Political Parties and Elections Bill

This has been a very full debate and I do not want to detain the Committee, but at the outset I must make an apology to the Committee. I inadvertently referred to candidates generally in referring to Clause 17. I want to make it absolutely clear that Clause 17 refers only to parliamentary candidates. As my noble friend Lord Greaves pointed out, candidates for some of the devolved Assemblies might be in a much more difficult situation. Imagine an Assemblyman in Stormont. He or she might very well feel that the provision was cosseting parliamentary candidates for Westminster in a totally unreasonable way. It is also true, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, said, that the clause does not meet his requirements. It is defective in precisely the way he pointed out with its reference to constituencies rather than to the general area or county, which might well be more appropriate. That reference is in new section (5)(b), which states that the home address form, ""may contain a statement made and signed by the candidate that he requires the home address not to be made public"." If he does so, he, ""must state the constituency within which the address is situated"." So the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, cannot support the clause in its present form. The point I want to make, and the one which the Minister has just made, is that we have had a debate here, but so far there has not been a full debate in the House of Commons. The only way we can facilitate that—I take precisely the point made by the Minister a few moments ago—is by rejecting the clause when we come to Report in our House, your Lordships’ House, so that there will have to be a debate in the Commons. Until that happens, all the points that have been made this afternoon simply hang in the air; they have not been given opportunity for expression in the place that we all agree should be where the decision is made. This is an important issue. We are reversing the transparency agreed in 1872 in the Ballot Act. I take very seriously the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts. In that sense it is a big decision, not for parliamentarians and not even for parliamentary candidates, but for the public. We are reversing something that has been our established practice for a considerable number of years—I cannot do the calculation, is it 130 or 137 years?