The Minister is clearly trying to be helpful but not succeeding.
In the end, it comes back to the point that the Electoral Commission’s priorities do not have to be the Government’s priorities, and the Government have no right to direct the commission in its work. Again I ask: what problem is the motion designed to address? If the Minister cannot articulate what the problem is and how the statement will change the behaviour of the Electoral Commission, frankly every Member of this House is busy and has lots of things to do. Have we just wasted 90 minutes of our time, because in two years we will come back and find that today’s motion had no impact? I rather hope that that is the case, because the other scenario would be that the Government are interfering in the Electoral Commission’s work, which is the worse of the two ways of looking at this.
3.34 pm