Political Parties and Elections Bill

This has been a fascinating debate. Who said that the House of Lords was not a political House? I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, in particular for moving so briefly that this clause should not stand part. Of course, he did not repeat the arguments that he used yesterday, but I know where he is coming from on this issue. Some impressive speeches and powerful points have been made. It is a long-standing and well supported principle that the amount of money that can be spent in pursuit of election should be limited. We must seek to achieve effective regulation of expenditure without introducing intolerable levels of uncertainty for those who are expected to abide by the regulations. We must also ensure at all times that the legislation in this area is not allowed to become a partisan tool. Any changes should command a reasonably broad consensus. As the Committee has heard on countless occasions, this has been an overriding objective for the Government throughout the passage of this Bill. The current candidate spending limit ensures that there can be no uncertainty for those standing for election as, in practice, it applies only from the date of dissolution of Parliament, or the date of a person’s formal declaration as a candidate if that comes later, to the date of the election itself. After dissolution, there is certainty that an election will be taking place shortly and there is certainty as to what is and is not to be regarded as an election expense. However, expenditure outside of this short period is effectively unregulated. As a result, unregulated campaigning by candidates can and does occur to a significant extent. I think that there is agreement on all sides of the Committee, as there was in the other place, that this is a real problem which needs to be looked at. As my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours gently reminded me, when the Bill was first introduced in the other place it included proposals to return to a form of the system that existed before the passage of the 2000 Act. My noble friend Lady Gould reminded us of this, too. It is known informally as "triggering". Under those proposals, an individual’s spending limit would not have begun at any fixed point in time but rather would have been triggered when an expense was used for the purposes of election. Opposition parties and the Electoral Commission expressed a number of concerns about those proposals, chiefly centring on the potential for creating greater uncertainty for candidates. It soon became clear that the proposals did not command widespread support. By way of example, the right honourable Member, Mr Maude, said: ""The proposal to return to triggering was universally condemned as a return to an unworkable, unwieldy rule that had long outlived its usefulness".—[Official Report, Commons, 9/2/09; col. 1222.]" That was his opinion.