---

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I want to go back to my earlier intervention. As I understood the noble and learned Lord’s reply, under paragraph 10(5), the Minister may reimburse reasonable expenses incurred by a registration officer for a local authority. Now, if the Government are in a position to reimburse such reasonable expenditure prior to the referendum, should that information not be communicated to local authorities? It might well be that some local authorities want to run a blitz campaign prior to the referendum, to increase registration. The Government appear, in the answer that the noble and learned Lord gave me, to be to some extent offering them the resources as long as the expenditure is reasonable. Perhaps the Minister might write to me on this point, because I am sure that local authorities will have picked up on his responses to my earlier interventions.