---

Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill

I endorse the comments made by my noble friend. Electoral law used to be almost set in stone and did not change very much. The rules, regulations and complexities seem to increase every year and we should not be unaware of the great extra burdens put on electoral administration, including the new rules on electoral registration, rolling registration and postal votes. The Government will say that electoral administrators nowadays have all these fancy computer programmes. The problem is that the administrators seem to spend half their time trying to make the programmes work, rather than benefiting from them. Perhaps that is life. There is no doubt that the administrators’ work has increased substantially and it is to be welcomed that the Government have agreed to put a period on the face of the Bill. If it has to be six months at this stage, it has to be six months, but that is better than nothing. I am fascinated by the idea that Governments do not choose election dates for political advantage. Perhaps the logic of the Minister’s statements is that we should have fixed-term Parliaments so that we know exactly when the dates of general elections will be. If she were able to persuade the Government to do that, electoral administrators would carry her around the streets of London, or anywhere else, on their shoulders, garlanded with flowers and all sorts of things. However, I do not hold out any hope for that. I did not manage to tempt the noble Baroness to discuss the prospect of turning May and June into election months, so that those of us who still tramp the streets in local elections could do so in decent weather. Perhaps we might discuss that at another time. I beg leave to withdraw—