Ms Liz Carolan:

I am getting all the easy questions. There was a question about qualifications. I know a previous head of the UK Electoral Commission ran another state body and was brought in as chief executive. That person was given responsibility for ensuring that the institution was functioning well.

What expertise will the body have? I think this will require the body to be able to hire from outside the Civil Service. It may have to be able to hire in people with specific expertise, in particular if there is a research function and a body responsible for ensuring that there can be threat protection. There may need to be some of that agility. We will need people who are literate in those areas or who, at a minimum, know the people who are literate in those areas.

How do we get away from the static design? This is the big question that I spend much of my time thinking about. It is well worth getting people who are experts in institutional design to help us to figure this out. Some of the examples I have heard about are in the area of environmental protection. I know the Environmental Protection Agency has three functions. One involves a public information division. There is a research function and another part implements legislation. We do not write legislation for every new potential environmental threat. We build bodies that are capable of responding in dynamic ways. The shift in drug policy in the past ten years has been interesting as well. We do not ban every substance. Instead, we think about the outcomes we want to see and how to build bodies.

The question is particularly difficult when it comes to elections because in a way there are many turkeys voting for Christmas if we think about some of the standard accountability structures where our elected representatives are also candidates. However, I believe we have to pursue this and think about that question. Otherwise we will end up struggling as our European counterparts are at the moment. We want to avoid struggling in two to five years' time to adapt an institution that was built for a different age. We may have detailed legislation on political advertisements but we might not have thought about what will happen with Alexa or the next generation of programmatic advertising that cannot deal with AstroTurf campaigns, etc.