Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
WEDNESDAY 2 NOVEMBER 2005
SAM YOUNGER
AND PETER
WARDLE
Q1 Chairman: Good morning, Mr Younger,
Mr Wardle. Thank you very much for being with us this morning.
Welcome. Perhaps I could start our question session off by asking
you how difficult it has been to maintain the balance between
partnership with Government and the scrutiny of the Government's
proposals in cases such as the all-postal ballot experiment in
2004 and indeed the more recent issues of electoral fraud. I do
apologise, Mr Younger. You indicated you might wish to make a
few remarks to us before you started. Perhaps that question could
remain on the shelf for a few minutes. We welcome your contributions.
Sam Younger: Thank you very much.
If I may make a few opening remarks, first, to welcome this opportunity.
Thank you very much for inviting us here today. It is the first
time we have come in front of the DCA Select Committee on its
own, and I hope it is something that can become a regular feature
of the Electoral Commission's life. We are now nearly five years
old, and it is a good time to begin to take stock of how well
we have done so far and what needs to be done in the future. Very
briefly, looking at our key areas of activity and summarising
them, the first key area, which was, after all, the driver for
setting us up in the first place, was the regulation of political
party finances. I think it is fair to say that the provision of
transparency that the Commission has been involved with producing
after the legislation has actually broadly gone quite well, though
there are clearly issues at the edges, issues about whether there
is excessive bureaucracy, whether we could further simplify the
processes while maintaining the outcomes that we are after, and
recognising particularly that the bureaucracy involves pressures
on people within parties who are volunteers and that we have to
be very careful to make sure we minimise the disincentives to
volunteers to participate in party work. The second area, advice
on electoral law and practice, again, it has been very busy. Quite
apart from the statutory reporting requirements on the conduct
of elections, there have been all the reviews arising out of those
statutory reports, particularly initially the general election
of 2001 and all the propositions coming out of that which have
fed into the current Electoral Administration Bill, which I will
come back to in a moment very briefly. It is important not to
forget all the other advice and consultation that we have with
Government, whether it is things the Government asks us to comment
on or whether things that there is a statutory requirement to
consult on, secondary legislation, for example. A lot of that
has gone on very effectively, out of the public eye, I think it
is fair to say, and it is important to remember also that there
are significant relationships of the same ilk outside. It is not
just Westminster; it is in Wales and Scotland and Northern Ireland
as well where those relationships have developed, and I think
have been valued. On the issue of advice on electoral law and
practice, also there is advice to returning officers and electoral
registration officers, and that has been a very key element, both
in terms of guidance, trying to move towards greater consistency
in the conduct of administration, and of course, that is part
of the Electoral Administration Bill in terms of a development
of that into setting and monitoring of standards, but also training
of registration officers and of those involved in the poll. Voter
awareness is the third area we took on. The broad advertising
campaigns we have done I think have become increasingly successful
as we have learnt more about the nature of them, and certainly
the ones in 2004-05 have been very successful by industry standards
in terms of impact. Then the work to get to harder to reach groups:
I think we are beginning to shift the strategy there, because
we are conscious that we have been demand-led up to now, and we
feel there is a need to put a slightly more strategic intent behind
it to be clear about what audiences we are targeting. That is
not forgetting the other two areas of local government boundaries,
where we have just completed the periodic electoral review cycle
of local authority boundaries in England, and work on referendums.
Of course, a year ago we did have a referendum under PPERA, but
it was a relatively small-scale one, in a single region. Just
to come on very briefly to the Bill that is currently before Parliament,
I would emphasize that we warmly welcome the Bill. There is an
awful lot in it that I think will make a difference, an accumulation
of modest measures in themselves but I think cumulatively very
important for the future. I should perhaps say a word on one of
the issues on which we do have a difference with what is in the
Bill at the moment, and that is over the question of registration
of voters, just to note that our view is that individual registration
is right in principle, for a number of reasons, which I am happy
to go into later if Members wish, but is also vital to secure
an underpinning for the security of postal voting, which is now
up to a pretty significant proportion of the electorate, just
over 12% at the 2005 general election. We do understand concern
about levels of registration, and indeed, it was our own research
only a couple of months ago that actually indicated the current
levels of under-registration under the existing system, so we
are very conscious of that and very much welcome a number of measures
that are in the Bill to improve registration levels. Those are
very important and very valuable, but we do believe that pilots
are not the best way forward. We are nevertheless—I am very
happy to talk about this later—keen to see whether a way
forward can be found that can command widespread support.
Q2 Chairman: Thank you very much
for that. I am certain we will have questions on the Bill as it
is going through the House a little later on in our proceedings,
but perhaps I could revive the question off the shelf, particularly
on the relationship of the Commission and the Government, and
ask you how you do maintain that balance between partnership and
when there are proposals such as the all-postal ballot experiment—you
have mentioned that—and of course, the more recent question
of electoral fraud.
Sam Younger: One thing I would
like to say, which I alluded to earlier on, is that I would not
want the fact that we have not had full agreement with Government
on a couple of quite significant issues to obscure the fact that
there are an awful lot of areas where there is a very good level
of cooperation on a practical level, not only at Westminster but
also around Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as well. That
said, of course, we are conscious that that balance is not easy
to keep. What I keep in mind above all is that, if the existence
of the Commission is to have any value, then that value has to
lie in its independence, whether of the Government of the day
or of any other influence, and that is terribly important. That
said, we cannot operate in an ivory tower, and clearly, in not
operating in an ivory tower, there is a particular relationship
with the Government of the day because of the day-to-day business,
a lot of it uncontroversial, but where the health of those working
relationships is very important. We have always recognised that
when it happens it is not comfortable, but that if we have a view
that we have stated clearly to Government and it does not fit
with government policy, that is the nature of having an independent
body. I think it is significant here that our accountability line
is directly to Parliament, not to the Government of the day, and
therefore when we do take a view that is not in line with government
policy, I think we have a duty to Parliament to say that that
is our view and to make sure that all Members of Parliament on
whatever side of the House are aware of that. Our primary duty
as an independent organisation I would say is to Parliament. That
does not make it always comfortable. It is terribly important
to work very hard at maintaining and sustaining relations with
the Government of the day at all levels, but also with other parties
within Parliament as well. We seek to do that. I would be the
first to acknowledge that I am sure there are ways in which we
can improve it. I do think in particular there are ways in which
we can improve our links to Parliament and to Members of Parliament.
I do not think we have yet got that right. I do not think the
fault is wholly on our side. I think there are a number of issues
at stake in getting it right. Indeed, the establishment now, since
the changes in Government of this Committee is one way forward
because, of course, before the issues that related to the Commission
were spread across more than one Select Committee of the House.
I think it is a good thing that it has now come together so that,
as it were, when it comes to holding the Commission to account
there is a logical committee that does that alongside the more
specific role of the Speaker's Committee. It may be Peter Wardle,
as somebody who came into the Commission a little bit later, and
has only been with us for just under a year, might have a perspective
to add, Chairman.
Peter Wardle: Thank you. As Sam
says, I have been here for just under a year, and have been interested
to see and hear about the way in which the Commission's role has
evolved. I would agree with Sam's analysis of the way relationships
are at the moment, and I think that both the Government and Parliament
and the Commission have learnt over the past five years how to
get the relationship better and how to recognise the realities
of the relationship. Certainly, it seems that in the summer of
2004, when the first big issue arose which hit the headlines,
around the all-postal voting pilots in four regions of the country—and
this was before I was in the Commission but looking and listening
to people who were around at the time—I think it is fair
to say that the Government and Parliament and the Commission all
learnt a little bit about their respective roles and have handled
what is clearly a difference of opinion at the moment about the
way forward with the registration system in a way which is informed
and better for the experience that all parties went through at
the time of the all-postal discussions.
Q3 Mr Tyrie: I think most people
agree, but challenge it if you do not, Sam, that the experiment
with postal voting, the scandals that we had, eroded some of the
credibility of the electorate in the voting system. Given that,
if you had the opportunity again, would you have made more noise
about your concerns about the extension of the postal ballot system?
Sam Younger: It is always difficult
to look in retrospect. You are quite right to say that the accumulation
of experience over the period, particularly 2004-05, has actually
led to, and public opinion surveys have shown that there is, a
lessening of confidence in the integrity of postal voting, more
people expressing themselves distrustful of its security.
Q4 Mr Tyrie: Have you published that?
Sam Younger: Yes, indeed. It is
a MORI poll that we published not very long ago. As to the question
of whether we should have shouted more loudly, this is really
quite a difficult one, because I am very conscious that the role
that we have as an organisation is in all of these areas to be
advisory to Government and Parliament. This is why I said, for
example, in relation to the all-postal pilot in 2004, the thing
that we learnt there was that our initial statements of our position
were statements that were made to Government, and I do not think
we brought in Parliament as a whole adequately until a slightly
later stage. We learnt from that and then made sure that the view
we took was well-known and therefore the position we had would
not be misunderstood. But I am a little bit wary about spending
a lot of time getting up on a soapbox. I think it is important
that those to whom we report and to whom we are responsible know
what our view is as an independent organisation.
Q5 Mr Tyrie: I ask, because you might
be in the same position all over again, might you not, if we were
to find ourselves going into the next election with broadly the
same system in place, with the same risks which you had identified
before the last election, which turned out to be correct, but
with the improvements to the postal ballot system not being pushed
through adequately, the move to individual registration and only
pilots, which you have already raised, being in place? How much
noise are you going to make about this?
Sam Younger: Our whole approach
on this is that we do not wish to go into another general election
in effectively the same position that we went into the 2005 general
election. We had, after all, been saying there needed to be an
improved underpinning for postal voting going way back to 2003.
It was not something that came out of the all-postal pilots of
2004 and the controversy surrounding those; it predated that,
where we said any extension of the use of postal voting needs
an underpinning which is absent at the moment. That is of critical
importance to us. All I would say at this stage, because it is
difficult to anticipate the future and I would not want to anticipate
what the outcome of the Bill is going to be in its passage through
Parliament, is I would hope that a way forward can be found that
reconciles the security requirements that we see to be there for
postal voting with the concerns about what happens to the register,
but clearly, we will have to look hard at our own position at
a certain point in the future if that is not achieved.
Q6 Chairman: We will certainly come
back to specific questions on the Bill a little later on, but
in terms of the Commission's work itself, and, as you have mentioned,
the policy suggestions that are made by the Commission, is there
at least a potential problem of duplication between the work that
the Commission does and the work undertaken by the Department
of Constitutional Affairs itself in reviewing electoral processes?
Do you think perhaps those roles could be made a little clearer?
Sam Younger: It is an interesting
point. I would say that the experience up to now has been that
there has been a strong enough relationship between the two that
there has not been a great deal of duplication, but I could imagine
that danger is there.
Q7 Chairman: That relationship is
a happy accident perhaps?
Sam Younger: I hope not an accident
altogether, but it happens to have worked really pretty well.
That said, I think if you go back—and one can see how this
tension appears—when the Commission was established and
when the PPERA was passed, there was intent that a lot of the
effort in terms of reviewing electoral law and practice that had
previously resided in, at that time, the Home Office would transfer
to the Commission, and Government would look at what came back
from the Commission and respond to it and legislate or not legislate
as a result. I think the reality has been that, because the Commission
has been quite active in this field, and things are coming back
at Government, the Government has felt the need, in a sense naturally,
to make sure it builds up its own capacity to analyse those proposals
and decide whether to go with them. So I think there is a potential
danger there in terms of how the resources are used. It seems
to me it is perfectly healthy in the way it operates, but I think
it maybe is not entirely consonant with what the original intention
was in terms of where the bulk of the work would be carried out.
Q8 Chairman: Of course, the other
new relationship is between the Commission and returning officers
at local level. Do you meet them on a regular basis? Do you have
a forum to discuss matters with them?
Sam Younger: Yes. I think the
area where our networks and relationships have probably developed
most comprehensively is in relation to returning officers and
registration officers. We have regular contact and meetings with
SOLACE for the chief executives and broadly the returning officers,
also with the Association of Electoral Administrators, and we
have relatively recently set up something that I think is potentially
very important and valuable, which is called the Electoral Leadership
Forum, which brings together on a regular basis effectively those
who were the regional returning officers in the European Parliament
elections and have therefore got used to playing some form of
coordinating leadership role within different regions, to talk
about strategic issues inrel elections. This has worked as quite
a happy marriage at the moment, in the sense that it allows that
group both to talk about the strategic issues but also to be kept
in touch collectively with the specific issues of the moment.
I think that is extraordinarily important and when the Bill talks,
for example, about the Electoral Commission having a role in setting
standards, I do not see that, and it cannot be the Electoral Commission
sitting in isolation in an ivory tower pontificating about standards.
Those standards have to be rooted in the experience and the perspectives
of those who are actually doing the job. One has to remember in
this that the Electoral Commission is not line-responsible for
any of the actual management of elections, and therefore we can
only be as effective as the inputs that we get from the community
and we are very conscious of that.
Peter Wardle: Perhaps I could
just mention a couple of the initiatives we have taken on the
ground from day to day. We have a very healthy programme of secondment
and exchange with electoral services staff around the country,
so at any time we have a couple of people working with us who
have recent experience of work in electoral services, and we build
that up at the time of elections specifically to make sure we
can deliver our role of giving advice and guidance—and very
quick advice -to returning officers and electoral registration
officers around the country. We also maintain a dedicated area
on our website which is specifically for electoral services officers,
and there they can get guidance, exchange views, and see what
the latest developments are. So in addition to the face-to-face
meetings we have, we have some very good day-to-day links that
are informing the work we do and, as Sam says, it is very noticeable
that this is an area where there was clearly a vacuum in terms
of the relationship between those making policy in London and
the capital cities around the country and electoral services officers
around the UK, and that is one that I think most electoral services
managers think we have stepped up to quite well and have developed
a very good relationship.
Q9 Chairman: Do you see perhaps the
need for a more formal arrangement for both consultation and review
between the three ends of the triangle, the Department, the Commission
and the administrators themselves?
Peter Wardle: I think it works
pretty well at the moment. Whether it is a happy accident and
we have the right people in place and the right relationships
in place or not is difficult to say. You can always envisage a
situation where relationships broke down, the wrong people are
around. I do not see that risk as a high one at the moment. There
genuinely is day-to-day contact between the Commission and officials
in the Department of Constitutional Affairs and with electoral
services managers around the country, both at the high level of
the Electoral Leadership Forum Sam was describing but also in
terms of day to day. There are a lot of good relationships where
people can pick up the phone and have a quick meeting and discuss
an issue because they know there is a particular issue in that
area that there is some expertise to tap into.
Sam Younger: I would just add
that I think there is a case for having a slightly more formalised
relationship, particularly in relation to standards, if that comes
out of the Bill, because those are standards that the Commission
can only derive in full consultation with those on the ground
who are going to implement them, and at the same time those standards
need to be agreed by the Secretary of State, so we need to find
a way of making sure that that is joined up. So I suspect we would
need something more formal. In terms of the consultation and the
links, it seems to me, with the returning officers and with Government
at civil service level in particular, those are pretty good links.
I do think where we have not done as well, as I think I mentioned
at the beginning, is the links particularly for advice and perspective
in Parliament, and I think that is something we do need to develop.
As you know, nobody can be a commissioner and nobody can be a
member of staff of the Electoral Commission at present—and
that is another issue I think worth looking at—who has had
a specific connection with a political party or elected politics
in the previous ten years, and that does make it incumbent on
us to find a way of making those links. We do that in a formal
sense through one of the things that was provided in the PPERA,
which was the Parliamentary Parties Panel, but that, both at the
Westminster level and we have replicated them in Wales, Scotland
and Northern Ireland, I think has been very valuable on a day-to-day
management level. What we have not managed to turn it into is
a forum for real advice and experience coming from elected politicians,
and that is something I would like to see developed.
Chairman: We might ask some further questions
on that particular issue later on.
Q10 Jessica Morden: Has there been
any research at all into the effectiveness of the Electoral Commission
as a body?
Sam Younger: Not as a body as
yet. The next piece of research is going to be the Speaker's Committee,
in its responsibilities, has been planning a review of the effectiveness
of the Electoral Commission and the appropriateness of its governance
and financial arrangements and so on.
Q11 Jessica Morden: Have you done
your own internal research?
Sam Younger: We do our own internal
estimates of how we are viewed by stakeholders. We did a big stakeholder
survey, which has raised a number of issues for us, not least
the one about the links to elected politicians, which is one that
has come out of that. But the formal review—and it is appropriate
time now; we are five years in and there is enough experience
to go on and the Speaker's Committee are looking at it and the
Committee on Standards in Public Life are also planning an investigation.
Peter Wardle: Perhaps I could
just add that, in terms of some of the particular activities we
carry out, public awareness is one where we have quite a high
profile, and we do, as any other public body would, carry out
evaluation of the effectiveness of that public awareness. For
example, looking at our last campaign, which was around registration
and voting in the run-up to 2005 general election, we got some
very good feedback. For example, 64% of adults aware of the campaign,
a third of those who had seen the campaign claiming that that
had been a factor in their decision to vote at the election. We
also ran a helpline with 23,000 calls, 93,000 visits to the website,
and 1.4 million leaflets around the place. So we are looking at
the effectiveness of particular areas of work that you would expect
us to evaluate and building on that experience. If you take another
area, which is the whole area of advice on reform of the electoral
system, looking at the Bill that is before Parliament at the moment,
some 80% of the clauses in the Bill are direct results of recommendations
that the Commission has made. We had a discussion with the Speaker's
Committee about how you measure your effectiveness, and it seems
to me that one measure of that is that if the Government and Parliament
were not interested in any of the recommendations we were making,
then clearly we would not be doing a good job. I think given that
80% of those recommendations being taken forward and we hope being
taken forward on a cross-party basis—the areas of disagreement
in Parliament I think are relatively limited—is quite a
good indicator that we are looking at the right things and targeting
the right areas.
Q12 Jessica Morden: Coming back to
your stakeholder internal research, what strengths and weakness
does it show?
Sam Younger: I think it is probably
fair to say that among the stakeholders the key strength has been
the strength of the relationship with the administrators and the
returning officers. That is where we got the cleanest bill of
health. It was less so among the political stakeholders, and I
think there are two slightly separate reasons for that. One is
an area that I think is inevitable, where I would not claim that
we have done everything right but where we are intrinsically in
an area that is going to provide some tension between us and political
parties, and that is on the regulatory area. I think it is endemic
in it that we will have a certain amount of that. Clearly, part
of the concern that is coming back is people saying that the Commission
is implementing this legislation; they do not necessarily understand
well enough how politics works and what the pressures are at local
level. We seek to do so within the constraints that we have, but
conscious that that is an area we still need to work on, though,
as we said, within the boundaries of the legislation, there are
occasions when what is really being complained about is what is
in the legislation as opposed to the way we are implementing it,
but that is a slightly different issue. The other dimension is
the dimension of the links to those with experience of party political
activity and elections at the political level and how that advice
feeds in, and feeling that the Commission does not always take
proper account of or is perhaps being, as it has been described
sometimes, naïve in those areas. That is why I referred earlier
to one of the needs being to find a better way of plugging that
in, although it is important to note that that is obviously, again,
having a value as an independent organisation, especially making
sure we have got the mechanisms fully to understand that input,
not necessarily saying we will absolutely every time follow what
is being said from there, because that is the nature of an independent
organisation, and its value.
Q13 Jessica Morden: Do you think
you have got the balance right then? I know one of the criticisms
levelled at the Electoral Commission when it was first set up
was that you were very heavy on the policing and regulation side
and quite light, I thought, on the raising voter awareness of
elections and advice to EROs, etc. Do you think you are now getting
the balance right in terms of that?
Peter Wardle: It is very interesting.
Again, taking my experience coming into the Commission four and
a bit years in, I was struck by the different perceptions of the
Commission. There was this strong perception that actually we
were very focused initially on the regulation. It is fair to say
that in the report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life
probably the key thing they were looking for from the Electoral
Commission when it was first established was the regulation of
political party finances, and that was the issue that the Committee
had looked at. The Act that established us actually gave us other
roles, including the public awareness role, and it was quite interesting.
When I first arrived less than 12 months ago, the main criticism
I was hearing from elected representatives was that we seemed
to be doing an awful lot of public awareness, and was this over
the top? Now, within 12 months, the key criticism I am hearing
from people—not necessarily the same people, by any means—is
the one you just articulated, which is that we do not seem to
have the balance right. It is very difficult to get that balance.
Our overall aim is that the voter can participate with confidence
in an electoral system, the electoral system in this country,
and when we go on to talk about the difference of views around
different stakeholders on where we go with electoral registration,
I think it is precisely there, about where you draw that balance
without putting at risk unacceptably either the confidence that
the electorate has in the system or their ability and willingness
to participate.
Q14 Jessica Morden: You have recently
undergone structural changes. Obviously, you have taken on the
parliamentary boundaries. Are those structural changes complete
and will you be needing additional staff? How many staff do you
have?
Peter Wardle: We are just about
150 staff. Just on a point of information, we took on the local
government boundaries not long after we were established. The
Act does provide for us to take on parliamentary boundaries but
that has not actually happened yet. The Government has indicated
that it is minded to do that, and I believe is consulting with
the Speaker and the Speaker's Committee at the moment about when
and how to take that forward. Taking on the local government boundary
functions, that is, reviewing local authority districts and wards,
brought I think about 30 staff in, and that has in fact decreased
because at that time they were in the middle of the periodic electoral
review. That has roughly halved since then. They are now just
carrying on one-off reviews in areas where the balance has got
out of kilter from the original proposals. But looking at the
possibility of taking on parliamentary boundaries, we do not think
it will be anything like such an increase, partly because there
is not a lot on the horizon at the moment. The first major review
will be in Scotland in two or three years' time, but we think
that will be a handful of staff rather than the tens of staff
that were involved in the local authority work.
Q15 Jessica Morden: What do you see
as the rise in your budget over the next ten years?
Peter Wardle: Our five-year plan,
which I think has been made available to the Committee, actually
looks at our core funding as remaining roughly the same. Over
the first four years of the Commission, every year something happened
so that, for example, one year there was a major programme of
training for electoral administrators in the run-up to the European
Parliamentary elections in 2004. Before that there was the acquisition
of the local government boundary work. If you look historically,
the figures went up quite steeply each year but when I came into
post in December 2004, at the first meeting of the Speaker's Committee
I was able to say that our core funding was now stable and would
remain stable. So our five-year forecasts are running basically
flat. That said, the Bill is proposing to give us some new responsibilities
which were not part of that core funding, so I would expect that
we might be looking at perhaps up to £1 million on our core
funding, certainly in the initial year, to take on and establish
the new functions that are contained for us in the Bill. There
is also the question, depending where the changes to the system
end up from the Bill, depending on the extent of the change from
the voters' point of view and from the registration officers'
point of view, whether we need to seek more money from Parliament
to run public awareness campaigns, which again would probably
spike in the initial year or two. For example, if we were running
pilots, there would be quite a lot of explaining that would have
to be done to voters to get them to understand what was going
on in their particular area. Equally, if we came up with any other
way forward, from the debates that Sam was suggesting, it would
probably be enough of a change that voters would need some education
and some awareness.
Q16 Jessica Morden: You mentioned
the five-year plan. What new strategies do you see the Commission
coming up with over the next five years?
Peter Wardle: Having finished
the periodic electoral review of local authority boundaries, we
inherited that work halfway through the review, and effectively
carried it on on the basis it had been run up to then. There is
an opportunity for us to review the whole way in which we approach
that, and I personally would not be surprised if we came up with
a new approach to looking at boundaries. At one extreme, is it,
for example, right simply to have a major review of the whole
country periodically, or is there more of a rolling programme
that could be adopted, and that would both change the way in which
we do the work but also the way in which our resources flow? That
is one example. Clearly, if we move into the area of setting performance
standards for electoral services management, which Sam mentioned
is one of the things in the Bill, then that changes our relationship
with those running elections around the country, and that would
require us to adopt a new stance and to consider how we make those
standards work in a way which adds value, which are accepted by
local authorities as useful, and which do not at the same time
conflict with all the other review and audit and inspection regimes
that local authorities are subject to. The third key area I would
like to mention is the one of regulation of parties, where I think,
as Sam has said, the feedback from our stakeholders was that we
were perhaps a little bit process-oriented in the way we do things,
that there was too much form-filling, and that the approach we
took was sometimes perceived as too inflexible. I think there
is plenty of thinking being done around the wider public sector,
and certainly it is something I have focused on because I have
a particular background in thinking about these things in other
roles I have had. There is certainly scope, I think, for looking
at more intelligent regulation of parties, understanding, for
example, which parties are high-risk in terms of those who are
clearly finding it difficult to comply with the requirements of
the legislation, and to tailor our approach so that they get more
attention, and so that parties which clearly understand and are
doing their best to comply do not necessarily have to jump through
as many hoops as they do at the moment.
Q17 Jessica Morden: Will that filter
all the way down through the parties to the very local levels,
where you have obviously got volunteer treasurers who now have
an amazing amount of regulation?
Peter Wardle: We do not in fact
have a one-size fits all approach, but that is certainly how it
is perceived at the level of local treasurers. Frankly, it is
not in our interests. It conflicts with one of our aims, which
is to maximise participation in the democratic process. It is
not just about voters. It is also about the ease with which people
can set up a political party, run a political party, and get involved
in local elections on relatively local issues as well.
Q18 Mr Tyrie: Just a couple of quick
points. First of all, you said right at the beginning that you
had done some private research on your effectiveness. Could you
put that into the public domain?
Sam Younger: There is no reason
why not. I am very happy to.
Q19 Mr Tyrie: Secondly, your budget
is now £26 million.
Peter Wardle: Just under.
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