Political Parties and Elections Bill

I spoke on this issue briefly yesterday. I am undecided about what is in the legislation. I am not certain that it resolves the problem. I do not understand the 55 months, as most elections are over in 48 months. Therefore, that is a nonsense. That is what worries me. I want to know what happens next and I will try to find that out. However, to go back, the 2000 Act provided a loophole for expenditure, which was opposed at that time by the Conservative Front Bench. I say with great respect to my noble friend, as I do not want to embarrass him in any way, that at the very end of a very long session on the 2000 Bill he said that if it was at all possible he would come back to the points that had been made. It was not his fault that it was not possible to do so. Had that been possible, we might not be in this position today. Given the support of the Conservative Front Bench and the comments made at that time by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, who was opposed to the relevant measures in the 2000 Bill, as I was, we could have made changes at that time. Unfortunately, that was not to be, which was no one’s fault. Irrespective of whether you call it the Ashcroft loophole or any other loophole, there is a loophole that allows excessive expenditure prior to an election because of the related short campaign that the 2000 Act introduced. I am not interested in Ashcroft per se, or even how that money was raised; I am interested in the principle. A serious principle is involved. The 2000 Act removed a level playing field, which is what we ought to seek in any legislation. I ran the Hove by-election at the previous general election, which we won with a two-figure margin. In the year prior to that election, the Tory candidate spent £90,000 of his own money on posters, which were displayed all over the constituency. He obviously sent out the wrong message because he did not win, but it was wrong that he was able to spend that sum of money when neither our own, new candidate nor his party had those resources. We should try to correct such an imbalance. I suggest that the Bill does not do so. I shall need a lot of persuading to convince me that it does. I have talked to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, because I am not absolutely certain that the measure that he produced yesterday is the answer. I need a clear explanation of the way forward. I have always been in favour of a trigger. As a party official for 24 years, I used the trigger and never had a problem. I think that there were two court cases in the whole time that the trigger existed. One of them occurred in 2000 and I believe that it led to the changes being introduced at the last minute in the 2000 Bill. Prior to that, to my knowledge, there had been only one case in 30 years. If something is working as well as that, why does it need to be changed? It meant that huge amounts of money could not be spent in an election. I cannot talk about what things are like today but, in my time, if we found someone starting up an election campaign by promoting themselves as a candidate, whether for the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats or whatever, the parties would communicate with each other. Conservative Central Office would call me and say, "Joyce, someone has just started a campaign as a Labour candidate". I would ring the person and say, "Withdraw instantly. You have started a campaign and you must not do that". That worked effectively, which is why I have a problem with this. I am not even certain that the trigger that was put into the Bill and then removed represents the right wording to get us back to where we were. There will have to be a long debate and discussion, and a lot more thought will have to be given to the issue, before we can come to a conclusion. I want to make one other point in relation to Clause 14. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, read out the first sentence of the Electoral Commission’s paper covering regulated periods and so on. However, the commission goes on to say: ""We therefore welcome the replacement of these proposals with the current Clause 14"." I do not say that I agree with it, but it is important to put on the record that the Electoral Commission has agreed with Clause 14 rather than, as has been implied—I say this with great respect—that it does not. This is something to which we must come back in great detail when we reach the Report stage.