Political Parties and Elections Bill

My noble Lords, I think the noble Lord, Lord Henley, means the Third Reading for a further look at this. We are getting to the stage now when we are all a bit punch-drunk. The integrity of the register is incredibly important and we welcome the moves that the Government are making towards personal identifiers. I think I am right in saying that the Electoral Commission made its recommendations as long ago as 2003. It is a very long time ago; we ought to have made more progress by now. As the noble Lord, Lord Henley, said, the purpose of Amendment 98, standing in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Rennard and supported by the noble Lords, Lord Henley and Lord Bates, is to try to build back into the Bill a little more flexibility. If we can make some progress, it surely would be right to do so. In Grand Committee, the argument that the Minister gave was that if we were to move more quickly it might conflict with the run-up to the general election. He is obviously greatly better informed that I am, because who knows when the election after next is likely to be? We might indeed find ourselves with a very short Parliament. I was the victim of the very short Parliament in 1974—in and out within eight months. Who knows? I therefore do not regard that argument as being conclusive, unless of course the Government are going to move towards fixed-term Parliaments as part of their package of reform proposals that are due any moment now. We simply thought that it was sensible to ask the Electoral Commission not to be boxed into a corner of automatically doing nothing until 2014 and that if there was a possibility of moving further and faster, we should do so. But we recognise also that there are important reasons why that may not be possible. We are not precluding the possibility of waiting until 2014; we are simply saying that if we can move further, faster and earlier we should so. I shall listen with interest to what the Minister says on this subject in a moment. I assume that he is going to address that particular point, and then we will have to think very carefully whether it is appropriate to pursue this any further at this late hour, or whether it is more sensible to look at it again, in the light of the Minister’s response, in time for Third Reading.