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Electoral Administration Bill

As the noble Lord will know, the difficulty is that this is a ““you can’t win”” situation. Governments try to include in legislation that which I think Members of your Lordships’ House want. I believe that noble Lords are keen to see us be explicit in primary legislation. As the noble Lord will appreciate, I have a particular love for secondary legislation, because it enables you to recognise that things have changed and to make variations more easily than you could by waiting for a passing Bill in which to do that. Although many Bills seem to be passing my way, unfortunately they concern totally different subjects. We have sought to set out the steps that we think are important. I think that the noble Lord and I agree that those are important steps. We recognise, however, that in the light of experience and of changes that may occur, we may be required to make changes. Although I understand that it is always the role of opposition parties to be deeply suspicious of any government’s motivations in introducing primary legislation, the sole purpose of the measure is to enable us, on the basis of experience, to add, vary, change or remove those things which we think need to be changed. We would seek to do that in the most appropriate and consultative way. However, I think that the Committee will recognise that without this measure we would have to await the arrival of appropriate primary legislation in which to introduce measures that could be valuable and would address some of the noble Lord’s concerns. I hope that he will withdraw the amendment.