Electoral Commission

I must press on at this point. I think that I have made the point that the 2000 Act substantially enlarged the original plan for an elections commission, which became the Electoral Commission and has been given very wide powers. The Government saw the functions of the new Electoral Commission"““as crucial to maintaining public confidence in our democratic institutions””." It therefore shared the view of the Committee on Standards in Public Life that the commission should be wholly independent of the Government and be seen to be scrupulously impartial in its dealings with political parties. It was therefore deliberately not constituted as a non-departmental public body, but was made directly accountable to Parliament. During the passage of the legislation through the House, the Government introduced stringent restrictions on the extent to which commissioners could be involved in active politics. The arrangements for setting the Electoral Commission’s budget were designed to reinforce that independent status. That responsibility was given to a statutory committee—the Speaker’s Committee—of nine Members of Parliament, including Mr. Speaker and of which I am a member. The Committee is deliberately constituted so that no party has a majority of the membership.