Clause 5 - Revision of procedures in light of report
European Parliamentary and Local Elections (Pilots) Bill
4:00 pm
Mr Christopher Leslie (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs; Shipley, Labour)
The clause is concerned with the rolling out of innovations that have been successfully piloted. It is similar to section 11 of the Representation of the People Act 2000, which enables the Secretary of State to make an order providing for an innovation that has been piloted to apply generally and permanently to local elections in England and Wales. The point of having pilots is to learn lessons. If lessons are learned, it is perfectly reasonable and logical to apply them to elections on a long-term, permanent basis. That is effectively the purpose of the clause.
I accept that the drafting reflects the extent of the interrelationship with the 2000 Act, and that that does not make the clause easily readable at first glance, but I assure the hon. Member for Spelthorne that it makes sense. The clause simply means that the lessons that we learn from this round of piloting in local elections can be used legitimately in any future roll-out of permanent and long-term changes that we seek to make nationwide. We have made provisions on this matter in other legislation—when we have local pilots, as we have had already for local elections, the lessons that have been learned can be rolled out on a permanent basis elsewhere. That is the rationale behind the way in which the Government have approached piloting so far. Applying a new set of criteria to a local area to see how they work administratively and to see their effect on turnout and other things, and then applying elsewhere the lessons that have been learned is sensible.