Presiding Officer, nobody would ever accuse Mike Hedges of not talking enough about local government, and we welcome his experience and knowledge of the subject. I told Members last week that I would never challenge him again, and I hope to stick to that in this answer today.

I hope that, in terms of establishing a national electronic register, we will be able to move to a situation whereby we will be able to vote when we're not necessarily in our ward, or constituency. Certainly, I would welcome that myself, and I assume that those are the sorts of issues that we would rely upon technology in order to solve. I see the leader of the house, who is responsible for digital matters in this Government, is nodding, and I'm delighted that she is, which gives me reassurance that, at least on this issue, I'm hopefully getting things right.

In terms of the safeguards in terms of codes and other matters, we will ensure, clearly, that these matters are secure. That is why we are seeking to introduce pilots, and not moving straight to new systems. And I think the pilots that we operate we will learn from, and we will, I hope, ensure that we have a participative democracy, where people feel able to take part in elections wherever they are, and to do so easily.

In terms of electronic counting, the systems that we have viewed in operation are different systems to those that the Member describes in Florida. And of course it is counting the votes rather than registering the vote that we are talking about in terms of electronic counting. I'm absolutely confident that that is one reform that we could introduce very, very quickly.

I made, Presiding Officer, a point in my statement of seeking to ensure that we do have an open view on issues around directly and indirectly employed by local authorities. The point that the Member has raised is absolutely correct. It is not our wish to prevent people from taking part or standing for election if there is any way at all in which we're able to encourage people and enable them to do so. So, the conversation that we will be having over the next couple of months will be a practical conversation about how we can enable people to stand for election to authorities from which they will receive a payment, and not a point of principle or a negative conversation about how that can be stopped. It will be a positive and open conversation about seeking to enable more people to stand for election, and how that can be managed.