My Lords, this amendment seeks to remove a technical part of the Bill—namely, Clause 25(3)—which would mean that the order commencing the provisions in the Bill would not be able to state different dates for different purposes. The subsection in question is a standard provision in legislation and the effect of this amendment would be to prevent the commencement of different parts of the Bill at the most appropriate times.
The Bill is set up to make changes over a two-year transition period. It is drafted with that in mind, and some provisions are specifically drafted to commence at different times. It is presumably not the Opposition’s intention that the planned two-year transition would become a big bang switchover with all the preparation work having to be done at the same time that IER was live.
The amendment would also mean that the much-needed improvements to the administration of elections contained in Part 2 could not be commenced until the provisions under Part 1 relating to IER were ready to be commenced. This would result in either delay in the electoral administration provisions being commenced or the Government being required to commence provisions of the Bill well before they intend to use the powers enabled by them.
The amendment would undermine the entire transition to IER, for example, by not allowing the Government to bring forward an order delaying this year’s canvass until IER was in force, thus defeating the purpose of doing so. It would also mean that electoral administration provisions under the Bill could be commenced only all at once and only alongside the IER provisions. For these reasons, I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.