Electoral Administration Bill

moved Amendment No. 101:"Page 56, line 28, leave out ““five”” and insert ““twelve””" The noble Lord said: My Lords, in moving the amendment, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 103 and 104. This is not the most important amendment that we have considered today, but it is of some interest. Under Clause 49, a party may request registration for up to five descriptions. My noble friend Lord Rennard objected in Grand Committee to this as being too few, and he said that it was unnecessary to have any restriction. The Minister said that five seemed to her to be a reasonable and appropriate number, but that she was not wedded to any particular number. While I would like the restriction to be removed all together, I propose in this amendment a very modest increase from five to 12 in the hope that the Minister might be willing to accept it. The figure of 12 is not simply snatched out of the sky. It equals the number of nations and regions in the United Kingdom. If the figure were 12, parties could register themselves as London Liberal Democrats or the East Anglian Conservatives or Yorkshire and Humberside Labour. This small increase in number does not seem to cause confusion. It is a minor step, but it makes the question of registration more flexible without producing an unmanageable number of different titles. I beg to move.