Electoral Administration Bill

That is essentially correct. The judgment has been made, however, that money spent closer to an election is more efficacious than money spent earlier. One of the proposals was simply to replicate the national system of having a 12-month period in which a rolling cap applied to every month, irrespective of the time of year. I was not attracted to that, however, because it is all very well for political parties to manage such a system given that they have well-paid professional people with great experience of these matters, whose job is to do just that, but it is a different matter for those of us who have voluntary agents, on whom we do not want to place too heavy a burden. We also do not want to create a perverse incentive for parties not to appoint agents until Dissolution, in order to avoid accusations of unauthorised spending. There is a balance to be struck. Before we get into too much detail, however, a lot more consultation and discussion needs to take place.