Political Parties and Elections Bill

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Henley, for raising this issue. It needs to be discussed and I am happy to do so. His amendments would reduce the period for which the Electoral Commission may retain documents obtained under the court order powers—of which we have just been reminded by my noble friend Lord Borrie—given by paragraphs 4 and 4A of new Schedule 19B for the purposes of conducting investigations into suspected breaches or contraventions of the PPERA 2000. The Bill would allow the commission to retain documents for up to three months, or longer in any of the circumstances set out in paragraph 5 of Schedule 1. So, for example, if during this period any relevant criminal proceedings are commenced or civil sanctions imposed, the commission will be able to retain the documents until they are no longer required in relation to the proceedings or civil sanctions. The amendments would reduce the period to 42 days. In another place, concern was expressed in Committee—the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, is right—that three months was an unnecessarily long period for documents to be retained by the commission. However, I emphasise that the Bill allows documents to be retained for up to three months; they may be held for a shorter period if an investigation is concluded or the documents are not considered relevant. However, it is important that we allow the commission an appropriate period of time to investigate possible offences or breaches, particularly as many cases that have reached that stage may be complex. As my right honourable friend the Minister of State highlighted in another place, we think that three months is an appropriate period of time to ensure that the commission is in a position to give careful consideration to documents in relation to an investigation. It is important that the commission is not pressured into making hasty decisions due to too short a timescale, which could rebound against an individual. Indeed, the commission in its briefing note on the Bill, which noble Lords may have seen and was published yesterday, commented that the amendments propose a time limit which is, ""unreasonably short for the purposes of an investigation"." The commission also usefully confirmed that longer retention of these documents will not inconvenience their owner, since that person will be able to take copies of them before providing them to the commission. That was a point made by my noble friend Lord Borrie. This might be a different argument if it was not possible these days to take copies of documents, but anyone will almost certainly take copies of documents before they pass them on to the commission.