Electoral Administration Bill

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. Having been subject to some of that increased spending, perhaps on a slightly smaller scale, from donors outside my immediate constituency—certainly a large amount of money was spent by central parties and one particular party in trying to wrest the seat from me—I recognise that that is a real difficulty. I said so on Second Reading, in Committee and on Report in this House. He may recall that I tabled amendments to try to regularise the position. To some extent, the Bill moves to deal with that issue, but my suspicion is that it does not go far enough and that we need to do more to prevent what is clearly an abuse in terms of large amounts of money being spent in particular constituencies that are identified as marginal. That is out of all proportion to the limits on election spending that are properly applied to those constituencies. However, I would be digressing too far from the Lords amendments if I were to explore that to any great extent.