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Political Parties and Elections Bill

My noble friend says that it is discriminatory. But if a local authority itself has a problem and applies to the Secretary of State, in what way is that discriminatory? It is not the state saying, "We are making you do this". It is the local authority itself saying, "We need additional powers to deal with our problem". Local authorities do that all the time. They often go to the state and say that they need additional resources to deal with a problem in their areas. It may well be that they are dealing with problems that are ethnically based, but that is not discriminatory.