Political Parties and Elections Bill

I am not going to comment on his state of mind at the time; I am trying to make the point that there was not widespread support for what was in the government Bill in the first place. By the way, the date was 9 February 2009. I now quote from the shadow Secretary of State for Justice on the Liberal Democrat Benches, who, in the same debate, said: ""The mechanism now being proposed in place of triggering is certainly better than triggering, which never really worked. It simply resulted in a lot of angry letters being exchanged between agents, with one accusing another of having started election expenses and then getting a letter back"." There was then an interruption, after which the honourable Member, Mr Howarth, continued: ""The hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) says that it did work. It worked in one sense, in that it represented a kind of background threat, but people who were brazen just got away with it anyway".—[Official Report, Commons, 9/2/09; cols. 1225-26.]" I do not use those quotations to say that I agree with them; I mention them because they were said in another place about this matter. In those circumstances, it is hardly surprising, given that the Government are looking for consensus, that they did not find it on returning to some sort of triggering in the Bill. Both major opposition parties’ Front Benches clearly disagreed with triggering.