---

Electoral Administration Bill

My Lords, the answer to the question is no, it would not. The basis of our amendment—I shall put this into my own words as I had to learn all this; capitalisation is a reasonably new concept to me—is that a loan of, say, £4,000 might have a capitalisation provision that never comes into effect. Alternatively, the provision might come into effect at some point in the lifetime of a loan that could be quite lengthy—it could be 10 years, for all we know—only when someone perhaps fails to pay the interest on time, or whatever. We think that it is unrealistic to require a local treasurer or anyone else to be completely clear about the moment at which it might stray into £5,001, if it ever did. Where it is very clear that a loan of £5,000 to a national party must be reported anyway and that it has a capitalisation provision, you should report the fact that you have that provision. If you add the provision in later, you should report the fact that you have added it in, because you are required to continue your reporting. I can see why the noble Lord thinks it would be attractive to try to work out something of that nature, but we really do not think that it is practical and we have to draw the line somewhere in what we ask people to do.