Political Parties and Elections Bill

I have Amendment 76 in this grouping. I begin by apologising to the Committee for not having been here for the beginning of today’s proceedings. I am therefore patricianly conscious that I should not try to plough a furrow that has already been ploughed in previous amendments and particularly under Amendment 74 from the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. Some of my foxes have been shot by the Minister in his opening remarks, but I have one or two small foxes still running across the fields, which I should like to pursue if I may. My amendment is a probing amendment designed to raise the minimum period from one to three years in which staff of the commission may have been involved previously in political activity. The point was made by the Government and by many noble Lords from all sides of the House yesterday and today about the necessity of maintaining public confidence in the performance of the commission. It will be doubly damaging if, at a time of public cynicism, we set out to reform and improve the working of the commission and for reasons unforeseen at this stage fail to do so because it will be a quantitative uplift in public cynicism as a result. We discussed under an earlier amendment the mixture of politicians and people who are politically active as commissioners in an administrative body, and I raised concerns about that during my debate at Second Reading. Obviously, we have seen calls for restraint and a non-partisan view of those who are so selected from political parties. I want to check one thing in relation to the Government’s Amendment 77—and I think I heard the Minister clearly—in subsection (8) of the new section on the requirement to consult. The Minister seemed to make it clear in his remarks that the ultimate power in this lies with the chairman of the commission, who can discuss the matter with the Speaker’s Committee but in the end, if he decides that the post is politically sensitive, it is his call and there is no gainsaying it.