Electoral Administration Bill

No. I am aware that I have taken up the time of other Members who want to make speeches. Let us deal with this issue to a sensible time scale, and on a scale that provides us with the results that the Government apparently want. That is the right way forward, as I shall try to persuade the Government in Committee. The Government have got themselves in a terrible mess on the issue of the expenses period. A four-month period for election expenses running before a fixed-term election is fine, because everybody knows where they stand. Of course, it is true that we always assume that county council elections will fall on the same date every four years, because that has been the pattern over the past few years, but the fact remains that having such a four-month period before an election whose date has yet to be determined gives rise to all sorts of problems. I say candidly to the Government that if they really want this provision to work, they must increase the limit to allow for a full four-month campaign during the election period, rather than a one-month campaign. But doing so will raise the threshold to the point where the process will be open to the abuse that we are theoretically trying to reduce. Doing so will increase instances of abuse of the kind that we used to have—instances of the old formulations being used to enable people to pretend that they are not candidates, when everyone knows perfectly well that they are. It would be much more sensible to revisit this matter and to consider the consequences. I now want to say something that some Members will not find so conducive. In this context, we also need to look at central parties’ spending in local constituencies. A great deal of abuse is going on in this regard—on the part, let me say, of all the parties represented in this House. In constituencies that are considered marginal, a welter of general election literature from political parties that is ““off record”” so far as election expenses are concerned is addressed individually to electors and put through their doors. That is nonsense and an abuse of the process, and it should not happen. It is not difficult to identify instances where election literature is directly addressed to an individual elector in a particular constituency. Such literature must surely count as an election expense. I want also to consider the change in the deposit threshold. I accept that this issue gives cause for concern, but I do not take quite so strong a view as the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire because, in my view, the deposit is not the right way to eliminate fringe candidates. A financial barrier is not the right way to restrict access to the poll. A far better idea is to change the number of assenters, so as to require a demonstration of popular support in a constituency before entering the poll, rather than using the financial constraint of a deposit. We do need to consider this issue. I welcome some of the new offences included in the Bill. We could go further by, for instance, preventing completed postal vote forms from falling into hands other than those of electors or returning officers. I welcome the co-ordinated online record of electors—the electronic register—and, I think, the performance standards, although I hope that they will not become over-prescriptive tick boxes. I hope that the Electoral Commission will seek, rather, to give guidelines and to audit the performance of electoral officers, rather than providing yet another system of targets. Moreover, the situation regarding imprints is still a mess, and I shall hope to improve it as the Bill progresses. May we also please do something about the Post Office authorities’ inappropriate influence in deciding what goes into a freepost leaflet? It is not for the Post Office to decide what we put in our leaflets. It is perhaps part of its job to refer something that it believes to be against election rules to the Electoral Commission, but it is not for the postmaster to decide what is appropriate for electors of X constituency to receive from candidates in an election. I finish on small point that is none the less important to Members. The Government are being cautious in doing something about the anomaly of the duplication involved in providing evidence of donations both to the Electoral Commission—as a result of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000—and to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, whom we employ to deal with such matters. The Government should not feel such concern, because it is sensible to eliminate this duplication. Let the Electoral Commission have access to and audit our Register of Members’ Interests, and let it be able to call in the commissioner for questioning, but let us not have this silly duplication. If we all feel this way, we should not worry about what some splenetic tabloid writer may say about us weakening our standards. Eliminating this duplication would not weaken them—we know that, the Electoral Commission knows that and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards knows that. This would be a sensible and small improvement that would be welcomed by the Standards and Privileges Committee, on which I used to serve.