Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what the implications are for the Government's policies of recommendation 5 of the report of the Association of Electoral Administrators entitled It’s time for urgent and positive Government action: The AEA’s review of the 2017 local government elections and the UK Parliamentary general election, published in September 2017, on the Government ensuring that expense claims submitted to the Election Claims Unit are audited and settled within six months of their receipt.

We agree that it is important for expense claims to be scrutinised and settled promptly, and have taken a number of steps – including increasing the capacity of the Elections

Claims Unit – to reduce this timescale.

Whilst Returning Officers have six months from the date of the poll in which to submit their accounts, the majority are received in the days preceding that deadline. It can therefore take some time, with queries raised on the claims and also to be answered, for them to be settled.

Ideally we would like them to be settled within the same financial year and we have begun work to look at the claims process and will consider this as part of that work.