Political Parties and Elections Bill

Amendment 15 is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Bates. I shall speak also to Amendments 16 to 23. I am very glad to see that the two Ministers are back after their defeat in the House of Commons. We wondered whether they were in the process of resigning. Perhaps the noble Lord has not heard that there has been a government defeat in the House of Commons. No doubt the Liberal Democrats will be able to tell us more in due course. I will get back to the matter in hand, which is Amendment 15 and its associated amendments. The Minister briefly tried to pre-empt the amendment when we discussed Amendment 6 and the question of time limits, and whether one should use the word "reasonable". Again, I stress that these are probing amendments; we are seeking to discover why the Government are doing what they are doing, and ask them to explain their reasons. The amendments ensure that documents cannot be held by the commission for the full three months set out in the Bill, but instead for only six weeks—that is, 42 days. Amendment 18 also gives the power to magistrates’ courts to extend that period by a further 14 days on application by the commission to the courts. These amendments are designed to bring a judicial safeguard mechanism into the Bill and prevent the commission from holding documents for an excessive period of time, which has the potential to place an individual or group in a very difficult position. In the case of important financial documents, 90 days can be an extremely long time to be without key information; indeed, it could lead to a further infringement of the rules, and another brush with the commission. For that reason, we believe that 42 days might be more appropriate. In fact, "a reasonable amount of time" might be more appropriate, but we would then have the problem of a lack of certainty facing individuals. I am sure that the noble Lord will explain what he thinks would be appropriate. With that brief explanation, I beg to move.