The hon. Gentleman makes a pertinent point. There has been a carefully considered process in Scotland, involving a partnership between the Electoral Commission and other stakeholders, to ensure that we have a fair, democratic and open debate around the referendum. I agree entirely with him that it would be counterproductive if this legislation were to cut across that process. That is one more reason for us to go back and look at the process in more depth.
It is not just in the run-up to elections that charities and civil society organisations take these issues seriously—they take them seriously throughout the electoral cycle. Fundamentally, I do not think that charities should have to cope with an extra set of regulations that overlap so extensively with existing charity law and other forms of regulation that seem to be working well. Charity regulation is certainly working well in Scotland, and since the introduction of the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator in 2005, governance has been strengthened across the voluntary sector, and accountability has improved dramatically right across the sector in the most recent few years.
Charities play an enormously important role in our democratic process. They not only make the voices of their members and service users heard, but they actively influence and shape public policy in ways that are already much more transparent and accountable than is the case with corporate lobbying. I can think of numerous examples of pieces of legislation that have been actively enhanced by the input of charities, with far-reaching consequences for the quality of life of thousands of people. I think in particular of the Community Care and Health (Scotland) Act 2002, which was significantly
amended by the efforts of stakeholders, including a range of small specialist health charities and large campaigning organisations working together to influence legislation and make it fit for the 21st century.
When I look back at the kinds of activities undertaken, fully transparently and accountably, by the charities involved in lobbying around that Bill, I can see that some of them would almost certainly have fallen within the terms of third-party campaigning proposed in the Bill. Some of the smaller organisations, particularly those with perhaps only one or two members of staff, advocating on behalf of small numbers of people perhaps with a rare condition, would simply have opted out of that discussion because they would not have had the resources to navigate the regulatory framework. That would have been to the enormous detriment of the legislation that finally emerged. As a society, we are all better off because of the inclusion of such organisations in the democratic process.