Political Parties and Elections Bill

The hon. Gentleman may have a point. We presented two defences that need to be reviewed, and perhaps they are not as connected as they should be—something that we can review. He agreed conceptually with one of the defences that I advanced, and found interest in the other one as well, so we are talking along the same lines to a great extent. I agree that we would want to look at amendment 122 further as we moved on to the later stages, and that will be done in the other place. Amendment 8 was tabled by the hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Hamilton). It would require future donation and transaction reports published pursuant to section 62 of PPERA which relate to a relevant donation by an unincorporated association to include the names and addresses of all donors donating £5,000 or more to that unincorporated association, and the names and addresses of all of the members of that association. Essentially, it is a look-through provision in respect of which we agree with the Electoral Commission; it is too widely drawn, such that is onerous and disproportionate. I do not want to spend too long on it because it has been effectively superseded by Government new clause 20, which we will come to in a later grouping. Finally, I address our amendments 123, 126, 127, 128, 130, 132, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138 and 139, which all provide for indexation of the remaining threshold sums. As I said, we believe that they are important provisions that will ensure that inflation does not leave the thresholds at an excessively low real level, and that the figures will increase in line with inflation. Some have said that they do not like the proposals or that there is no practical need for them for various reasons, including that section 155 of the 2000 Act already allows the Government to increase thresholds to reflect changes in the value of money. That is all very well in theory, but in practice, Parliament will have other things to do than reconsider those figures annually. That is why such provisions should go into the Bill, and why we were happy to hear from the Minister that that point has been conceded by the Government. We look forward to receiving his amendments during further stages in the other place; I also appreciate his point about the need for a rounding figure to keep the figures clear and unconfusing. We will be open-minded on how such a provision is best put into effect.