Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps the Government is taking to ensure that expenses claims submitted to the Election Claims Unit are audited and settled within six months of their receipt.

Returning Officers have six months in which to submit an account of spending on a poll
funded from the Consolidated Fund. The vast majority of these claims are received by the
ECU in the last month before the deadline. This raises an issue with processing the
claims, many of which require significant work, within six months of receipt, including how
quickly queries on a claim are responded to by Returning Officers

We are looking at the process with the Association of Electoral Administrators to identify
how it may best be operated.