Programme motion, Report stage in the Commons
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Mr. Fabian Hamilton (Leeds, North-East) (Lab)Labour- Quote
- I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
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- Mr. HamiltonLabour
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- New clauses 3 and 4 give me an opportunity to examine some of the broader issues with which the Bill has tried to deal. I am grateful to the Government for having—as has been pointed out by the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) and others—amended it considerably since its initial draft in an effort to establish far greater cross-party consensus. Given, however, that in its present form it extends the power of the Electoral Commission, I think it timely to consider whether the commission has used its powers wisely in the past. Unfortunately, its record is not all that impressive. On the one hand, it appears to have failed to ensure adequate compliance by regulated donees since 2001 when it was set up. Hundreds of late notifications—most of them honest mistakes—have been identified. Indeed, I understand that in the last six months of 2008 a total of some £750,000 was identified, accounting for more than 150 late donations. On the other hand, it appears to have been very heavy-handed and, I would argue, incompetent in dealing with certain cases, most notably that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr. Hain). The Standards and Privileges Committee admitted in its conclusion that my right hon. Friend had made an “honest mistake”. It seems incredible, does it not, that the Electoral Commission did not even send warning letters to him, or to other Members of Parliament and other regulated donees who notified it late of donations received. Up until the beginning of last year, no warning letters had been sent. I think the commission should have a duty to give clear guidelines and positive advice to Members who are genuinely trying to comply, but it has been quite evasive about providing full information on its performance in response to parliamentary questions, many of which I tabled myself. It appears from its answer to one of my questions that it inexplicably and, I would say, recklessly destroyed numerous original donation forms that were in its care. There have been a great many cases of non-compliance on the part of many Members, some of whom were high-profile figures on the Opposition Benches, but on a number of occasions the commission has simply issued a press statement to the effect that no further action will be taken, or that the law has not been broken. In the early part of 2008, however, it clearly wanted to make an example of someone as part of its campaign for new and more draconian legal powers. That is where the case of my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath comes in. He himself informed the commission as soon as he discovered that his campaign had failed to meet the commission’s notification requirement, but he was asked no questions whatsoever by commission officials about the reasons for the lateness. Incredibly, when he visited the commission’s offices to discuss the late notifications, officials actually lobbied him for some of the new powers that are in the Bill. I believe that, up to now, the commission has been wholly unaccountable to Parliament and, indeed, to the general public. The present rules, fiercely defended by the commission, ensure that most staff, and indeed commissioners themselves, have no knowledge whatever of the world of politics, which seems rather bizarre when we consider the whole purpose of establishing the commission in the first place. As we know, when the commission referred my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath to the police it destroyed his position in the Government, but it also destroyed its own credibility here in Parliament when, months later, the Crown Prosecution Service decided that there was absolutely no case to answer. It exposed the fact that the initial commission referral to the police was incompetent and, indeed, reckless, and that it was not even fully conversant with electoral law. Under the initial Bill, the commission could be judge, jury and executioner, breaking into MPs’ offices and compelling Members, their staff and anyone else to attend to them and answer questions. That was very worrying, because it exposed the fact that no one was regulating the regulator. That is why I tabled new clause 4. In common with, I think, all Members, I believe that the transparency of Parliament is generally a good thing, but why hitherto has there not been transparency in the Electoral Commission’s operations? When asked in Parliament when it decides to refer a case to the police, a rather obscure answer was given, which was, “When the commission decided the facts of the case merited it.” I do not think we would tolerate such an answer from a Minister, so my question is this: is the Electoral Commission above Parliament? Of course it is not. I am glad that the Electoral Commission now has a new chair. I hope, however, that she is good at building bridges, because she will need to build many.
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Andrew Mackinlay (Thurrock) (Lab)Labour- Quote
- She is very handsomely paid, too.
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- Mr. HamiltonLabour
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- She certainly is. Members are generally happy to comply with reasonable requirements to register donations, even if the rules are not quite as clear as we might hope, and we had a very good debate on that earlier. The simpler the rules are, the better it is for all Members to ensure that they comply, and it is not unreasonable to expect positive support and guidance from the commission itself. If some Members refuse to comply with reasonable requests, commit serious crimes or seek to evade their responsibilities, no reasonable person would think that the commission should not have the power to act, with the appropriate checks and balances, of course. Concern has been expressed that the Electoral Commission has in the past been biased against the party of Government. I hope that is not true, and I hope it never will be, but it will be for the new commission chair to demonstrate a number of principles that I believe will correct the imbalance and bring the commission more into public view. The principles are: the commission should devise new ways of being open and transparent to Parliament, and I hope that the new chair will ensure that is so. I also hope that it will swiftly unify procedures with the Register of Members’ Interests; we need to know precisely when that will happen, and I hope the Minister will be able to tell us in his reply. Non-compliance should be decriminalised as much as possible where it is clear that mistakes have been made and there was no intent to undermine the legislation or to take in funds fraudulently and try to disguise them, and that is where new clause 3 comes in. The use of penalties and sanctions—which the Electoral Commission has, and will be given more of—will need to be monitored externally; new clause 4 addresses that. Finally, there must be more dialogue with Members of Parliament to ensure that the commission has more genuine political support from all parts of the House; only then can it do its job, both politically and in the public’s view, to a standard we would expect and the public can trust.
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Mr. Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con)Conservative- Quote
- All the amendments in the first group except the first two new clauses address clause 3 and schedule 2, which introduce a range of civil sanctions for the Electoral Commission. The sanctions relate to the commission of offences and the contravention of restrictions or requirements under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, or PPERA. Together, clause 3 and schedule 2 empower the commission to impose these civil sanctions on a “person”, “registered party”, “recognised third party” or “permitted participant”, as defined in the 2000 Act.
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Dr. Gavin Strang (Edinburgh, East) (Lab)Labour- Quote
- The House will be in no doubt about the importance of what we are debating. Clearly, we can talk in more detail about the investigative powers when we come to the next group of amendments, but any measure that allows a senior commission official or the police to enter premises to check on the income and expenditure of an individual or organisation should be looked into carefully. The House should be fully satisfied that the new framework that we are putting in place will serve Parliament and the country well. To pick up briefly on our earlier debate on the motion on the guide to the rules relating to the conduct of Members, I do not think that anyone in the House is resisting transparency. One of the contributors to that debate suggested that the discussion indicated that hon. Members did not want to declare, or want their local parties to have to declare, events that raised more than £1,000. Certainly, that was not my position. The position is that we want maximum transparency, but clearly we have to have a system that can be handled properly, and that does not put an unreasonable demand on the volunteers on whom we all depend for the operation of the political system, which, of course, is dependent on the political parties. I pay tribute to the hon. Members who were on the Public Bill Committee. The Government had a real wish to arrive at a consensus, and that is to their credit. The Minister said, perfectly fairly, that some of the Government’s amendments reflect an aim on which there should be consensus. There is no doubt in my mind—I have given evidence on such matters to the Committee on Standards in Public Life—that when we try to enact legislation governing our electoral process and governing the very important issue of donations, we should do so in a way that achieves full and proper consensus. We can, of course, go into detail on the investigatory powers later. I will not pass comment on the commission; again, that can come later. It is a new organisation. It is important that it establishes itself, in the eyes of parliamentarians and the country, as doing an excellent job.
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David Howarth (Cambridge) (LD)Liberal Democrat- Quote
- I understand where the new clauses and amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Hamilton) and by the Conservatives are coming from, but I have one central problem with them, which is an objection to their consistency with what we in the House impose on the rest of society. I hope that hon. Members will explain further in the course of debate. We should not, as politicians, give ourselves special treatment in the regulatory regime that we do not give to other people. We should not give ourselves arbitrary exemptions from the type of rules that we impose on others. It is clear that, in some cases, politics is special. It is clear that, for example, we as democratic representatives need some rights to be able to do our job. That is entirely in order and entirely behind the scandal of the treatment of the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green). But that has to do with constitutional matters—with the balance of power between different branches of government. It is not just about whether we feel that we ought to be given special treatment.
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- Mr. DjanoglyConservative
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- Surely the hon. Gentleman appreciates that the provisions go much further than MPs. Great concern was expressed on both sides in Committee that honourable people who give up their time on a voluntary basis for our associations, for instance, would be unfairly caught by the provisions.
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- David HowarthLiberal Democrat
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- I appreciate that point, but we must be careful not to make special rules for politics just because we know about politics and we do not know about other areas of activity in the economy and in social life.
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- Mr. Fabian HamiltonLabour
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- Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the time of the police is better used trying to find real criminals who are causing crime in the community than chasing bureaucratic errors that were made honestly?
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- David HowarthLiberal Democrat
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- I fully support that point. I had intended to deal with the hon. Gentleman’s new clause 3 later, but I may as well speak about it now. In principle, I am fully in favour of what he says, for precisely the reason that he gives. Over the past 10 or 11 years the Government have become far too fond of creating criminal offences. They have invented more than 3,000 criminal offences, in many cases with no particular purpose in mind except to issue a press release. However, we must be careful to apply the same principles to everybody else in society as we apply here. I would be grateful for the support of the hon. Member for Leeds, North-East in other examples when we on the Liberal Democrat Benches try to make sure that the criminal law is not used inappropriately. We do not have the opportunity to do that now, but it is important to bear in mind—and on the whole I support his new clause—that we should apply the same argument in other cases as they come up. I am more concerned about some of the amendments tabled by the Conservatives. We should be wary of removing civil sanctions for contraventions that are short of criminal offences. Standard regulatory practice in the outside world applies that sort of idea to a range of other activities. Why, in this case, should political activity be treated differently? If we remove any sort of civil sanction for violations that fall short of criminal violations, we are left with no sanctions at all. It is pointless to pass statutory provisions that impose obligations on people and to have absolutely no sanctions to back up those obligations. The temptation for the Government will then be to make those obligations enforceable by the criminal law, so we will end up with yet more criminal offences. That applies even more in the case of removing the variable monetary penalties. Anyone looking at the Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Act 2008, for example, will see that those penalties are entirely standard. That is how regulation happens in general, and I cannot see any reason to remove such regulatory devices for the activity that we are discussing. There was an opportunity to object to them when the 2008 Act was going through Parliament; perhaps some Members did object. But given the fact that such devices represent the standard way in which regulation happens, I see no reason why what we do should get special treatment. That brings me to amendment 74, which relates to the appeal to the High Court and on which the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) wants us to vote. Under the 2008 Act, the standard practice—for everybody else, in every other regulatory field—is that there is no appeal to any sort of court, only to the first level of the tribunal. In giving them an appeal to the county court, we are already giving people in the line of activity that we are discussing a degree of special treatment; they have access to the ordinary courts. To go further and give people involved in politics access to the High Court would go way beyond what we offer people in other fields of activity. The hon. Gentleman said that doing so would provide for precedent. I should say that, as a matter of technical law, one High Court cannot bind another, so the amendment would not even do that. I have yet to be convinced that amendment 74 is fair in its treatment of political activity in relation to other types of activity. I am more sympathetic on the issue of discounts for the early payment of fines. It always seemed to me that those were a rather strange provision in the 2008 Act in the first place. Paying a fine early should not mean that people pay less; it is not a matter of civil debt, simply of when the obligation is fulfilled. However, the fact that that provision in the 2008 Act makes no sense is not a reason to give the activity that we are dealing with today special treatment with regard to it. We should be worrying about why we passed the provision in the first place.
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- Mr. DjanoglyConservative
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- In making all those points, the hon. Gentleman runs the risk of putting the monitoring of our electoral system in the same basket as dealing with parking tickets. There is a difference between the two, and that point applies to everything that he has just said—not least, to his last point.
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- David HowarthLiberal Democrat
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- The 2008 Act deals with a whole range of topics, some of them very serious. The hon. Gentleman has to show why the special characteristics of politics, party funding and all the matters with which we are dealing should lead to the specific special treatment that he wants. I am afraid that he has not done that.
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- Mr. DjanoglyConservative
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- I would say that most people would put the running of our electoral system in a different category from that of the monitoring of commercial affairs.
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- David HowarthLiberal Democrat
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- It is in a different category, but the question is about why that different category should be treated in the specifically different ways that he is talking about. My fear is that it is simply because we in the House know more about the political process—we know far more about it than about economic and commercial processes—that we think that we ought to provide differently for it. I am afraid that I do not think that that is good enough.
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- Mr. DjanoglyConservative
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- I put it to the hon. Gentleman that the reason is that we are here to guard our democratic system.
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- David HowarthLiberal Democrat
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- Precisely right. But I want the hon. Gentleman to demonstrate that the provisions that he puts forward—in amendment 74, for example—specifically help to guard the democratic process. My central worry is that this is not to do with thinking about the function and the importance of politics but has more to do with our self-regard and our specific knowledge. That is insufficient reason to treat better an activity that we know more about than other sorts of activity that we regulate every day.
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Mr. Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)Labour- Quote
- My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Hamilton) made his case powerfully, and I understand what the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) said about our not wanting to be seen to be putting ourselves in a different category from other citizens. However, my central point is that it is not a good thing for the police and the whole panoply of criminal law and prosecutors to invade politics—sometimes, although not in my case, for party political reasons—because they often do not want to do it. It is pretty clear, from my direct experience, that the police do not welcome this practice that has grown up. We are in danger of following the American course whereby we pollute politics with all this extraneous interference. When fraud is being committed—when an hon. Member or a member of a political party is, say, deliberately concealing a donation or seeking to obstruct justice or in some way to hinder and block the operation of the legislation that this Government have put in place—then those people deserve to be pursued for a criminal sanction; of course they do. But where an innocent mistake has been made involving what are complex rules, as has happened to many hundreds of Members of this House—including some here this evening, not only me—it is not sensible for the police or the whole system of criminal law to come in; it is a matter for regulation either by this House or by the Electoral Commission. I think that this Bill improves the situation. Let us look at some examples. The “loans for peerages” case was pursued as the result of a political request. It took 15 months, nothing happened at the end of it, and the police spent a great deal of money—hundreds of thousands of pounds. The question of whether there was an issue in that case needed to be addressed by the political process—the process of transparency and democratic accountability for which this Government deserve a lot of credit for introducing. We turned our back on the old system whereby a Hong Kong billionaire could give what he liked to a particular political party and nobody knew where it was coming from, who he was or what his motive was. The other important point about the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East—whether all its specifics are satisfactory to the House is a separate matter—is that the Electoral Commission needs to be much more accountable and needs different leadership from what it has had in the first phase of its work. If I may say so—I will not go into detail—I found it to be incompetent, dysfunctional and politically unworldly. There have been some sensible changes, with commissioners with a political background coming in. I could not believe some of the things that I experienced. One of the things that I found out in the course of this story was that if one of us were taking part in an internal party election and a member of our campaign staff, perhaps a student volunteer, got us a return to Brighton that cost, let us say, £12 or £13 off-peak, and that individual had used a credit card with a credit rating of £2,000 to £3,000—in other words, more than the £1,000 that we have to declare in relation to any donations—the commission’s view was that we would have to declare that. A £12 ticket counted as a donation in kind because of the credit card that happened to pay for it a couple of days before the money was reclaimed. I could quote countless examples—but I will not burden the House—about my own unhappy experience, which proved to me that the commission had very little idea of the political world that it was regulating. This is not in any way intended to excuse or somehow sidestep the obligation to report on time, or the necessity for the law to be obeyed by regulated donees, which all of us are. I am simply saying that we need from the new leadership a more effective and competent commission, and one that will carry out the duties that the new legislation will enshrine. The changes that the Government have made to the Bill, which were in part provoked by the original amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East and spoken to by my hon. Friends the Members for Battersea (Martin Linton) and for Carmarthen, West and South Pembrokeshire (Nick Ainger) in Committee, have made it a much better Bill. I hope that the commission’s leadership will take heed of it and start to act in a proportionate and more politically worldly fashion. In the end, we are dealing with politics, which is a voluntary activity. We all have our obligations, but we do not want, for example, to criminalise the local party treasurer because he is in his 80s and has not studied the small print of something—someone who could not be any further away from wanting to do something dishonest. We have to take the process forward in a sensible fashion, and that has not been the case before now.
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Dr. Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)Labour- Quote
- I am a little puzzled by the insistence on a Division on the question of whether a final appeal under these procedures should go to the High Court rather than the county court. The question is not where the appeal ends up, but the time during which someone may be proto-criminalised while a procedure takes place. That may well result in an appeal being taken to a county court, or in the case of the final appeal, to the High Court. That was the thrust of an amendment suggested in Committee by my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Martin Linton), to which I contributed, on the making of a defence prior to a proceeding taking place by application to a court about the nature of an omission or act that could invoke proceedings. The ability to obtain a certificate prior to those proceedings taking place relates to the argument about the defence of democracy, and the extent to which people undertaking acts that they consider to be part of their duties in representing the public in the political process can be criminalised by implication long before anything has been decided. As was suggested in Committee, people can end up camped outside people’s doors, and a series of articles and comments can be published in the press and the media about something that has yet to be determined. Under the existing process for considering whether an offence has been committed, there is no provision for redress while the process is undertaken. The idea of being able to prevent that process from going any further through the application for a certificate seems to provide the way forward, given several of the discussions we have had this afternoon. My right hon. Friend the Minister suggested in Committee that further examination of those ideas might be undertaken before the Bill had run its course through this House and another place. It would be helpful to our considerations if he could indicate whether such considerations might be provided through further amendments, or other provisions, to introduce a more proportionate system before the Bill returns to this House from the other place and we make our final consideration of it.
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Martin Linton (Battersea) (Lab)Labour- Quote
- Does my right hon. Friend accept that it should be a minimum requirement that before the Electoral Commission takes action on late payment, it has reason to suspect that that late payment is caused by a desire either to withhold information or to deceive? In cases in which there is no such suspicion and no reason to believe that, should it not decline to take action?
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- Mr. DjanoglyConservative
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- The Minister almost assumes that the commission will act proportionately. That may be the case with the existing commission, but we are legislating for the long term, and many amendments that Opposition Members and the hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Hamilton) tabled, and many comments from other hon. Members, reflect concerns that the commission may not always exercise proportionality. Will the Minister deal with our anxieties?
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- Mr. Fabian HamiltonLabour
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- Does my right hon. Friend not accept that the motivation behind new clause 4 was to ensure that the commission, which up to now has not been consistent in investigating various infringements, were consistent and monitored in respect of such consistency? Can he assure me and the House that what is proposed will ensure such consistency, which has been so sadly lacking?
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- Mr. DjanoglyConservative
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- The Minister said that we were talking about differentiating the commission’s activities from other aspects of public life, but the legislation to which the hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Hamilton) referred probably deals mainly with commercial life.
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- Mr. DjanoglyConservative
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- I would appreciate it if the Minister addressed the concerns that many people have expressed about the possibility of imposing a large penalty for a minor civil offence.
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- Mr. DjanoglyConservative
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- Will the Minister give the House one example of when an early payment discount would be likely to apply? These powers are not likely to be used frequently, and as he has said, in many people’s minds, such practices are more relevant to parking tickets than to electoral offences.
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- Mr. DjanoglyConservative
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- First, the Minister will appreciate that House procedures meant that I had to suggest that we would vote on the matter rather than wait until a later date. More particularly, does he not appreciate that the average county court judge is not very used to dealing with the legality of electoral matters? That is why they should go to the High Court.
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- David HowarthLiberal Democrat
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- I support the Minister’s general case on this issue, but is there not another important point in that amendment 74 is about appeals for fixed penalty notices? Wasting the High Court’s time on fixed penalty notices seems rather bizarre. There might, however, be a serious point—there might be, so I merely ask the Minister to reflect on it—when it comes to appeals about stop notices, which might have an effect on an election that is under way. That might be a different case, but amendment 74 seems to provide no case at all.
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- Mr. DjanoglyConservative
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- There is no precedent, because we are setting up a new system.
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- Mr. DjanoglyConservative
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- Is the Minister asserting that any fine, no matter how small—very small fines could be imposed for short periods of late fining—should go into the annual report?
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- Mr. DjanoglyConservative
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- I put it to the Minister that if a company files its report and accounts late it will now be fined. So far as I know, however, such companies do not get listed in an annual report. Why should association officers be treated differently?
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- Mr. DjanoglyConservative
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- May I suggest that it is the Minister who has turned the argument on its head? He was arguing that everyone should be treated equally. Now he is saying that they should be treated differently. The more I hear of this, the more I think it is something that we shall have to return to.
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- Mr. Fabian HamiltonLabour
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- With the leave of the House, I am grateful to the Minister for his responses to my new clauses 3 and 4. The Government have gone a long way towards meeting some of the criticisms held by me and by many other Members of the House, which were expressed in Committee by various hon. Members. I have two points to make. First, as I said in an intervention, police time could be better used to pursue criminals in the community, rather than people who have made an unintended breach of this legislation. Secondly, will the Minister strengthen the safeguards against the use of sanctions on unintended errors in reporting in the context about which he has said so much this afternoon—the flexibility that the Electoral Commission must have, and the proportionality that it must exercise in dealing with such errors? On the basis of what the Minister has said and with the permission of the House, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion. Clause, by leave, withdrawn. Schedule 1 Investigatory powers of Commission: Schedule to be inserted into the 2000 Act
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- Mr. DjanoglyConservative
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- I beg to move amendment 46, page 16, line 24, leave out ‘or has been’.
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Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst)Conservative- Quote
- With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment 47, page 16, line 25, at end insert— ‘(aa) has been the treasurer or another officer of an organisation to which this paragraph applies within the five years immediately prior to the date of the notice, or’. Government amendment 11. Amendment 52, page 17, line 13, at end insert— ‘(6) For the purposes of this Schedule a person authorised by the Commission is a person who has express written authority of the Commission to act on its behalf and is one of the following— (a) an employee of managerial level of the Electoral Commission; (b) a member of a police force in England and Wales; (c) a constable of a police force in Scotland; or (d) a member of the Police Service for Northern Ireland.’. Government amendment 12. Government amendment 13, page 18, line 5, leave out from beginning to end of line 9 on page 19 and insert— ‘Court order for delivery of documents 3 (1) This paragraph applies where the Commission have given a notice under paragraph 2 requiring documents to be produced. (2) A county court or (in Scotland) a sheriff may make a disclosure order against a person (“the respondent”) if satisfied on an application by the Commission that— (a) there are reasonable grounds to suspect that a person (whether or not the respondent) has committed an offence under this Act or has contravened (otherwise than by committing an offence) any restriction or other requirement imposed by or by virtue of this Act, and (b) there are documents referred to in the notice under paragraph 2 which— (i) have not been produced as required by the notice (either within the time specified in the notice for compliance or subsequently), (ii) are reasonably required by the Commission for the purposes of investigating the offence or contravention referred to in paragraph (a), and (iii) are in the custody or under the control of the respondent. (3) A disclosure order is an order requiring the respondent to deliver to the Commission, within such time as is specified in the order, such documents falling within sub-paragraph (2)(b) as are identified in the order (either specifically or by reference to any category or description of document). (4) For the purposes of sub-paragraph (2)(b)(iii) a document is under a person’s control if it is in the person’s possession or if the person has a right to possession of it. (5) A person who fails to comply with a disclosure order may not, in respect of that failure, be both punished for contempt of court and convicted of an offence under paragraph 13(1).’. Amendment (a) to Government amendment 13, in sub-paragraph (2), leave out ‘A county court’ and insert ‘The High Court’. Amendment (b) to Government amendment 13, in sub-paragraph (3), leave out from ‘within’ to second ‘such’ and insert ‘28 days of receipt of the order’. Amendment 9, page 18, line 6, leave out from beginning to first ‘on’ in line 7 and insert ‘The Electoral Commission may on notice apply to the High Court for an order, subject to sub-paragraph (1A),’. Amendment 3, page 18, line 6, after ‘may’, insert ‘, subject to sub-paragraph (1A),’. Amendment 2, page 18, line 15, at end insert— ‘(1A) An order may be issued under this paragraph in respect of any premises used by a holder of a relevant elective office.’. Government amendments 14 to 17. Amendment 57, page 20, line 42, at end insert ‘and leave a copy of such authorisation with that person.’. Government amendments 18 to 22.
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- Mr. DjanoglyConservative
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- The amendments deal with the investigatory powers of the Electoral Commission. Let me provide some of the background. The commission was created by the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, which gave it supervisory powers. Its functions are set out in section 145, which stipulates that its role is as a regulator, with attendant responsibility to monitor parts 3 and 4 of the Act. Those parts relate to “accounting requirements for registered parties and their members” and the “control of donations to registered parties and their members” respectively. In carrying out its role, the commission is empowered by section l46 of the Act to request information from any of a group of subjects, including political parties and candidates at an election. Additionally, a person authorised by the commission may enter the premises of a registered party, a recognised third party or a permitted participant to inspect financial records. We should therefore appreciate that potent powers are already available to the Commission, as the Minister confirmed in Committee. We support the existence of effective powers and will not revisit the PPERA powers here, but it is important for political activity not to be discouraged for fear of a heavy-handed, over-zealous and excessively empowered Electoral Commission. Furthermore, as the Minister acknowledged in Committee, the extensive powers that already exist have been used very rarely. Indeed, on Second Reading the Secretary of State for Justice confirmed that “the existing powers have been used only once since the Electoral Commission was established nearly eight years ago.”—[Official Report, 20 October 2008; Vol. 481, c.50.] Above all, let us not forget that the Bill and the Electoral Commission’s powers have a common aim: restoration of confidence in the political system through the eradication of unfair and underhand practices. It is against that backdrop that we cautiously welcome the Government amendments, which, in our view, represent a significant improvement on the Bill presented in Committee. In particular, the provisions that empowered the Commission to enter the premises of donees—including MPs—for the purpose of monitoring has been withdrawn, while the ability to apply for a search warrant for the purpose of investigating a suspected offence or legislative breach has been entirely removed. Nevertheless, a number of reservations remain, and there is more work to be done before we can be fully satisfied. Schedule 1 contains the provisions of a new schedule 19A to the 2000 Act, which is inserted in the Act by clause 2(2). In respect of schedule 1, I reiterate our conceptual support for an enhanced role for the commission as a regulator, but that support is not unqualified, and attention is now required as we address the detail. Amendments 46 and 47 are intended to inject clarity. In the light of the commission’s wide-ranging powers, it is sensible to define the limits of the relevant provisions carefully. The amendments are linked, and introduce a specified time limit for the period in which a retired officer is subject to the disclosure notice provisions. We are keen to avoid a scenario in which long-retired ex-officers of political associations are subject to disclosure notices in relation to some long-forgotten donation or action: it is both unreasonable and impractical to extend this power to very historical actions. From a more practical perspective, the likelihood of comprehensive records or documents being kept by an officer for more than five years after his tenure is small and the power would be difficult to enforce, especially in view of the limited physical space in which party officials often find themselves working. We must also be aware of the financial and administrative burdens that we place on such individuals and organisations, as well as the fact that many of the individuals concerned will have left such offices altogether and may even have left the country. What concerned the Minister in Committee was that, given the wording of the amendment that we proposed then, officers of more than five years’ standing could be excluded even if they were still serving. That was clearly not our intention. We have taken this opportunity to hone the earlier amendment, proposing amendments 46 and 47 to address its deficiencies. They address the point made by the Minister by removing the ability to serve a notice on an ex-officer who has been retired from the post for five years or more, while not limiting the ability to serve a notice on any current officer. An additional benefit would be the encouragement of expedient and efficient issuing of notices by the Electoral Commission. If the commission does not find grounds for investigation within five years of an officer’s retiring from a post, it is normally the fault of the commission rather than the individual or group. Let me repeat that we are dealing with unpaid volunteers in our associations who involve themselves in politics because they want to give their time freely for what they hope will be the better of our society. We must, as far as possible, encourage them in that, and not put them off by unnecessary and burdensome liabilities. To that end, I intend to press amendment 47 to a Division. The background to Government amendments 11 to 22 is contentious. Great concern has been expressed throughout the passage of the Bill about the excessiveness of the new “powers of entry” regime. Prior to the amendments, the Bill would have extended the Electoral Commission’s existing powers of entry under section 146 of the Political Parties and Electoral Reform Act to include other bodies and individuals such as donors and MPs. Quite simply, hard-fought personal liberties—specifically privacy—were at stake. Moreover, we were greatly concerned about potential erosion of the willingness of law-abiding citizens to donate to political parties and engage with the political system. A single abuse of the entry powers—perhaps the entering of a suspected but innocent person’s home—could have had grave consequences for donations generally, thus damaging the general aims of the Bill. The Government amendments remove from the Bill the commission’s excessive power to enter the premises of regulated donees, regulated participants, candidates at an election and election agents. However, they replace the removed passage with a new paragraph (1A) which retains the commission’s ability to enter the premises of a registered party, a recognised third party, a permitted participant, a members’ association, or an organisation or individual formerly falling within any of those groups. The Bill will still permit the commission to enter premises other than those excluded by Government amendment 11 for the purpose of carrying out its functions, and it may then inspect documents relating to income and expenditure. Government amendments 12, 18 and 21 are consequential, and ensure that the remaining provisions of the schedule are consistent with the change. On 11 November last year, in Committee, the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) expressed concern lest the wholesale removal of entry powers in relation to all donees, as proposed by what was then our amendment 102, would go too far and actually reduce the powers of the commission. In particular, the removal of “donees” from the paragraph would remove members’ associations—along with MPs—from the ambit of the provision. Government amendment 11 addresses that concern by including members’ associations in new paragraph (1A)(l)(d). The commission itself has also confirmed that the power conferred in Committee was not essential for its purposes. We are now close to a position that is acceptable to all in terms of entry powers. Accordingly, we welcome this significant Government climbdown and the reduction in the commission’s power, and we are pleased that the ability to invade the privacy of MPs and other individuals will be removed. Even with these amendments, the commission will still possess significant powers to ensure it is equipped to tackle offences and infringements of the 2000 Act. Indeed, the drafting essentially preserves the status quo under the Act while removing the contentious provisions. To that extent, these amendments represent a significant retreat from the menacing position proposed in the Bill presented in Committee and return a much-needed balance to the schedule. As amended by Government amendment 11, schedule 1 would make reference to those people “authorised by the Commission”. Such people are very important, and almost all the powers granted to the commission are available to these individuals. Unfortunately, there is no reference in the Bill to what constitutes a person “authorised by the Commission”. Considering the great powers placed in their hands, we consider that it would be better if they were a defined group of persons. Amendment 52 proposes a solution, and defines “a person authorised by the Commission”, and who may be authorised by the commission to exercise its powers under the schedule. Who such a person can be has been intentionally restricted to high-level employees of the commission. In Committee on 11 November, the Minister expressed concern that this would be too “restrictive and inflexible”. However, the Minister went on to address this concern by confirming: “The commission has no intention of using this power lightly”.––[Official Report, Political Parties and Elections Public Bill Committee, 11 November 2008; c. 175.] Reconciling these two statements, I ask this question: is it not sensible that a power that will be rarely used, and employed only to tackle serious cases, is exercised only by the more senior members of the commission? It seems entirely reasonable to expect the commission to send a senior individual, ensuring that both the commission and the subject of the search take the process seriously. As things stand, the commission could theoretically send the cleaner along. Any lack of flexibility caused by this amendment reflects the need to exercise caution when exercising commission powers. Government amendment 13 represents another progressive development in an area that was hotly disputed in Committee. First and foremost, it removes the power of entry by warrant introduced by paragraph 3 of schedule 1. This is significant, and shows the progress we have made in departing from the draconian provisions of the original Bill. Without this amendment, the Bill would permit entry, by force, on to the premises of MPs and other individuals. Given recent events, I hardly need to remind hon. Members how contentious that power was; it was excessive and had the potential to be used disproportionately. In addition, the amendment replaces the entry by warrant provision with a more acceptable measure: the ability for the commission to apply for a court order that documents be released. The commission may apply for a court order when it has exhausted the request by notice procedure in paragraph 2(2). We support this measure, and believe that it is a helpful last resort when the commission is confronted with a reluctant subject of a proper investigation. The hurdles in place before an order can be made also seem adequate, and the commission must show that there are “reasonable grounds” to suspect that a person has committed an offence under the 2000 Act.
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- Dr. StrangLabour
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- The whole House supports the principle of proper entry and inspection, and, as the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) said, there is a desire for that to be proportionate. The discussion among all the parties currently represented in the Chamber reflects that aim, and it is interesting that the commission itself in its briefing supports the line being taken. It is right to go down the court order procedure route. I have been a Member of this House for a long time, and I well remember the days before we had the Electoral Commission. Whatever view one takes of the record of the commission—I do not feel qualified to make a judgment on that—the fact is that there is a consensus that we need a commission. It must be an independent body, but it also works within a framework laid down by the House of Commons. What has been said in this debate, about Government amendments 11, 12 and 13 in particular, reflects the intention to put a measure in place that can be properly enforced by inspecting premises and, if necessary, bringing the individual or individuals concerned to justice.
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- David HowarthLiberal Democrat
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- I, too, welcome the Government amendments in this group. As the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) said, there was widespread concern in the House not only about the extent of the powers being granted to the commission, but about the way in which those powers were to be exercised by a warrant process that did not contain much accountability. From the start of the debate on this matter, the commission has conceded the point; in evidence to us, it said that it would prefer a different sort of procedure. The way in which the Government have introduced the procedure in the amendments reflects well on what the commission asked them to do: to move to a different process whereby an application is made to a court for an order, the court checks that the order has been properly applied for and the circumstances are such that an order should be made, and the sanction is basically the one for contempt of court—rightly, anyone who defies a court order to act in the way that the commission wants is asking for trouble. That is a far more proportionate, accountable and open way of proceeding. On Government amendment 11, the hon. Gentleman mentioned my concern in Committee that proposals to exclude vast swathes of the people who were affected by the commission’s powers would go too far and we would end up with less regulatory coverage than there is now. I am entirely satisfied with the Government’s response on that matter, for precisely the reason that he mentioned—the new drafting covers the cases I had in mind. I can offer the hon. Gentleman some comfort in that, compared with the previous debate, I agree with the Conservatives’ amendments 46 and 47. He rightly says that there is a need for some sort of statutory limitations on this sort of regulation; we cannot have people who are long retired still facing the prospect of having action taken against them under these powers. For the sake of certainty and clarity, it is right to have a cut-off point, so I am with him in his principle, which is right, and I will support him in the Lobby if he manages to secure a vote on this particular point. However, I would prefer a time limit of six years, rather than five, simply because—this goes back to the previous debate—that would be more in line with the normal limitation times used in law. On amendment 52, the hon. Gentleman is also right to say that there ought to be a specific list of people of a specific degree of seniority who can act on behalf of the commission. Simply making provision in respect of anyone to whom the commission might delegate gives too broad a discretion. This ought to be controlled by not only the commission’s views as to what is right, but by statute, and I am perfectly happy to support what he said on that, too. As for what the hon. Gentleman said about the High Court, I do not wish to repeat what was said in a previous debate. His proposal might be putting too much of a burden on High Court judges, but this is a different case from the one in the previous debate; there might be a case for saying that instances of sensitivity would be involved where someone defies a court order and the appeal might, thus, be more appropriately heard at a higher level than a simple fixed penalty notice matter would be. I am very happy with the way in which this debate has panned out. The starting point was not right, had many difficulties and was inadvertently threatening. Nevertheless, some of the remedies suggested from various parts of the House turned out to be worse than the disease. I am glad that we have ended up at a point where we can all agree that the regulation being proposed is proportionate and right.
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- Mr. DjanoglyConservative
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- If it makes the Minister happy, I shall say that as well.
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Mr. Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)Independent- Quote
- I have been listening to the Minister’s argument very carefully. He says that the power will be used only in exceptional circumstances, that it will be a senior management decision and that he expects it not to be delegated down. Surely it will be much simpler just to put a provision in the Bill that it will not be delegated down.
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- Mr. DjanoglyConservative
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- We welcome the Government’s significant shift on many of the provisions to a position that we basically support. I appreciate the Minister’s agreement this evening to review the role of the High Court. However, there remain issues that we will want to look at in detail when the Bill goes to the other place. The Minister has just addressed the main one; we are pleased that he now sees that there is a case for offering protections to non-serving association officers, who normally will have served on a voluntary basis. We had great concerns that ongoing liability would be unfair to such people. Having heard the Minister’s explanation, and his promise to table an amendment in the other place, I will not press amendment 47 to a Division. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Amendments made: 11, page 17, leave out lines 5 to 13 and insert— ‘Powers of entry and inspection 1A (4) This paragraph applies to the following organisations and individuals— (a) a registered party or, in the case of a registered party with accounting units— (i) the central organisation of the party; (ii) an accounting unit of the party; (b) a recognised third party (within the meaning of Part 6); (c) a permitted participant (within the meaning of Part 7); (d) a members association (within the meaning of Schedule 7); (e) an organisation or individual formerly falling within any of paragraphs (a) to (d). (5) A person authorised by the Commission may, for the purposes of the carrying out by the Commission of their functions— (a) at any reasonable time enter premises occupied by an organisation to which, or an individual to whom, this paragraph applies, and (b) having entered the premises, inspect any documents relating to the income and expenditure of the organisation or individual. (6) This paragraph is subject to paragraph 2(6).’. Amendment 12, page 18, line 1, leave out ‘paragraph 1(5)’ and insert ‘paragraph 1A’. Amendment 13, page 18, line 5, leave out from beginning to end of line 9 on page 19 and insert— ‘Court order for delivery of documents 3 (1) This paragraph applies where the Commission have given a notice under paragraph 2 requiring documents to be produced. (2) A county court or (in Scotland) a sheriff may make a disclosure order against a person (“the respondent”) if satisfied on an application by the Commission that— (a) there are reasonable grounds to suspect that a person (whether or not the respondent) has committed an offence under this Act or has contravened (otherwise than by committing an offence) any restriction or other requirement imposed by or by virtue of this Act, and (b) there are documents referred to in the notice under paragraph 2 which— (i) have not been produced as required by the notice (either within the time specified in the notice for compliance or subsequently), (ii) are reasonably required by the Commission for the purposes of investigating the offence or contravention referred to in paragraph (a), and (iii) are in the custody or under the control of the respondent. (3) A disclosure order is an order requiring the respondent to deliver to the Commission, within such time as is specified in the order, such documents falling within sub-paragraph (2)(b) as are identified in the order (either specifically or by reference to any category or description of document). (4) For the purposes of sub-paragraph (2)(b)(iii) a document is under a person’s control if it is in the person’s possession or if the person has a right to possession of it. (5) A person who fails to comply with a disclosure order may not, in respect of that failure, be both punished for contempt of court and convicted of an offence under paragraph 13(1).’. Amendment 14, page 19, line 11, leave out from beginning to first ‘for’ in line 12 and insert ‘The Commission may retain any documents delivered to them in compliance with an order under paragraph 3’. Amendment 15, page 20, line 29, leave out from ‘documents’ to end of line 30 and insert ‘delivered to them in compliance with an order under paragraph 3;’. Amendment 16, page 20, line 37, leave out from ‘exercising’ to end of line 39 and insert ‘a power under paragraph 1A in relation to any premises’. Amendment 17, page 20, line 40, leave out ‘or warrant’. Amendment 18, page 22, line 28, leave out ‘paragraph 1(5)’ and insert ‘paragraph 1A’. Amendment 19, page 22, line 32, leave out ‘a warrant’ and insert ‘an order’. Amendment 20, page 22, leave out lines 33 to 36. Amendment 21, page 23, line 11, leave out ‘paragraph 1(5)’ and insert ‘paragraph 1A’. Amendment 22, page 23, line 15, leave out from ‘which’ to end of line 23 and insert ‘an order under paragraph 3— (i) was applied for; (ii) was made.’.—(Mr. Wills.) Schedule 2 Civil sanctions: Schedule to be inserted into the 2000 Act Amendment proposed: 74, page 25, line 22, leave out ‘a county court’ and insert ‘the High Court.’—(Mr. Djanogly.) Question put, That the amendment be made.
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- Mr. Deputy SpeakerConservative
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- With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment 5, in schedule 3, page 38, line 21, at beginning insert— ‘(A1) In paragraph 1 of Schedule 7 to the 2000 Act (prohibition on accepting donations from impermissible donors), at the end of sub-sub-paragraph (7)(c) there is inserted “, or a compliance officer appointed by the holder of a relevant elective office to act on his behalf.”’. Government amendments 29 and 30.
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- Mr. Deputy SpeakerConservative
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- Order. I am sorry to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman. Will the House please be quiet? This debate may be short and sweet, but it should be heard in silence.
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Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)Scottish National Party- Quote
- I beg to move amendment 86, page 4, line 2, leave out from ‘3A’ to end and insert ‘Nominated Commissioners’.
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- Mr. Deputy SpeakerConservative
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- With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: amendment 87, page 4, line 3, leave out from beginning to ‘be’ and insert ‘A “nominated Commissioner” shall’. Amendment 88, page 4, line 5, leave out ‘(a “nominated Commissioner”)’. Amendment 89, page 4, line 7, leave out from ‘with’ to ‘at’ in line 8 and insert ‘15 or more parliamentarians’. Amendment 90, page 4, line 9, leave out from ‘appointment’ to ‘whose’ in line 13. Government amendments 31 and 32. Amendment 91, page 4, line 19, at end insert— ‘( ) In subsection (2) a “parliamentarian” means a Member of the European Parliament, a Member of the House of Commons, a Member of the Scottish Parliament, a Member of the Welsh Assembly or a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly.’. Government amendment 33. Amendment 92, page 4, line 26, leave out subsection (7). Amendment 93, in clause 6, page 4, line 46, leave out ‘nine or ten’ and insert ‘one or two more than the number of nominated Commissioners multiplied by two.’.
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- Pete WishartScottish National Party
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- The amendment, which unites all the minority parties in this House, stands in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Angus Robertson) and other colleagues across the House, and it should also include signatures from the Democratic Unionist party. We, the minority parties of this House, are in effect and in fact the Governments of the different legislatures across the United Kingdom. The amendment is self-explanatory. We want the Electoral Commission, in regulating across the United Kingdom, to recognise the new reality of the UK in 2009: the multi-party, multi-legislature UK that we currently experience. It is no good for it simply to reflect this House—the old tired Westminster solution of the two main parties, with the Liberals acting as a sop for all the other minority parties. The amendments try to define that new system. Let us take a cursory look around the United Kingdom. In this House, we have a majority Labour Government; in Scotland, we have a minority SNP Government and in Wales and Northern Ireland, we have coalitions of different parties. Different parties are in power throughout the United Kingdom. In fact, the only two parties involved in this debate who are not in power anywhere in the UK are the Conservative and Liberal parties, yet they will have a political commissioner nominee for the new commission. That is totally unacceptable to us. If the Bill were just about this House, I would accept that what it proposed was the right way to proceed, given that we in the SNP are seven Members out of 646 Members of this House and all the minority parties combined amount to little more than 28 Members. If it were just about this House, having one political commissioner between the four parties would seem to be fair and reasonable, but the Electoral Commission has a remit beyond these green Benches. It serves all the legislatures, Parliaments and Assemblies throughout the United Kingdom, and the appointment of those political commissioners should adequately reflect and represent that. Let us look at the situation in Scotland a little more carefully. We are described as a minority party in this House, and I accept that with seven Members out of 646, that is the case. However, it is not the case in Scotland. We are the largest party in Scotland by seats and by votes. We are the Government of Scotland. If we look at the last two by-elections in Scotland, we find that the Labour party won one—I see that the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Lindsay Roy) is in his place—and the SNP won one. The Conservatives narrowly held on to their deposit in one seat but lost it in the other. The Liberals lost both their deposits. Those parties are quickly becoming minority parties in Scotland, yet they will have a nominated political commissioner, who will be involved in regulating electoral law for the Scottish Parliament, while the party of Government in Scotland will not have such an appointee. That is clearly absurd, unfair and bizarre, and it is totally unacceptable to us. It is as if we were to say to the Labour party, “Let’s have politically nominated commissioners, but you can’t have one.” That would be totally unacceptable to the Minister and his colleagues. I would wager that it would be unacceptable to the Conservatives were they to be told, “We’re going to have politically nominated commissioners. The Labour party can have one, but sorry, Conservative party, you can’t have one.” I am sure that had the Labour and the Conservative parties been allowed to have politically nominated commissioners and the Liberal party had not, that would be totally unacceptable to the Liberals. They would be standing with me, full of indignation about what had been suggested. This debate is about fairness and what is right. I want to dispel the notion—we debated this in Committee at some length; I remember discussing it with the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing), who I am sure is paying attention to everything that I am saying—that these politically nominated commissioners have nothing to do with the parties that are nominating them. What a lot of nonsense to suggest that they are somehow above politics and will be nominated by political parties only to give us the benefit of their experience and of their years in this House—“Aye, right”, as we say in Scotland. They are there as political nominees from those political parties, and they will have a role to play for those parties.
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Mrs. Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)Conservative- Quote
- I am indeed paying close attention to every word that the hon. Gentleman is saying, many of which he said when we considered the matter in Committee. He is right to reiterate his argument now, but that does not make it any more correct than it was then. The fact is that if people of seniority, experience and wisdom are appointed to a body such as the Electoral Commission, they are not there to serve narrow party political interests, and to suggest that they are is to suggest that the entire political class is incapable of rising above party politics and acting for the common good and for the sake of democracy, which is what we really want.
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- Pete WishartScottish National Party
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- I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that intervention. We have been round the houses on this issue. I challenged her on that point in Committee, and I challenge her again, because this is the key choice for all the political parties in the House. If it does not matter whether or not it is a Conservative Member who is nominating these political commissioners, I am sure that she will bypass her opportunity to nominate. I am sure that Labour Members will say, “If it’s just a bit of experience they want, we’ll not bother nominating anybody”, and the Liberals will do the same. I offered them that opportunity in Committee, and—surprise, surprise—they were not prepared to take up my generous offer, because they know, as I do, that we are talking about party political representatives on the Electoral Commission. They will all have one; we will not. That is the key to this issue. It is about fairness and ensuring that all the political parties get their right to nominate a political commissioner. What is being proposed—I note the amendment also tabled by the hon. Member for Gosport (Sir Peter Viggers)—is that all the major political parties, Labour, Conservative and Liberal, will be allowed to nominate two candidates for political commissioners, who will all have, as is right, a place on the new commission. There is a fourth place reserved for all of the minority parties. How on earth the Social Democratic and Labour party and the SNP—Plaid Cymru and the Democratic Unionists cannot be with us tonight—can decide about how we should nominate one commissioner for the Electoral Commission is beyond me.
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Mr. Angus MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)Independent- Quote
- These other minority parties are not only very different but happen to form the Governments of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
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- Pete WishartScottish National Party
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- I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding me of that fact. I will come to that point, which is a good and powerful one. I would not know how to organise and delegate for one commissioner from all those four very diverse political parties from different legislatures throughout the United Kingdom. Thankfully, however, it will not be left to me but to the hon. Member for Gosport, and I have no idea how on earth he intends to do it. According to the Bill, each of these four political parties—any party with more than two Members is constituted as a political party within the House—will be allowed to nominate two potential commissioners and then pass those nominations to the hon. Gentleman’s Committee—the Speaker’s Committee—to decide who that one commissioner will be. I have no idea what the criteria will be, or how that commissioner will be determined. I am interested to see how that matter will be resolved.
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Mr. Francis Maude (Horsham) (Con)Conservative- Quote
- Is the hon. Gentleman really saying that his party is incapable of working with other parties in order to achieve a single nomination?
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- Pete WishartScottish National Party
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- We have absolutely no problem whatsoever about working with the other minority parties in this House. In fact, we work together very effectively on a number of issues, but when it comes to the regulation of elections in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, how on earth can a political commissioner from Northern Ireland have the knowledge, background and experience to look after elections in Scotland? It is just not possible.
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Stewart Hosie (Dundee, East) (SNP)Scottish National Party- Quote
- Is it not the case that the electoral systems may be different? I am not sure whether the electoral law is identical, but the level of knowledge that would be required to cover at least three, possibly four, different legislatures would be extraordinary.
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- Pete WishartScottish National Party
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- My hon. Friend is right. Northern Ireland has a very different political system of proportional representation from Scotland, and any political commissioner representing all the minority parties would have trouble ensuring that the different systems were represented effectively. I come back to the issue of how the fourth commissioner will be decided upon. I do not envy the hon. Member for Gosport in that task, and I look forward to him giving even a scintilla of a hint of how the matter will be determined. If a former Member from Northern Ireland, for example, was to be a political commissioner, what on earth would they know about the Scottish parliamentary system and Scottish politics? I would have very little knowledge of what happens in Northern Ireland if that task were ever to fall on me, so I look forward to learning how the matter will be determined. It is almost an impossible task, so we have a serious problem.
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Bob Spink (Castle Point) (Ind)Independent- Quote
- Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that the key issue is how the matter will be perceived by the public? We know that the public hold Parliament and parliamentarians in contempt at the moment—[Hon. Members: “Some of them.”] In general, as a collective body—not as individuals, of course. Each of our constituents love us as MPs and trust us, but they hold the body of Parliament in contempt. They have never before held us in such low regard in my lifetime. We have to look at how this matter is perceived by people out there, because that is the issue, but, yet again, we are failing to do so.
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- Pete WishartScottish National Party
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- The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, and I am sorry to disappoint him, but UKIP does not qualify. It has only one Member in this House.
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- Bob SpinkIndependent
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- I am an independent.
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- Pete WishartScottish National Party
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- The independents are not even recognised as a political party in this House, and that also applies to the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Galloway), whose Respect party would not qualify for the arrangement for appointing a political commissioner. The process is nonsense and is unworkable, given that there is no clear method of determining who will be the fourth commissioner. We must address that issue as a priority, which is why I have introduced what I consider to be an elegant solution to this problem and conundrum. It takes us beyond the green Benches and the shadow of Big Ben to all the other legislatures in the United Kingdom, because that is the basis on which we should start. It takes account of the fact that there are not just parliamentarians in Westminster, but in the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly. The Electoral Commission must recognise that reality. I have put forward what I consider to be measured and sensible amendments, even if I do say so myself, which set a threshold of 15 parliamentarians across the United Kingdom, which means that if a party has 15 parliamentarians, it should be entitled to nominate a party political commissioner to the Electoral Commission. The number of 15 parliamentarians is not excessive, and it is fair.
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Mr. Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)Liberal Democrat- Quote
- I support the principle behind the hon. Gentleman’s amendment, but I do not think that the solution is as elegant as he makes out. His threshold of 15 is too low because in practice it would mean four electoral commissioners for Northern Ireland, and five for the whole of Great Britain. If he wants our support on amendment 89, he would have to increase the threshold.
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- Pete WishartScottish National Party
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- I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I can see that 15 may seem a bit of a low threshold, but I am a reasonable guy and I would be prepared to reconsider it. We have to establish the principle that all Parliaments and all legislatures are important, and that they should be counted when it comes to determining such important tasks and roles. It is not good enough for the Electoral Commission to be the plaything of this House, because it belongs to all the legislatures of the United Kingdom. The amendment that I intend to press to a vote would put in place a system that involved parliamentarians from all the political parties. I would be grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s support for that.
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- Mr. MacNeilIndependent
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- Does my hon. Friend agree that if his proposal is not taken up, it will, sadly, look like a shoddy carve-up from Westminster once more?
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- Pete WishartScottish National Party
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- I am grateful to my hon. Friend who, as usual, makes an important and powerful point. The legitimacy of the Electoral Commission is at stake, not just as a thing of Westminster, but as a proper organisation that reflects all the legislatures in the United Kingdom. That legitimacy will be put to the test by my amendments. The commission has to be seen to be serving every single Parliament and Assembly in the United Kingdom, and it is not good enough for it just to serve this House. That is why we have to vote this evening; we have to acknowledge that all the other legislatures and Parliaments are important and that they should be taken into account when the political commissioners are appointed.
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Hywel Williams (Caernarfon) (PC)Plaid Cymru- Quote
- An example of that complexity is that the legislative competence of the Welsh Assembly is determined by this place, by devolving individual powers through the wonderfully named legislative competence order arrangements. If the Minister gives me a concise, 100-word explanation of the legislative competence order provision and the 27 steps thereof, I will happily support the Government if the amendment is pressed to a vote; otherwise, I shall support my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart).
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- Pete WishartScottish National Party
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- I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I can see the Minister itching to get to his feet to explain that, and waving to his civil servants to assist him in that task. We are in a difficult situation and I do not envy the position of the hon. Member for Gosport. I would, perhaps, give him one little bit of advice, if he does not mind. The largest minority party in this House is the Democratic Unionist party, with nine Members of the House of Commons. Next, comes the Scottish National party with seven, then we have the SDLP and Plaid Cymru with three each. If I were the hon. Gentleman, my first port of call when deciding who the fourth commissioner should be would be the largest party. I know, as an SNP Member that if I were in the largest minority party and it was passed over for that role, I would be very disappointed. We would expect it to be a job for the largest party. What is likely to happen? If the hon. Member for Gosport is approaching this matter as I know he will—diligently and with due care and attention—that position should be given to the Democratic Unionist party. There is no other way to deal with the matter than to award the role to the largest party. But what a shoddy way to do it—to award it to that party just because it is the largest. We would expect a member of the Democratic Unionist party, from another Parliament, to be our representative on the Electoral Commission. That is not good enough. It is nonsense, and an alternative must be addressed as a priority by the Minister. At stake is the credibility of the Electoral Commission to do a job that reflects not just this House, but the reality of a multi-party, multi-legislature United Kingdom. That is the task and the test of these amendments. We will press the matter to a vote, and we encourage hon. Members who believe in fairness and who think that the whole UK should be recognised to support us. I am sure that if hon. Members consider the matter properly and carefully, we will get that support.
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- Dr. StrangLabour
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- As the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) knows, the commission has resisted the idea of any political party making nominations to the commission. However, like the Government and others in this House, I think that the commission got that wrong. It is right in principle that we include people with experience of political parties. They do not have to have been Members of Parliament, but such people should be members of the commission. I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s point that because someone on the commission is a Labour or Liberal appointee, they will act as a Labour or Liberal party person. That is not how the system will operate in practice.
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- Mr. MacNeilIndependent
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- Perhaps I have stopped the hon. Gentleman in mid-flow, but would he be happy to see a commission without a Labour representative or a Labour appointee?
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- Dr. StrangLabour
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- Quite frankly, if there were only two or three, it would not be earth-shattering. Having said that, I think that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire made a good case about the difficulty in appointing the fourth commissioner. There is no question about that. I must confess—perhaps this is a dangerous thing to say—that I had assumed that the fourth commissioner might well be a nationalist, either Scottish or Welsh. However, it is obviously not intended that it always would be, and the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire made that case very well. Obviously Northern Ireland is a very important part of the UK, and inevitably it must be represented. He has encouraged us to consider the matter, and I hope that the Government will listen. There could be a commissioner from Northern Ireland, which is very different from the mainland in some respects. There is a case for considering the fourth commissioner, because with due respect to the hon. Member for Gosport (Sir Peter Viggers), who will state his position shortly, if Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberals are going to have representatives, it seems difficult to imagine how one person can represent the minority parties. An interesting case has been made about that.
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Mr. Jim Devine (Livingston) (Lab)Labour- Quote
- As my right hon. Friend knows, I was my predecessor’s election agent from 1983. I was astonished by the lack of knowledge of electoral law at the Electoral Commission. Not one of its representatives had stood as a candidate, been an agent or understood the basics of local funding of political parties. Not one of them understood how returns were filled in or the need to complete them within 28 days. I saw a shambles in Bathgate on the night of the electoral count, when we had to abandon the count at 5.30 am and recommence it at 12 o’clock. That was totally under the control of the Electoral Commission. Surely it is time that we got some real political knowledge and insight on the commission.
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- Dr. StrangLabour
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- My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. We could go over the history of the matter, and as I said earlier, if we go back far enough it was all under the auspices of the Home Office. As has been said, we now have a hotchpotch of electoral systems in Scotland and elsewhere, with different ways of voting in different elections. There is considerable merit in being prepared to consider the matter constructively. As we know, power devolved is power retained, and this is not just about the House of Commons. As my hon. Friend says, it is about practicalities and how we conduct our democratic affairs. We do that, of course, through the parties.
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- Stewart HosieScottish National Party
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- The point made by the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Devine) about the lack of real life experience in the Electoral Commission is all the more important because the election he mentioned was won by Angela Constance of the SNP. Likewise, the Scottish Parliament counterpart of the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Lindsay Roy) is Tricia Marwick of the SNP, and that of the right hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Dr. Strang) is Kenny McAskill of the SNP. That is all the more reason to back up the suggestion of the hon. Member for Livingston that there should be a proper, fair distribution of experience as well as of party. The example that he gives from the May election is absolutely right and justifies what my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) said.
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- Dr. StrangLabour
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- We had an unfortunate experience in Edinburgh, East, too. We had the highest number of spoiled papers, and various difficulties arose. I hope that we can consider the matter constructively, because it is not just about the Westminster Parliament. It is about Parliaments throughout the UK.
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- David HowarthLiberal Democrat
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- As I said in Committee, I have a great deal of sympathy with the position taken by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart). The fundamental difficulty results from the lack of devolution of powers on electoral matters. There is a Boundary Commission for Scotland—that matter is devolved—but no Scottish Electoral Commission that covers the electoral law that applies to the Scottish Parliament. The situation is similar in Wales and Northern Ireland. The long-term solution is further devolution of those matters. In the meantime, we have to agree about what to do about the various anomalies that the hon. Gentleman mentioned.
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- Mr. MacNeilIndependent
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- I am listening to the hon. Gentleman’s long-term hopes, goals and ambitions. As we know, in the House of Commons “long term” really can mean long term. In the meantime, for the practical purposes of the debate, does he not agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart)? We need fairness, that is all. We do not want a system that is cooked up in Westminster; we want fairness.
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- David HowarthLiberal Democrat
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- I do agree that that is necessary, and that the Electoral Commission’s credibility in carrying out its task, which covers elections to the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly, depends on its having a spread of people with intimate knowledge of what is going on in those elections. Not only fairness but effectiveness is needed. The point about electoral systems has been well made. The systems used in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland are entirely different from those used for this House—more’s the pity, in the case of the Northern Ireland system. That shows the variety of problems that the commission faces. More than that, we are dealing with different political cultures. It is not just how people are elected that is different in this House from the Scottish Parliament, Wales or Northern Ireland. The multi-party nature of those assemblies makes politics different. We cannot understand a place’s electoral politics unless we understand the culture of its politics. That point is fundamental. We must therefore consider how to deal with the current situation, which I hope is temporary. The principle suggested by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire is right: the law must recognise the existence of the other parliamentary assemblies. We in this House are not the only relevant people. I am absolutely with him on that, and I am glad that he wishes to press to a Division the amendment that makes precisely that point, but I am afraid that I am with my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr. Reid) on the exact mechanism and numbers that the hon. Gentleman has chosen. If we were to require an unweighted number of 15 parliamentarians for a party to be represented, we would end up with nine political commissioners, four of whom would represent Northern Irish parties. One of those would be Sinn Fein, and it would be interesting to see whether it took up its position.
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- Mr. MacNeilIndependent
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- I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman, and I hope that this is not an example of the Liberal Democrats slipping away from fairness on a technicality.
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- David HowarthLiberal Democrat
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- Not at all. On the basic principle proposed by the hon. Gentleman’s party, we will be with him in the Lobby. However, we must consider the practicalities of the numbers involved and the balance between the various parts of the UK. We need to find a practical way forward that recognises the principle of producing an Electoral Commission that is not excessively weighted in one direction or another. As the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire said, we must recognise the multi-party, multi-parliamentary nature of our country. The Government’s proposal harks back to the days before the radical policy of devolution, of which the Labour party ought to be proud. They now need to understand the consequences of that policy right across the board, including in the Bill.
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Sir Peter Viggers (Gosport) (Con)Conservative- Quote
- I wish to speak about amendments 31, 32 and 33, which I tabled as the hon. Member who speaks on behalf of the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission. The Justice Secretary then signed them, which technically makes them Government amendments, and the Minister needs to move them formally at the end of the debate. The purpose of the amendments is to reduce from two to one the minimum number of candidates that the leader of one of the three major UK-wide parties is required to put forward in order to nominate a commissioner with a political experience. They have been tabled on behalf of the Speaker’s Committee, which, under clause 4, will be responsible for the procedure for appointing all electoral commissioners, including the four commissioners whom the leaders of political parties nominate. The Speaker’s Committee is of the view that it should not be required to choose between names put forward by the three main parties, for two reasons. First, a party’s leader is the person best placed to choose who should represent that party. Secondly, the choice between two candidates might prove to be a false choice, with the dice deliberately loaded in favour of one candidate. If a party leader wishes to nominate more than one person, nothing in the amendments would prevent that, but the Speaker’s Committee sees no reason for requiring multiple nominations. The Speaker’s Committee takes the view that its role should be to assess a nominee’s suitability to be an electoral commissioner and, on that basis, to approve or reject him or her. The amendments do not affect the position on nominations made on behalf of parties other than the three main parties. In any case, it differs from the position on the main parties. It is greatly hoped that the other parties’ leaders can reach agreement between them on a single nominee. If they cannot, each one will have the right to put forward one or more names and, in circumstances in which more than one leader of a minor party chooses to exercise that right, the Speaker’s Committee will have to choose between the nominees.
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- Mr. MacNeilIndependent
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- I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman, but from where I am sitting—I am sure that it applies to many other people, not only in Scotland but throughout the UK—the proposals look like Westminster games as usual. I am sorry to say that.
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- Sir Peter ViggersConservative
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- All I can say to the hon. Gentleman is that, knowing from my membership of the Speaker’s Committee that it represents a range of parties and that the majority is not Government controlled, I believe that it tries to work impartially and fairly.
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- Mr. DevineLabour
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- We should be clear about what the Electoral Commission is. It is a practical application of electoral law and it requires expertise. Does the hon. Gentleman agree?
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- Sir Peter ViggersConservative
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- The Speaker’s Committee agrees. That is why it has concurred with the Government’s proposals to have electoral commissioners with political experience. It believes that the best way of appointing such people is for party leaders to nominate a person who would be approved or not by the Electoral Commission. The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point and the Speaker’s Committee has shared the view for some time that the Electoral Commission would benefit from direct party political input.
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- Andrew MackinlayLabour
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- How does the Chairman personally envisage the Committee going about making the choice? Let us assume that all the numerically minor political parties nominate sensible, qualified people. It beggars belief that there is some fair way of choosing. Frankly, a lottery would be fairer and it would have some logic. How does the hon. Gentleman envisage approaching the matter? I am genuinely bewildered and fascinated to know how, under his stewardship, he would choose between the Democratic Unionist party, the Social Democratic and Labour party, the Scottish National party, Plaid Cymru and so on. How would he do it?
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- Sir Peter ViggersConservative
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- First, the Chairman of the Speaker’s Committee is technically the Speaker. He is not always present, but he is technically the Chairman of the Committee. The Electoral Commission was created with the intention of its being independent, but it has to be responsible for pay and rations to somebody. The House decided that the “somebody” would be the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, and that it would seek to carry out its duties fairly and responsibly. To date, I have heard no criticism that the Speaker’s Committee is partial or unfair. Yes, a heavy duty is placed on the Speaker’s Committee, and it will fulfil it as fairly and properly as possible.
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- Andrew MackinlayLabour
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- We have every confidence in the desire of our friends and colleagues to be impartial—no one has suggested otherwise—but how do they demonstrate that? The hon. Gentleman has avoided that question. He has not said how, under his stewardship or direction, or through working with the Speaker, the Committee would embark, in the little garret room in which they meet late at night, on resolving the matter. Would members discuss the person’s qualities? Would they have a secret ballot? Would they say, “Well, it’s the DUP’s turn, and the DUP represents quite a different electoral tradition from that in Scotland, England and Wales”? That is true, incidentally—they have some strange practices over there, which are accepted by custom and practice—
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- Sir Peter ViggersConservative
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- There are two main theories to which human beings subscribe. I think that the hon. Gentleman subscribes to the conspiracy theory. I personally subscribe to a constructive theory of life. The Speaker’s Committee has not yet had the duty placed upon it. As and when that happens, I am confident that it will try to carry it out as fairly and impartially as possible. I am not trying to avoid answering the hon. Gentleman’s question, but it is hypothetical at this point.
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Chris Huhne (Eastleigh) (LD)Liberal Democrat- Quote
- On the substantive points in the amendments, I understand that the key attribute of people that the parties nominate should be expertise, but surely there is a case—I am open minded about it—for other parties having some say over a choice. We know that there are people in all parties who, although they have expertise, may be tribalist or partisan, and that others would find it easier to work with members of other parties. Perhaps members of the Speaker’s Committee could reach a judgment about that, which would elude a party leader.
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- Sir Peter ViggersConservative
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- Much of the legislation that deals with the Electoral Commission is not clear. Several matters have been left incomplete in specifying how exactly it and the Speaker’s Committee will operate. It has been necessary over the years for the Speaker’s Committee to be a little creative in its operation. I am sure that the Committee will listen carefully to everything that has been said in the House and will take account of it. With those few words, I ask hon. Members to support the amendments.
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- Dr. WhiteheadLabour
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- I am concerned by the way in which we appear collectively to portray what the political commissioners will do on the Electoral Commission. I hope that no one envisages that the politically nominated electoral commissioners—not politicians on the Electoral Commission, because they cannot be that—will fervently bat for their side all the time they serve on the commission. If that were so, it would appear not only to undermine what the Electoral Commission is about, but further to undermine—if anybody wanted to do this—how members of the public perceive those who hold political office generally. As far as I understand it, the whole idea behind putting political nominees on to the Electoral Commission is to do with the nature of the democratic process and all that goes with it, which includes how the Electoral Commission responds, and the idea that that body should have serving on it a number of people with political experience in general who can relate that experience to how it works.
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- Stewart HosieScottish National Party
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- I am listening to the hon. Gentleman and I am with him so far, but he mentioned the electoral process. Is not the whole point that there are in fact electoral processes? That is the fundamental point that is at stake, not the partisan nature of appointments—I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman: I do not want to see that either. However, the point is that we have a multiplicity of processes, not a single electoral process.
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- Dr. WhiteheadLabour
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- If the hon. Gentleman had waited for one minute, he might have heard me address that issue. When I talk about the electoral process, I of course embrace within that term the electoral process in Westminster elections and the process in parliamentary and Assembly elections throughout the UK. They are all part of the process. The Electoral Commission should be concerned to ensure that those processes, as well as everything that happens between those elections, are undertaken in a fair, non-partisan, clean and transparent way. Having political nominees on the Electoral Commission adds to that process and, as far as I am concerned, it should add to it.
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- Pete WishartScottish National Party
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- I actually agree with the hon. Gentleman. I have the same hope and aspiration that the political nominees will serve the commission in that way. However, does he not understand the point about people’s perception? To take the example of Scotland, the Scottish election will be determined by the Electoral Commission, on which the Labour, Liberal and Conservative parties will be represented, but there will be no Scottish National party representation. That will bring the legitimacy of the Electoral Commission into question and introduce a flavour of doubt that something is not quite right.
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- Dr. WhiteheadLabour
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- I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concern. However, all of us, both in this House and in the Parliaments and Assemblies in the UK, are in the difficult position between, being perceived on the one hand, as perhaps acting unfairly in respect of how those people are placed on the Electoral Commission in the first place and, on the other hand, as simply pursuing party, partisan advantage, by placing people on the Electoral Commission in order to fight the corner of our parties. That is completely against what we should be trying to do, as far as political appointments to the Electoral Commission are concerned. I would be with the hon. Gentleman more, on the basis of the logic that perhaps all the Parliaments and Assemblies of the UK should nominate a number of people to the Electoral Commission to serve as political representatives. Under those circumstances, if it so happened that the outcome was that there were no Labour representatives from among those who had been nominated, I for one would not be unhappy, because they would have been nominated by the Parliaments and Assemblies of the UK. As matters stand, it appears that we are nowhere near what I would consider to be an ideal outcome, which relates to what the job to be done should be and how it ought to be perceived as being done. I do not believe that the hon. Gentleman’s formulation would overcome the problem of what it might look like to have politically partisan representatives on the Electoral Commission, rather than those who will be there for the advancement of the commission.
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- Andrew MackinlayLabour
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- Surely the case for representation from Northern Ireland, by way of an example, is demonstrated by the Bill itself, because as you will have noticed, Mr. Deputy Speaker, it amends the system of elections to the European Parliament in Northern Ireland, which is contrary to the Electoral Commission’s proposals. Rightly or wrongly, the Government have been persuaded by Northern Ireland politicians to discard the commission’s advice. In a sense, that is a compelling case for Northern Ireland politicians to be represented on the commission, because their view prevailed. Their view was: “We deal with elections, so let’s give the advice, rather than these nitwits on the Electoral Commission who’ve never fought an election in their lives.”
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- Dr. WhiteheadLabour
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- By referring to the word “representation”, my hon. Friend has, if anything, underlined the problem that we face of how to make the appointments. The hon. Member for Gosport (Sir Peter Viggers), who represents the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, drew attention to the fact that the Committee does not have a Labour party majority and the fact that not every party is represented on it. The Standards and Privileges Committee does not have majority Labour representation—it has more than Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat Members; it has a Welsh nationalist Member, too. But do we consider the purpose of all those people on the Standards and Privileges Committee to be to fight the corner for their party? Clearly not, as far as what they do for this House is concerned.
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- Mr. MacNeilIndependent
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- The hon. Gentleman is talking the talk of fairness, but I am afraid that he is not walking the walk. He is looking at this from a Westminster perspective. The Standards and Privileges Committee is a Westminster body, but the Electoral Commission is UK-wide: it hits Belfast, Cardiff and Edinburgh. We are looking for fairness. He is grasping at fairness, and I can see him struggling to find it. Will he please walk the walk as well as talking the talk?
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- Dr. WhiteheadLabour
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- I hope that the hon. Gentleman has been following closely what I was saying. As far as this House and the other Assemblies and Parliaments of the UK are concerned, we need to make it clear that the way in which we nominate people is not seen simply as people wishing to fight their party political corner in the Electoral Commission. In order to make that clear, we need to confront the question of how we can have adequate representation and fairness in the nomination process. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) has made a suggestion that could, as other hon. Members have pointed out, lead to what would broadly be perceived as an unfair outcome. That seems to be the way we are going. My suggestion is that we either seek nominations from all the Parliaments and Assemblies or go with the proposal from the Speaker’s Committee to find a system whereby the fairness of the nomination can be underpinned by the way in which the nominations are made.
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- Bob SpinkIndependent
- Quote
- The hon. Gentleman’s hopes are laudable, and we can all follow his arguments. He is right to look for fairness, but that ain’t what we have got on the amendment paper tonight. Instead, we have a Scottish amendment that is not perfect—it is not what I would want—but that is fairer than the alternative that would pertain if we do not accept it. We should therefore support it and vote for it, and force the Government to look again at this matter. This electoral system—our democracy—does not belong to us; it belongs to the public. The important thing is how the public perceive these things. The people in Scotland, just like the people in Castle Point, are not going to see this as fair. They are going to see it as another Westminster carve-up between the three main parties.
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- Dr. WhiteheadLabour
- Quote
- The hon. Gentleman makes my point precisely. How the public perceive what we do is very important, and there must be no implication that who puts whom on a Committee has anything to do with party political advantage, or that the people sitting on that Committee are simply there to fight their own party’s corner.
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- Mr. MacNeilIndependent
- Quote
- I am listening very carefully to the hon. Gentleman, who is making some very good points. He is presenting his own personal utopia, and I do not disagree with him. However, I want to echo the hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) and say that we have a choice tonight between the Government’s proposal and that of the Scottish National party. Which of those options is closer to the hon. Gentleman’s personal utopia? I would wager that it was the SNP’s proposal, and I ask him again to walk the walk in regard to fairness.
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- Dr. WhiteheadLabour
- Quote
- The hon. Gentleman puts forward two options. One would result in about four out of nine commissioners being from parties involved in the Northern Ireland Assembly. The alternative does not appear to go down that route, and would not necessarily involve the membership of the Electoral Commission reflecting an exact replica of the party membership of the Assemblies and Parliaments across the UK. I accept that this is a conundrum and a continuing problem. I also accept that it is not easy to resolve. My personal view is that something like what we have had before, as now, is probably the best way to proceed. My desired outcome would allow the Assemblies and Parliaments of the United Kingdom collectively to choose who the nominees would be, but that proposal is not on the table tonight. We need to choose between a proposal that looks fair and representative but whose outcome would not be, and one that does not look so fair or representative but whose outcome might be workable for the next stage of the Electoral Commission.
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- Mrs. LaingConservative
- Quote
- Commissioners with direct political experience will enhance the work of the Electoral Commission, so Conservative Members support the Government’s intentions on this part of the Bill. As the right hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Dr. Strang) and the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Devine) both said, the commission will work better if people who have been through elections, who have been candidates, who have gone into every detail of electoral law in fighting an election and who have experienced the processes and problems that occur and the solutions that are found are actually in there either advising or as part of the Electoral Commission. They will have the experience, knowledge and wisdom that comes from fighting elections, which people who have not fought them simply will not have. The hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) said that he would consider nominating himself to become a commissioner, and I would support such a nomination 100 per cent. [Interruption.] The Minister might not, but I would. The hon. Member for Thurrock is, of course, independent-minded, fair and very experienced, having been in this place for many years—[Interruption.] I will give way to the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr. MacNeil) later, but he really must stop shouting. I repeat that the hon. Member for Thurrock has experience and knowledge that people who have never fought elections do not have. I honestly believe—I mean this as a sincere compliment to the hon. Member for Thurrock—that he and others like him would be able to rise above the party political process. If he were an electoral commissioner, he would be able to act in an honest, straightforward and trustworthy fashion—regardless of the political party that he had represented for much of his life. He is not alone in that, as many others would, through their experience and their wisdom, be able to serve the Electoral Commission and thus the democratic process very well indeed.
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- Mr. MacNeilIndependent
- Quote
- I am grateful to the hon. Lady, and I am wondering whether the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) is going to be the Conservative nominee to the Electoral Commission. What we are witnessing here yet again is the Westminster old boys’ carve-up; the pals come together and in a few years’ time after further headlines, we will be back yet again to the same position—with more legislation necessary to hide their blushes.
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- Mrs. LaingConservative
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- Well, I am not an old boy, and I never will be. The fact is that the hon. Member for Thurrock, in view of what he proposed this evening, could indeed be the Conservative nomination—of course he could, because we are talking about cross-party co-operation for the good of democracy.
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- Mr. DevineLabour
- Quote
- I am disappointed that the hon. Lady has not nominated me. It is, however, a sad indictment of parties in this place that they think that the people of Britain are sitting around tonight watching this debate to find out who will be the nomination to this body of electoral administration. People are not going to be saying that we are unfair: we are giving a say to parties that represent 20-odd out of 650, which I think is fair. Does the hon. Lady agree?
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- Mrs. LaingConservative
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- Yes, I do, and I see no reason why the hon. Gentleman, despite being a member of the Labour party, could not also be a fair-minded, trustworthy and experienced member of the Electoral Commission. Being a member of the Labour party does not necessarily make someone a partisan person who is unable to take decisions in a cross-party or reasonable way. I am beginning to think, however, from evidence over the last half an hour, that being a member of the Scottish National party does make one partisan and narrow-minded—[Interruption.] In fact, I have held that view for some time. However, that is not the point. Unfortunately, the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) are a bit of a red herring compared with what the Bill is actually about, while the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Sir Peter Viggers) are absolutely correct. They will bring clarity to the Bill and to the process, and we totally support them.
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- Mr. Alan ReidLiberal Democrat
- Quote
- The hon. Lady is right about the whole spectrum of experience, but does she not accept that fighting elections under proportional representation is a different experience from fighting elections under first past the post? Amendment 91, which I support, defines a parliamentarian as somebody from any of the devolved Assemblies, as well as from here. Surely, to get that wide spectrum of experience, she should be supporting that amendment.
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- Mrs. LaingConservative
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- There is a better way to ensure fairness, which is to get rid of elections under any system other than first past the post. That is the fair and straightforward way. Let me make three quick points, because this argument has dragged on for rather too long. The point is that the political appointees to the Electoral Commission will always be a minority. If I may, I shall quote Sir Hayden Phillips, who gave evidence to the Public Bill Committee on 4 November 2008: “I think that this will help the Electoral Commission, and will help political parties to feel more comfortable with the Electoral Commission. Those four people will be in a minority, and will never be a majority.”––[Official Report, Political Parties and Elections Public Bill Committee, 4 November 2008; c. 34, Q83.] They will never have power on the Committee; they will have only influence. That is the whole point.
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- Dr. StrangLabour
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- The hon. Lady is making a constructive speech and clearly we support her on the role that these commissioners are to play. However, while I am not suggesting that one support the SNP amendment, is there not a problem in that three of those commissioners will essentially have been put forward by the leader of a political party whereas the fourth commissioner will be something rather different?
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- Mrs. LaingConservative
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- That is the whole point of the spectrum of experience. It is likely that one of these four people will have more experience of government than of opposition and another will have more experience of opposition than of government and that one will be from one part of the country and one from another part. It is very possible that—[Interruption.] The Scottish National party, Mr. Deputy Speaker—
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- Bob SpinkIndependent
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- It is rubbish.
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- Mrs. LaingConservative
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- Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am very pleased that I entirely disagree with the hon. Gentleman about what is rubbish, and I am very pleased that he disagrees with me. The point about the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire is that it is elegant, it is arithmetically clever, and it would make the commission far too big. It would make it unwieldy and unworkable. Furthermore, as I have said, it is wrong to consider this whole matter along party political lines. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar has nothing whatever to say. He is just laughing. That makes me realise that my earlier remarks about the Scottish National party are sadly becoming all the more true. The point is that no member of the Electoral Commission would be acting in the interests of any political party. That would be entirely wrong.
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Mr. Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)Scottish National Party- Quote
- Will the hon. Lady give way?
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- Mrs. LaingConservative
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- No, I cannot give way again. We really must make progress. The basis of the argument advanced by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire is completely unfounded and irrelevant. No one will be acting for any political party. No one will be representing a political party. We will have a broad spectrum of people who can enhance the democratic process. There is one final point which the Scottish National party, of course, ignores. This Parliament is the Parliament of the United Kingdom. We are talking about the Electoral Commission, which deals with the whole of the United Kingdom. Although the Scottish National party would have it otherwise, it is still the case that this Parliament makes rules for the United Kingdom, and it is from the authority of this Parliament that all devolved legislatures take their own power and authority. The Scottish Parliament would have no authority had it not been given it by this Parliament. It is absolutely right that this law should be made tonight in this Parliament—not for any particular sector and not for any particular party, but for the whole of the United Kingdom.
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- Mr. MacNeilIndependent
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- Will the Minister give way?
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- Mr. Weir Scottish National Party
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- rose—
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- Mr. MacNeilIndependent
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- rose—
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- Mr. MacNeilIndependent
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- Unfortunately, the right hon. Gentleman’s words will be construed as high-handed in many other places. That is disappointing. When we are developing rules, we should aim ultimately to uphold the principle of fairness, rather than allow the seeking of party political advantage or carve-ups, with the necessity of returning to this matter in a few years’ time. I ask him to remove the party labels and have in mind the principle of fairness. In fact, might it not be better to remove the three main parties so that we have the breadth of knowledge of the minority parties represented on the Electoral Commission, as that might prevent any more carve-ups?
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- Mr. WeirScottish National Party
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- Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
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- Mr. WeirScottish National Party
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- I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. He has not addressed the important point that there are different electoral systems. In the last few minutes, both the Justice Secretary from a sedentary position and the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) have decried proportional representation, but that system is in operation in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—and even, I believe, in London—so it is an important part of the electoral system in the UK. However, that is being dismissed in the carve-up, at least between the two main parties. It is important that, as things stand, no one on the commission will be representing these important systems.
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- Mr. WeirScottish National Party
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- But does the right hon. Gentleman not accept that proportional representation has delivered different forms of government? The SNP is in government in Edinburgh; Plaid Cymru is in coalition in Wales; and the Democratic Unionist party is in government in Northern Ireland. Should not those Governments of three of the nations of the United Kingdom have an input into the Electoral Commission, because of the differences in the nations of the United Kingdom?
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- Mrs. LaingConservative
- Quote
- Can the Minister answer this simple question: is there anything to prevent the leader of any of the political parties from nominating a Member of the Scottish Parliament, the London assembly or the Northern Ireland Assembly? There is nothing to stop that, is there?
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- Pete WishartScottish National Party
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- This has been a good and interesting debate, containing some valuable contributions—until we reached those from the Government and Opposition Front Benchers, when it started to get disappointing. We have a situation in which the largest party in Scotland, by votes and seats awarded, will have no input on electoral regulations for elections in Scotland, and that is totally unacceptable to our party.
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- Pete WishartScottish National Party
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- To be fair to the Minister, I should say that that is not how it seems from our Benches. This arrangement is all right for him, because he has his political commissioner and he will be able to nominate somebody to serve on the Electoral Commission, and it is all right for the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing) and for the Liberals, because they will be able to nominate somebody to serve on it. The provisions are not all right and acceptable for us, because we will not be able to nominate someone to serve on the Electoral Commission to run and regulate elections in our nation. That is the heart of the matter; this is about fairness, democracy and ensuring that people are properly represented in this House. I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Gosport (Sir Peter Viggers), who is in an impossible situation. To be fair to him, there is no way that he could begin to come close to defining the criteria on which this fourth commissioner will be determined, because he does not know what they will be—he has no clue as to how this will be determined. I, too, have no idea, and neither does the Minister or the hon. Member for Epping Forest. What will be the arrangements for the fourth commissioner? How will the decision be made? The Minister does not seem to know. If he does know, will he please get up and tell me?
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- Pete WishartScottish National Party
- Quote
- The Minister will know that that was not an answer and that he does not know how the fourth commissioner will be determined—nobody knows. This is a total mess, but I propose a solution. I get the sense from the rest of the House that a threshold of 15 parliamentarians will not be acceptable, so I shall ask leave to withdraw the amendment containing that proposal. However, I hope that other hon. Members will support the principle that the other legislatures in the United Kingdom are important and must be taken into account. That is a challenge to hon. Members here this evening. I know about the support of the Liberals, who believe that the other Parliaments are important, that we live in a multi-party democracy and that we are now in a different type of United Kingdom. The challenge is for other hon. Members: do they recognise that or do they not? Are we to have the stable, closed-door Westminster wheelings and dealings? Is it all about the green Benches here or is it all about the new reality of the United Kingdom?
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- Mr. MacNeilIndependent
- Quote
- Does my hon. Friend agree that this process is beginning to throw into question the legitimacy of the Electoral Commission?
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- Pete WishartScottish National Party
- Quote
- My hon. Friend is entirely right in what he says, because he describes the challenge; the Electoral Commission will be questioned in the nations of the United Kingdom if we do not get our proposal through. It is in place to serve all the legislatures, but unless our proposal is passed this evening it will fail in that task and its very legitimacy will be brought into question. That is what is at stake. I know that there is a desire to get on to the next set of amendments, but this is an important principle. I wish to press amendment No. 91 to a Division, and I urge hon. Members to support me. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Amendments made: 31, page 4, line 15, leave out ‘two’ and insert ‘one’. Amendment 32, page 4, line 17, leave out ‘persons one of whom’ and insert ‘a person who’.—(Steve McCabe.) Amendment proposed: 91, page 4, line 19, at end insert— ‘( ) In subsection (2) a “parliamentarian” means a Member of the European Parliament, a Member of the House of Commons, a Member of the Scottish Parliament, a Member of the Welsh Assembly or a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly.’.—(Pete Wishart.) Question put, That the amendment be made.
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- Mr. Alan ReidLiberal Democrat
- Quote
- In general, I support the new clause. However, if a national political party were to deluge a constituency with target mail urging people to vote for that party in that constituency without mentioning the candidate, surely that should count as expenditure against the candidate of that registered party. That is surely a loophole in the clause.
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- Bob SpinkIndependent
- Quote
- I congratulate the parliamentary draftsmen on how they have tackled this complex area, and I am delighted that this is not necessarily the final word on the issue. The Minister will agree that elections in this country have often been held six months before the final date at which an election must be called; that is the aim of any Prime Minister and generally the sensible thing to do. Why can the restricted period not be longer than the five months? If it were a 10-month period, it would take account of the real period during which candidates would be expected to start to push, particularly in marginal seats?
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- Andrew MackinlayLabour
- Quote
- I am truly trying to follow this, but I am a little bewildered. In a situation such as that in 1964 or February 1974, what is the regime as regards expenses in the period where it is unlikely that a Parliament is going to run for the duration? If there were a hung Parliament, surely all the big battalions would have been trying to pour money into what was an uncertain period of a few months.
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- David HowarthLiberal Democrat
- Quote
- I have come across this point about fixed costs before, but I ask the Minister to list what he thinks they are. In most campaigns, the fixed costs will have been incurred long ago and all that one has in the run-up to the election, five months before, are variable costs.
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- Mr. MaudeConservative
- Quote
- Will the Minister be a little more specific about the proposal that the Government plan to bring before the House on the use of Members’ allowances during this equivalent period? He will know from previous discussions that we are concerned about symmetry in this case. Members of Parliament have large allowances available that can be used for pro-active communication with their electors. When candidates are affected by this measure, which we support, to control spending during the last few months of the Parliament, the House must put in place rock-solid arrangements regarding the use of allowances, whether for communications or for incidental expenses, to do stuff that promotes Members of Parliament in a way that is equivalent to a candidate’s campaigning. I am grateful to him for the indication that new clause 17 will not commence until such matters have been decided, but it is crucial that the House understands exactly what is proposed, and that there is no intention to commence the provision until that happens.
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- Martin LintonLabour
- Quote
- In view of the complete absence of Conservative Back Benchers during this debate—I cannot think why—would my right hon. Friend care to comment on the common-sense view that many Conservative candidates, without any constraints on their spending, are more likely to start their campaigns in September and run them for six months until the expected date of the election, rather than in January? It would be more valuable to have these commendable controls in place, not from the 55th month, but from the 50th, in order to give a good six-month run, thus preventing the distortion to the result of the election that could be caused by the fact that very rich candidates are able to put huge amounts of their own money into their election campaigns.
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- Mr. Alan ReidLiberal Democrat
- Quote
- If the Government are considering the communications allowance used by Members of this House, can they also look at similar allowances used by those in devolved Parliaments or Assemblies? For example, at the last general election, my opponent was a Conservative list MSP, and it would be unfair if a candidate in such a position were allowed to use the Scottish Parliament equivalent of the communications allowance. All the Parliaments’ communications allowances need to be looked at.
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- Mr. MaudeConservative
- Quote
- I warmly welcome the Government’s climbdown on this issue; it is a long-overdue return to an attempt to reach consensus. The Minister is completely right that it is not possible to reach perfect agreement. The Justice Secretary said last summer that he believed that there was a consensus about reintroducing a trigger. When I heard him say that, I looked at what I said in response to his statement on 16 June last year, to see whether I had been at all ambivalent about it. I found that I had said that it would be “an atrocious abuse of power for the Government to force through restrictions on what parliamentary candidates can spend from money they have raised privately, while sitting MPs can spend ever-more taxpayers’ money on promoting themselves”.—[Official Report, 16 June 2008; Vol. 477, c. 694.] I can see that that was most equivocal, and did not make it at all clear that we had reservations. I must resolve to stop speaking in code and say exactly what I mean. The Government’s decision is a welcome return to consensus. The proposal to return to triggering was universally condemned as a return to an unworkable, unwieldy rule that had long outlived its usefulness. It was an attempt to appease Labour Members who were feeling the hot breath of their electoral nemesis on their necks, convinced that their salvation lay in controlling the wall of money that seemed to be heading their way. I know that the hon. Member for Battersea (Martin Linton) has been a long-time campaigner on the subject and is deeply concerned about it. I can reassure him that the amount of support being given by the central party to the excellent candidate against whom he will be fighting the election, whenever it comes, is actually very small. He is right to be concerned about his electoral future, not because of the amount being spent but because there is an outstanding Conservative candidate in Battersea who has a brilliant, enthusiastic team that she has inspired locally. That is where his nemesis lies, and his salvation does not lie in provisions such as he seeks.
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- Martin LintonLabour
- Quote
- I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that I campaign not for myself in any way—I am totally confident about the result in my constituency—but for the principle that candidates’ spending should not be unlimited. The Conservative party has subscribed to that principle for the past 100 years, but as the result of an unintended change in the law, it has suddenly embraced the freedom to spend as much money as it likes. Many of my colleagues of all parties will bear the brunt of such unrestricted spending, and it is an insult and an affront to democracy that the House should support it.
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- Mr. MaudeConservative
- Quote
- If the hon. Gentleman says that his campaigning was entirely high-minded and selfless, of course I accept that—it is obligatory that we must. I note, however, that a dispassionate viewer would say that the matter has a considerable effect on his constituency. I reassure him that it is not what is causing him a problem in his constituency. That is entirely to do with the fact that there is an outstanding candidate there, who is campaigning night and day with a brilliant team of enthusiastic volunteers.
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Mr. David Winnick (Walsall, North) (Lab)Labour- Quote
- Is the right hon. Gentleman familiar with Lord Ashcroft’s words? He said: “We haven’t been wasting our time or our resources. Of the 33 candidates who won seats from Labour or the Liberal Democrats” at the last election, “no fewer than 25 had received support from the fund that I had set up with Leonard Steinberg and the Midlands Industrial Group”. Many of us would consider that an abuse of the electoral system.
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- Mr. MaudeConservative
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- Frankly, it is very hard to see how it is an abuse for candidates to raise money to fight their campaigns. Why is that any more of an abuse than the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues raising large amounts of money from the trade unions in a way that is much less transparent?
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- Mr. WinnickLabour
- Quote
- indicated dissent.
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- Mr. MaudeConservative
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- The hon. Gentleman seems to think that that is different, but it is not. The argument is completely bogus.
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Mr. Gordon Prentice (Pendle) (Lab)Labour- Quote
- rose—
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- Mr. MaudeConservative
- Quote
- I give way to the hon. Gentleman, another Member with a very marginal seat and an outstanding Conservative candidate hot on his heels.
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- Mr. PrenticeLabour
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- The candidate whom I defeated last time was Jane Ellison, who is standing in Battersea this time. Does the Gentleman feel comfortable about taking barrel loads of money from the self-confessed tax exile, Lord Laidlaw?
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- Mr. MaudeConservative
- Quote
- I shall simply cite the Justice Secretary when that matter was raised in a debate a little more than a year ago. He said that what mattered was that a donor was legal and permissible under legislation that he had piloted through Parliament. He also said that an individual’s tax status was a matter for that individual.
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- Mr. MaudeConservative
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- That is the bit that I did not hear clearly. I heard the commitment not to commence the provision without a resolution of the House, but I did not hear what the Minister proposed to put before the House as a constraint on the use of allowances. It is crucial—the Minister must understand that. I believe that he does understand it, and I know that the Justice Secretary understands how unfettered—or any—use of taxpayers’ money to promote a Member of Parliament’s activities when statutory constraints, with criminal penalties, were placed on candidates’ ability to promote themselves would be unfair, and would be seen to be unfair. Symmetry is essential. We are not remotely convinced that the new clause is necessary. However, we believe that it is acceptable and we happily acquiesce in it, but there must be symmetry in its introduction. We want an election whereby challenging candidates can contest with incumbents on the same footing. I assume that amendment 41 applies to the late selection of a candidate simply to prevent previously incurred expenses from escaping the net. If the Minister has a chance to reply—he probably will not—I would be grateful if he confirmed that the expenses that the new, earlier period of 56 months plus catches will be defined in the same way as expenses in the election period. It would be hugely complicated if there were any difference in the definition of expenses for those purposes. With those observations, we support the amendments.
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- Martin LintonLabour
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- I shall not take up much of the House’s time because I do not want to stand in the way of amendments being moved. However, I have campaigned for the past seven years to close the Ashcroft loophole. I appreciate that Lord Ashcroft did not invent it, but he has made more use of it than anybody. It was an unintended consequence of earlier legislation, and the House agreed that it was undesirable. During that time we have had one attempt to close that loophole.
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- Mr. MaudeConservative
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- Could the hon. Gentleman just explain why it is a loophole for a legitimate donor of any sort to be willing to support a candidate in his constituency? What is that a loophole in, for heaven’s sake?
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- Martin LintonLabour
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- It is a loophole in the controls on candidates’ spending that have existed for 128 years in this country, which are supported by all parties. It was only as an unintended consequence of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 that that loophole was created. The original Bill proposed a return to triggering. We never regarded that as an ideal solution, but it would have brought back the controls that existed before 2000, for which there were a lot of legal precedents, and it would have worked. In its place, the Government have proposed a 55-month period, which in theory would come into force on 10 December. However, my right hon. Friend the Minister said that he would commence it on 1 January, which will restrain candidates’ spending in the three months before the last possible date for a dissolution. It is certainly true, as shown by the evidence from Lord Ashcroft and from Peter Bradley, the former Member for The Wrekin, that most spending happens in the pre-campaign period between January and March and is done both by candidates locally—that was the evidence from the 2005 election—and by the national parties. The 55-month period that my right hon. Friend proposes would have the salutary effect of restraining spending during that pre-campaign period. I would regard that as far better than the status quo, which is to have no controls at all. My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) and I suggested a 50-month period in Committee, because the key period is not just the January-to-March period, but from September onwards. The last six months before the last possible date for dissolution is when it is most important to have controls on candidates’ spending. I stick by the view that that would be the best control that we could introduce at this stage. In fact, we would have preferred a 36-month period, which would automatically introduce candidate controls after three and a half years of any Parliament, so that whether an election was held after four or five years, there would be controls on candidates’ spending in the last six months. I welcome the fact that my right hon. Friend said that what we have now is not the end of the story. New legislation will have to be introduced in the next Parliament, and I hope that it will propose a 36-month period. I end by reminding hon. Members that controls on candidates’ spending were introduced in 1880, as a result of outrageously high spending in the election of that year, when candidates spent a total of £2 million. In today’s terms, that would be £171 million. Indeed, if we use the earnings index, which is a fairer measure, we realise that the amount would be £2.2 billion. That is even more than the $2 billion spent by all the candidates in the recent US election, which was the most expensive election in recent history. Britain was even worse than that before we had controls on candidates’ spending. If we want to return to having candidates being able to buy their way into Parliament, all we have to do is to have no laws on candidates’ spending at all. I welcome new clause 17, but I hope that hon. Members are with me in preferring spending to be controlled from the start of the 36-month period or, at the very least, for the last six months of a Parliament.
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- David HowarthLiberal Democrat
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- I am very glad to welcome the demise of clause 11, as it did not produce the answers, which many hon. Members were looking for, to a number of problems. Basically, there are two problems, although they are different. One is the Lord Ashcroft problem, which the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) mentioned. It arises when money is thrown at constituencies from a centrally raised fund. The second problem is what might be called the Zac Goldsmith problem, which is where a very wealthy candidate spends money on promoting himself. These two separate problems cannot be solved using the same provision. All through this debate, we have been dogged by the problem of trying to achieve two different things with one suggested mechanism. The mechanism now being proposed in place of triggering is certainly better than triggering, which never really worked. It simply resulted in a lot of angry letters being exchanged between agents, with one accusing another of having started election expenses and then getting a letter back—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) says that it did work. It worked in one sense, in that it represented a kind of background threat, but people who were brazen just got away with it anyway. The triggering mechanism also led to a number of straightforward evasions, such as calling oneself a prospective parliamentary candidate, a parliamentary spokesperson or the editor of the newsletter—[Hon. Members: “Who would do that?”] I have no idea who would do that kind of thing, but those were all well-known evasions. The process became a laughing stock. The attempt to bring it back was an attempt to solve both the problems that I have just mentioned but, in the end, it was not going to work. A number of meetings took place between experts and the Electoral Commission, and the commission tried to put forward draft guidance, but it became very clear that, as a practical matter, this was not going to work. We have now come back to the suggestion, which I think was originally made by the hon. Member for Battersea (Martin Linton), of having a fixed date from which there would be a period of pre-election control on candidates’ spending, and having a second period of controlled candidates’ spending following the Dissolution of Parliament. That is workable. I do not think that it causes the problem that triggering has—namely, that it cannot be made to work in practice—but it has serious flaws that will have to be thought about as the Bill goes through the House of Lords.
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- Bob SpinkIndependent
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- The hon. Gentleman supports Government new clause 17, but does he agree that it should be even tougher, and that it should involve a 50-month period rather than a 55-month period? If so, will he allow me a moment to speak to my amendments (a) to (d)?
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- David HowarthLiberal Democrat
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- I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, but those amendments are technically deficient in an important way, and would not achieve what he wants, because he has not changed the start date. Unfortunately, they would keep the start date of 1 January in the Bill. Although there is a lot of merit in what his amendments say about spreading out the period, and about making things smoother in regard to the number of months, they would not work as a practical suggestion—[Interruption.] Does the Secretary of State want to intervene? I want briefly to go through the defects in the existing proposal. It deals only with individual spending and not with party spending, and it gives the governing party, which knows the date of the general election, an unfair advantage. That really needs to be sorted out. The percentages in the Bill sort of deal with that point, but they do not go far enough. Finally, and most importantly, the proposal does not deal at all with third-party expenditure. It deals only with expenditure by candidates and agents, and not with third-party spending on behalf of candidates. I hope that the Minister will at least have time to deal with that last point.
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