I thank noble Lords on all sides of the House for their contributions. I will try to answer all the questions, but I may not give your Lordships a complete answer, so I will read Hansard tomorrow and make sure that, if any have not been answered, I will do so.
The noble Lord, Lord Jones, went slightly off the SIs, but I understand why. It has been almost 10 years since the PCCs were introduced in 2012, and it is always right that the Government take a step back and review the model and their role on a continual basis. The Government were clear in their 2019 manifesto that they would strengthen the accountability of elected PCCs and expand their role, and a two-part internal review into the role of PCCs was established by the then Home Secretary. This has provided an opportunity to look more closely at how the Government can strengthen that accountability but also the resilience, the legitimacy and the scrutiny of democratically elected PCCs, because we want to ensure that the record of those PCCs is more visible to the voting public. This comes to the noble Lord’s questions about why the people of this country are not really interested in this, and why the election numbers are down. If we can make PCCs more visible, I hope we can increase the public vote and drive up standards.
One of the other things that needs to be done is clarification for the public of the relationship between a chief constable and a PCC, because they need to know that in order to know who to go to, and then they have the right checks and balances. So the Home Office is doing work on this. I think that is probably enough on that.
The noble Lord asked a number of quite detailed questions about the breakdown of spending; I will write to him with the answers.
With regard to visiting Wales, that is a very kind invitation but I will leave it to my noble friend Lady Bloomfield, who I believe is going to Wales tomorrow. She goes regularly, and I am sure that she would love to meet some PCCs in Wales.
I move on to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. As she knows, it can be difficult to access polling stations, particularly in rural areas, but this of course is the responsibility of electoral officers. I do think they are getting better at it, and this Act and the changes that are being made, and the fact that the Electoral Commission now has to take more notice of what is being said and give more guidance to electoral officers about this, mean that things will change even more for the better.
In addition, particularly for those people who have sight difficulties, the work that the noble Lords, Lord Blunkett and Lord Holmes, have done through the Act to give different polling stations the flexibility to find the best way to enable blind and visually impaired people to vote in a proper way has been fantastic. They are not in their places, but I thank them for the work that they have done on that.
On training, I am sure that the commission will be helping local electoral officers with that. There is indeed a five-year review, which the Electoral Commission is required to undertake and to report the steps taken by returning officers. However, because this is not the way the commission works, I do not expect that it will wait for five years to do it. I am sure that it will keep a rolling view on it, because that is the way that it works, and it is important that that happens.
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In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on costs, the Government will provide new-burdens funding for the implementations of the Election Act, ensuring that local authorities have the necessary resources to implement these new measures while continuing to deliver our elections robustly and securely, which is really important. So there should be no problem with resourcing.
The precise funding requirement for equipment for disabled voters is being considered in conjunction with the Electoral Commission’s guidance for returning officers—so it is being worked on, but the new-burdens funding should cover that.
The noble Lord, Lord Storey, also brought up the issue of third-party campaigning, which I know was a big issue when it came up during the passage of the Bill. It is important to note that Section 75 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 and Article 34 of the Police and Crime Commissioner Elections Order 2012 already prohibit local third-party campaign spending over a permitted sum that has not been authorised in writing and therefore requires specific authorisation. Where such spending is authorised by a candidate, the candidate must also report on spending incurred by the third party. If a third party, which could include a political party, spends over that threshold without authorisation, an offence has been committed. Neither the Elections Act nor this order alter that principle. That is important, and I know that the noble Lord, Lord True, brought up that principle a number of times during the passage of the Bill.
Where a third party, including a political party, has provided property, goods or services free of charge or at a discount, and the candidate or their agent, or someone else acting on their behalf, has made use of the property, et cetera, that must be recorded by the candidate as a notional expense, and an offence has been committed if it is not. That was an important part of the debate during the passage of the Bill. Perhaps that answers the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, on notional expenditure.
I do not think there is anything else to answer; I think I have answered the questions of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, in responding to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. So, to finish, these regulations are vital to ensure that changes already
agreed in primary legislation are applied to police and crime commissioner elections. Failure to do so would create an unwelcome discrepancy, creating confusion instead of clarity, and would mean that disabled electors were required to obtain attestations for their proxy vote application for police and crime commissioner elections but not for other elections. They are also vital to ensuring that disabled voters get the right support in polling stations at all elections reserved to the UK Government, both through improved provision of assistive equipment and through expanded criteria for who can assist a disabled voter.
I hope that noble Lords will join me in supporting these instruments.