Electoral Administration Bill

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her detailed reply but I do not agree with it. I will not press the amendment today but, as I said, I am not promising not to come back to the matter. The worry is that the all-postal pilots were so difficult that they raised more questions than answers, while moving to other electronic means of all-postal voting would be bound to be fraught with hazard. Meanwhile, the trouble with saying that each local authority could make its own decisions on whether it would like an all-postal ballot or some other technical ballot is that it may not always be quite as aware as Parliament may be, having seen and scrutinised the whole system, of what is seen to be going on nationally. That is not to say that local authorities are incapable of doing it, but sometimes the picture is not wholly understood. We remain resolutely against all-postal voting. Even if some small advantage were to be gained from it in smaller elections, we believe that it should not be supported. For today’s purposes I am going to withdraw the amendment, while saying sotto voce to the Minister that my noble friend Lord Hanningfield has just confirmed that Third Reading is on 24 May. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. [Amendments Nos. 43 and 44 not moved.]