Political Parties and Elections Bill

I disagree, because a local authority has a right to go to the Secretary of State within the context that this is a national scheme, but it has very specific problems that it has to deal with. It may have a higher level of multi-occupancy or whatever, and therefore it needs extra resources to help that process. But to pick out areas just because they happen to have a large Asian population, which is what my noble friend is saying, is discriminatory. I do not think that that is right. I also need to respond on another matter. I intended to make this very short, but my noble friend has goaded me. In respect of Northern Ireland, he quoted a lot from the Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee report for 2004-05, but that is now so out of date as to be unquotable as evidence in real terms. Of course we have to learn from the Northern Ireland experience. Of course it was not right to begin with: there is no question about that. There were things that were not done as well as they should have been, and there were systems that were not done as they should have been done.