Written evidence to be reported to the House
Political Parties and Elections Bill
12:00 pm
Peter Wardle: There are lots of questions about the Bill at the moment. We are already beginning to try to work out what our guidance would look like and we would hope to have that guidance in the public domain by January. I do not think that it is possible to get anything useful and in detail in the public domain before then. I have said to Members of the House elsewhere, when I was asked this question before, that I would certainly hope that we would be able to finalise the guidance as soon as possible after Parliament has finished its consideration of the Bill, and that, subject to the number of last-minute changes, the responses that we receive to consultation and so on, we would certainly aim to finalise the guidance and make it available to people in a definitive form, as far as we are concerned, as soon as possible. We definitely welcome the indications that the Secretary of State gave to the Committee on Tuesday that he was considering trying to align the date on which the new provisions bit with our ability to get properly consulted guidance into circulation.