Political Parties and Elections Bill

Of course I accept that, and I said that the corporation sole must be demonstrably independent of the Government. I do not think that the Secretary of State would quite qualify under that particular criterion. Data security and protection are very important and, for that reason, the new power provides that the Secretary of State may, in the order that I mentioned, establish an advisory panel to provide advice and support to the office holder on any difficult issues that arise, for example in relation to the management, processing or supply of electoral registration information. The advisory panel would not be a separate non-departmental public body in its own right, but it would form part of the overall structure of the corporation sole. The amendment provides for necessary matters of detail concerning the creation of the corporation sole to be addressed in the order, and it also makes provision for a number of matters that would be consequential upon the establishment of the corporation sole. In particular, it amends section 1(10) of the 2006 Act to provide expressly that a person designated as the CORE keeper under the CORE scheme order must be a corporation sole established under the new power, or some other public authority. That will preserve the ability of another public authority to take on the role of CORE keeper if that is considered appropriate in future. The amendment also provides for an order establishing the new corporation sole to be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure and provides that before the order can be made, the Electoral Commission and the Information Commissioner must be consulted. Those requirements are designed to ensure that the order will be subject to a high degree of scrutiny. I hope that the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) is reassured by that. We have to retain flexibility, but the House will have ample opportunity to scrutinise any implementation of that flexibility. I turn to the other amendments. CORE will create a new national database of electoral data, and therefore different security arrangements may be required. CORE will not make any new information available, nor will it supply electoral data to anyone not entitled to them. As the data it will hold will be available from a single point rather than through individual electoral registration officers, it will be easier to access the national data set. The effect of provisions in the 2006 Act is that regulations governing access to, and supply of, the electoral register by electoral registration officers will also apply to the CORE keeper, subject to any modifications that the Secretary of State considers appropriate. That means that bodies currently entitled to receive copies of the electoral register and related information from electoral registration officers will be entitled to receive the same information from the CORE keeper, subject to the same restrictions on access and use. In the light of that, Lords amendment 34 supplements the Secretary of State's existing power to modify the application of the regulations by enabling additional or different protections to be imposed on the supply of material by the CORE keeper. Lords amendment 35 relates to section 3 of the Juries Act 1974, which requires electoral registration officers to supply copies of the register for the purpose of jury summoning. Once the CORE system is operational, it may be more efficient and convenient for the registers to be supplied on a national scale by the CORE keeper rather than by each individual electoral registration officer. Accordingly, the amendment creates a power to amend section 3 of the 1974 Act to provide for that, but it will not allow anyone who is not already entitled to access the register from electoral registration officers to do so from the CORE keeper. Lords amendment 36 extends the Secretary of State's existing powers in relation to the CORE scheme order, so that it can authorise information sharing between the CORE keeper and the Electoral Commission. As I have detailed, the original intention was for the commission to be the CORE keeper. Now given that is not to be the case, however, it is important that the CORE keeper is able to furnish the commission with information that is relevant to its functions. It is envisaged that that power will enable the CORE keeper to provide the Electoral Commission with information on what checks have been made by political parties—for example, whether a particular person's entry was checked before a donation or loan was accepted from that person. CORE will also provide statistical information to support electoral registration officer performance standards, such as registration changes year on year. The power may also be used to enable the CORE keeper to inform the commission if an electoral registration officer has failed to report back to the CORE keeper on steps taken to investigate potential instances of fraud or other improprieties, as may be required in the CORE scheme order. I turn to Lords amendments 37 to 50, 96 to 98, 105 and 106, on individual registration. On 2 March, this House spent a considerable period discussing some of the general principles of that most important subject. In these amendments, the Government have set out their approach to the implementation of individual registration in Great Britain. It is an historic shift with a carefully phased timetable, designed to bolster and support both the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the electoral register. I believe that in our previous discussions, there has been agreement throughout the House about how important both those principles are.