Electoral Administration Bill

moved Amendment No. 111:"Page 67, line 39, leave out ““ought reasonably to have known”” and insert ““was reckless as to whether or not he knew”” ." The noble Lord said: My Lords, this amendment and Amendment No. 112 deal with the part of the Bill that seeks to impose criminal liability on those who are engaged in transactions between a registered party on the one hand and an authorised participant on the other. Previously in the Bill there are other measures that make void a transaction between a registered party and an unauthorised participant. In Committee I suggested that a party treasurer should have a particular defence to a prosecution under the criminal liability provisions. Since the exchanges that took place in Committee, not only between myself and the Minister but also between myself and the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, I have further reflected; and, as a consequence, I have come to conclude that negligence is wholly out of place as a basis for establishing the mens rea of an offence in this matter. Legislators are always careful before they include negligence as part of the mens rea; and it is only exceptionally that that approach finds its way on to the statute book. Most treasurers reporting on such matters will be constituency treasurers who are honorary and often unqualified technically in the world of financial transactions. They may find that they have only one day a month to devote their attentions to constituency business. In my submission it is wholly disproportionate to place such an onerous burden on them—that they should apply all the skills of a professional accountant to ensuring that a loan transaction is with an authorised participant. This is particularly so when we find that a transaction might have been made originally with an authorised participant but that person may subsequently have become unauthorised for one reason or another. I can think of only one recent example that in my view establishes my case beyond peradventure. Mr Jack Dromey, honorary treasurer of the Labour Party—not a local constituency treasurer, but a treasurer for the whole party—was wholly unaware that quite substantial loans were being made to his party while he was honorary treasurer. If the rules in this Bill had applied to him at that time, a court might well have found that he ought to have known about these loans being made. We ought to be exceedingly hesitant before allowing negligence as the mens rea for the kind of offences that are laid out in the Bill. I beg to move.