Political Parties and Elections Bill

Government Amendments 2 and 3 provide for a time limitation on the commission’s ability to issue a disclosure notice requesting information or documents for its supervisory purposes. The effect is that such a notice can only be issued to someone who has been a treasurer or other officer of a body supervised by the commission within the past five years. I will break away from my brief for a moment or two in order to point out that for many years I was treasurer of a constituency Labour Party. It is so many years ago that the five years catches it very easily indeed. The full list of the bodies to which this potentially relates is set out in paragraph 1(1) of proposed new Schedule 19B to the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, inserted by Schedule 1 to the Bill. In another place, it was suggested that the possibility of the commission requesting information a long time after a person ceased to be supervised by the commission would place an unduly onerous burden on former treasurers or other officeholders, in effect requiring them to retain information relating to income and expenditure indefinitely. The Government accepted that given the often involuntary nature of staff occupying these posts, such a requirement was particularly onerous. The Electoral Commission has reassured us that as the power to issue a disclosure notice under this power applies only to the commission’s supervisory role and cannot be used in connection with investigations into suspected breaches, it is unlikely that they would need to use this power more than five years after an individual had ceased to fall within the commission’s jurisdiction. Therefore, we seek to amend paragraph 1(2) of the schedule so that the commission would be able to issue a disclosure notice only to a person who has been a treasurer or to another officer of an organisation, to which paragraph 1(2) applies, in the past five years. We believe that the five-year limit strikes the right balance and helps to ensure that accurate audit trails are kept of information relating to income and expenditure without placing an unduly onerous burden on former treasurers. We are not seeking to place any time bar on the commission’s power to request information under paragraph 3 in relation to a suspected offence or contravention. This power remains without time limitation, as we believe it should given the importance of effected investigation and enforcement of breaches of the rule. I beg to move.