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Mrs. Laing: I appreciate the Minister's long explanation. However, once again it is difficult for the Committee to discuss the full effect of what is before it without access to the consultation paper. I understand and appreciate the Minister's offer of a consultation meeting between officials and not only
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members of this Committee but any Member of the House. However, it is difficult for us to do the work that we are here to do now—to consider this part of the Bill in detail.
I appreciate, too, what the Minister has said about who the CORE keeper should be, and in what circumstances. Will she explain further the thinking behind the difference in the access to the information allowed to a national political party and that afforded to a smaller organ of that party, such as a constituency party? Access to the electoral register is an important tool in political campaigning, and I agree with the Minister that it has to be carefully guarded.
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Will the Minister explain further how the Government envisage the role of electoral registration officers developing given the new duties that the Bill places on them? Will she also explain further how access will be offered and regulated? The way in which information is held on CORE is also important. It must be secure but at the same time available to those to whom it ought to be available, and not available to those to whom it ought not. That may be stating the obvious, but I would be grateful if the Minister explained further.
I would also be grateful if the Minister explained another issue further, but she cannot. I really want her to explain how the regulations in relation to this part of the Bill will work when they are implemented, but I appreciate that she cannot give me a positive answer because the regulations cannot be discussed this morning. I do not want to be repetitive and take up the Committee's time, but that makes it difficult to discuss the matter with any real meaning.
I appreciate that it is not the Minister's fault that the regulations are not available, but why are they not? If it is taking longer than the Government expected to compile them, why did we not simply postpone the Committee stage? It would have been perfectly possible for us to hold this sitting next week or the week after, at which point we would have had and considered the regulations and could have had a constructive discussion. I appreciate that I am asking questions that the Minister cannot answer, but the situation is frustrating.
Mr. Binley: I express my concern at the points my hon. Friend has made about the consultation document. I recognise how difficult it is for the Minister not to have the document, which is a vital piece of information that would have cleared up a number of the issues that we have started discussing. Sadly, we cannot clear those issues up, because we do not know what is in the document.
I am concerned that there may be some hint of what is in the document in the Minister's comments, but we are unable to confirm that. Her comments therefore present us with questions, which we will duly ask, and I have no doubt that we will be told that the points are dealt with in the document and that we will have to wait for it. That makes this whole process difficult.
I have two concerns. The first relates to the Minister's comments on segregating the distribution
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of information, which seems quite a fraught point. She suggested that national political organisations would be able to gain information from CORE, but that local political organisations should get information from the electoral registration officer. However, some of the questions that will pose themselves will be inter-constituency, inter-area questions, and we will have real difficulty dealing with those questions if information distribution takes the strata form suggested by the Minister.
My second cause for concern relates to my general point that scrutiny of the electoral register is vital to the whole process of good election conduct and to assuring the voters of this country that the electoral administration undertaken on their behalf is good. I was particularly concerned about the concept that the question of anonymity could be denied scrutiny.
I understand the Minister's perfectly fair reason for including the clause on anonymity. Of course we need to protect as far as possible people who are open to danger and abuse, but I see no reason why recognised, credible people should not be able to see the information held by CORE under some legal prefix that forbids them from disseminating it further. That would make the situation more open. There is no doubt that the anonymity clause gives rise to concern.
The Chairman: Order. I seem to remember the hon. Gentleman referring to the anonymity clause on the Floor of the House.
Ms Harman: He did.
The Chairman: It is undesirable—indeed, out of order—to refer to it again in Committee.
Mr. Binley: I take your guidance, Mr. O'Hara.
Ms Harman: I return to the framework. In essence, the Bill is asking the House to decide whether it wants a CORE. I assume that we all believe the answer to be yes. The question is how we determine its operation. Do we want to do so under primary legislation, or is it better suited to regulations? I believe that this is a classic case of the need to take powers, to consult in detail and to return the matter to the House in regulations.
At the start of this part of our discussion, I thought that it would probably have been a very bad idea to have got the consultation paper ready, because we would have discussed all the issues raised by the consultation paper, even though we are not here to discuss the regulations. I ask hon. Members to consider the concept that this is not a late consultation paper on primary powers. We are not consulting on the primary powers. The powers are simply a framework. They are as they are. This is an early consultation paper on secondary powers.
We need to consult on whether we want everyone to have access to the information held by the ERO and that held by CORE, because the question relates to access that should be governed by detailed regulations about how the CORE scheme will work.
Again, I recommend the overall framework. We are going the right way about this, and I have decided that
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it would not have been a good idea to have got the consultation paper ready. Even with your iron chairmanship, Mr. O'Hara, it would have been very difficult not to get into a detailed discussion of all the questions and answers in the consultation document.
Mrs. Laing: The Minister may be right, but do we have her undertaking that at the appropriate time the regulations resulting from the consultation will be laid before the House in the usual way, in a delegated legislation Committee, and that we shall then have the opportunity to discuss them in great detail?
Ms Harman: I can give that assurance, and do better. We shall have detailed consultations when the consultation paper is published. We shall have two further bites of the cherry on the matter of the detail. We shall welcome the proposals that the consultation paper will give rise to. We have no hidden agenda. We just want to get things right, and we appreciate that we will be helped in that by as much input as possible from hon. Members. That is what we shall arrange.
Mrs. Laing: I accept the Minister's assurances and look forward to further discussion in different forums in future. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 3
CORE scheme grants
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr. Heath: Why, given that the clause is concerned with, effectively, a governmental structure—one necessary for the proper administration of the electoral system—is there a need for subsection (4), which provides for
''conditions as to the circumstances in which the . . . grant is to be repaid''?
Presumably, in this instance, it would be repaid by the Electoral Commission, if it was the commissioning agent, or by individual returning officers, further down the track. I can understand that the issue might arise if criminal fraud were involved, but I believe that that is taken care of in other ways. Why does the Minister think that there is a need for conditions for the repayment of the grant necessary for setting up the CORE provisions?
Ms Harman: Probably there will not be a need for it, but I am confident that if we had not included it the hon. Gentleman would have tabled an amendment to investigate what would happen if, after having been given all the relevant money, the keeper were to be dissolved, or became unable to perform its functions, and it was desirable to appoint another keeper. The subsection is just a matter of thinking of all eventualities. We do not expect it to be needed. We expect that the arrangements, as with all the Government's computer programmes, will go swimmingly. It is sensible, in using substantial amounts of public money, to make sure that if those to whom a grant is made cannot perform the duty in
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question, or if circumstances change, the money can be retrieved.
I assure hon. Members once again that the matter will be subject to consultation through the consultation document. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his probing question, which we shall discuss further when we come to consider regulations.
Mr. Heath: I am not absolutely sure that I should necessarily table an amendment on the effect of the subsection, because the CORE keeper is, by definition, a public body. It is set up by statute and is entirely within the control of the Government. Therefore, any circumstances in which it could go bust or otherwise fail to perform its functions would seem to amount to an indictment of the Department and the Government, rather than anyone else. Does a similar arrangement exist between the Department for Constitutional Affairs or the Treasury? Is it a condition that the Department for Constitutional Affairs should repay its Treasury grant if it fails to meet expectations?
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