Political Parties and Elections Bill

I apologise for missing the first part of this debate, but I understand very well what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, wants in his amendment. I regret that I have not so far been able to take part in the Committee stage due to commitments on the Marine and Coastal Access Bill and my family. There may well be people here who are quite pleased that I have not been able to take part previously, but we are now coming to areas that I am really interested in. Since this is the first time that I have spoken in Committee, I declare my interests as a lifelong election campaigner on behalf of the Liberal Party and the Liberal Democrats, as an elected local councillor in Lancashire and as a declared agent in five county council elections now taking place—or at least I hope so, if all the nomination papers have gone in properly, which was something that I was not able to do myself because I have been here. I want to follow up on what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, said by reporting to the Committee what is happening in relation to the next general election in the Pendle constituency, where I live. In doing so, I am not criticising the Conservatives for taking advantage of the existing law. I criticise the law as it stands because it allows them to do it. Equally, it is generally believed that the noble Lord, Lord Ashcroft, is behind everything. I have no detailed knowledge beyond the report that states that that is thought to be the case in one way or the other, and certainly our Member of Parliament, Mr Gordon Prentice, takes a close interest in the noble Lord, Lord Ashcroft, and his activities. As I say, I do not particularly want to criticise the Conservatives; I want merely to report what is happening, because it seems to go beyond what is reasonable if we are looking for a level playing field. Level playing fields may be hard to find in our hilly area, but nevertheless they ought to be there for electoral purposes. Since the Conservatives adopted a new candidate around 18 months ago, every month the good people of Pendle have been receiving a regular tabloid-sized leaflet made up sometimes of four pages and sometimes of eight. It is delivered by Royal Mail, presumably because there are no local deliverers because nowadays political parties are short of such helpers. As I say, pretty well every month for the past 18 months, everyone has received through the Royal Mail a full-colour four or eight page tabloid leaflet, sometimes promoting Mr Cameron and the Conservative Party nationally, but usually promoting Mr Stephenson, the new Conservative candidate, and his views and activities locally. Far be it from me to object to political parties issuing leaflets telling people what they are doing and how they are doing it, but the scale of what is happening, which is clearly being targeted at the next general election, is extraordinary by any standards that I have known. It is not just the monthly newspaper-style leaflets; there are also targeted mailings to all sorts of people in the constituency, which are again coloured leaflets and letters from the Conservative candidate posted through the Royal Mail. Lots of other activity is going on; leaflets are being genuinely delivered by local people, but the leaflet delivery system for some of them is paid for—people are being paid to deliver the leaflet, rather than just being party workers. Again, I do not complain about any of that in the normal course of events. I point out that it is being targeted very specifically at the election of a particular person at the next parliamentary election at a date that could still be 12 months away. If it is, it will have been two and a half years for which a level of activity normally associated with the four or five weeks, or even less, of an election campaign will have been sustained. It remains to be seen what effect that will have had on how people vote when the votes are finally cast and counted, but if we are looking for a level playing field, we certainly have not got one. How much all that is costing I do not know. I did a rule-of-thumb calculation that the amount of money that appears to be being pumped into the local Conservative Party compared with what it had been spending previously within living memory, if this period lasts for two and a half years, might well be of the order of a quarter of a million pounds. That is my guess. I have no evidence for that; it is just based on what I know things cost. After costing the activity that is taking place—the use of central telephone polling organisations and everything else—that is my guess at the real value of what is being done. Well, the rest of us have to take account of what is happening and try to do our best in the face of it. Again, I am not whingeing or complaining. If our opponents or anyone else’s are capable of intensive political activity, that is entirely legitimate and desirable, but it should be based on local resources and people power, not on a party’s ability to pump in large amounts of money to one constituency to try to win it. I am not suggesting that it is only the Conservatives who are doing that; I am suggesting that the system that allows it to happen is wrong.