Clause 8 - Provision of information to voters
Regional Assemblies (Preparations) Bill
12:15 pm
Mr Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge, Conservative)
I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's point. The Bill introduces an absolute requirement to get the information to all persons. I will not suggest that the amendment is perfectly drafted—the Government might accept the principle but suggest better wording—so I stand to be corrected, but I understand that the phrase
''that can be cost effectively achieved''
could involve moving quite a long way up the cost curve. Clearly, however, some voters at the margin will be just too expensive to reach and it would not be sensible to try to reach that last small percentage of electors. For example, they might be people with such profound disabilities that it would not be practical, in a cost-effective way, to get the information to them; or they might be people who had sailed off to a remote and hitherto uninhabited island off the north-west coast of Scotland. An element of common sense is required.
The amendment is trying to make the point that the clause as written places an absolute obligation without modifying that in any way to deal with the ability to access such marginal electors in a cost-effective way.