Political Parties and Elections Bill

I hear what the noble Lord says in defence. That leads me to my second point about the problem, which concerns the extent of the allowances, as my noble friend Lord Marland has mentioned. Allowances are available to an incumbent Member of Parliament not directly for campaigning purposes. The noble Lord was clear in saying that he did not accept the communications allowance. From our side, David Cameron has also it made very clear that we will remove it. There is a scale of allowances for a kind of soft campaigning. I recall in 1997, when I served in the other place, staff allowances were around £30,000 per year; they are now £90,000 per year. There are additional staff and other cost allowances of £37,000 per year. In addition, there is a communications allowance of £10,000 per year. In many ways, what we have to debate is the extent to which there ought to be a built-in bias in our system. The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, made absolutely the right point: we ought to seek a level playing field. My argument is that, when someone is contesting a seat with an incumbent, there is not a level playing field in the resources or opportunities that are available.