for their own particular electoral reasons, find it more convenient to make sure that nothing can happen until 2014 at the earliest.