Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

I apologise for intervening before my noble friend speaks; I do not want to encourage anything that would prolong this debate. However, he says that the laws governing referendums have worked very well and have been in existence for 10 years. Yes, they have been in existence for 10 years but, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, pointed out, there has been only one referendum—a very local referendum about whether there should be a north-east assembly. I do not know what the expenditure on that referendum was but I dare say that an upper cap of £5 million was not a great problem. When the Minister says that it is tried and tested, it absolutely is not. It was tried in the north-east and that is all. There is the problem, which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, reminded me that I raised a decade ago and which I have alighted on again, of groups splitting up. How do you ensure that a so-called independent group is not related to the designated group? This is a real problem. As the Minister pointed out, my worry is not about rich people intervening. I always remember that it was the millionaire Engels who subsidised Karl Marx. I am surprised that the other side of the House is not more in favour of rich people. My fear is just that these limits will be completely meaningless because so many organisations will claim that they are independent. I do not wish to name the different organisations that favour changing the voting system but there are a lot of them. I asked the Minister how you distinguish between the money that those organisations spend day by day now, before the campaign begins, and the money that they will spend during the campaign. What will be defined as a campaign contribution? The Minister can say that we have legislation to cover this but it has not been tried on any significant scale. If he cannot give some guidance today, perhaps he could answer these questions on another day of the Committee or at a different stage of the Bill. They are genuinely of concern, or they certainly are to me.