Electoral Administration Bill

I am rather less satisfied with the answer to this amendment than I was with answers to previous amendments that I have moved today, and the Minister has made me even more suspicious. I can think of lots of circumstances in which such a payment might be demanded, arranged and imposed by the Secretary of State or whoever through the CORE scheme. The problem is that I would be against them all, and I am afraid that the noble Baroness’s comments have not made me any less suspicious. Before I withdraw the amendment, I want to say that there is a creeping problem here. If it is now being envisaged that the CORE scheme—the national database—will start to do work on behalf of local EROs, then it undermines the principle—