I thank my hon. Friend for his informed comments. I am sure Members will appreciate that in the past few days my mind has been elsewhere, but he makes a valid point.
I refer Members to the Electoral Commission’s written evidence:
“The regulatory burden created by the Bill is likely to be significant. The Impact Assessment states that the estimated cost of compliance with the Bill changes for registered campaigners will be in the range from zero to £800. This assumes among other things that campaigners will need two hours to become familiar with the new definition of regulated activity since it is ‘a relatively clear and simple requirement’—
the Government are tabling an amendment on this, which might change things slightly—
“and that a day of additional information recording will suffice to deal with the new requirement. On the basis of our experience of the effort that campaigners need to make to comply with the
current rules, and of our discussions with organisations that may be affected by the new rules, we do not think these estimates are credible.”
That is strong language. The Electoral Commission recognises that it will have a huge new burden, and that there will be a huge new burden on voluntary organisations, charities and campaigning organisations. To say that the estimates are not credible is a strong use of language: it does not say that they are underestimates or not correctly thought through, but that they are not credible. It worries me that the governmental body, the impartial organisation charged with the implementation of the Bill, says that the Government’s estimates of the costs and burdens on voluntary organisations are not credible. In the interests of democracy, the Government need to swallow their pride and recognise that more work needs to be done. That is what new clause 3 seeks to do.
The Electoral Commission’s written evidence goes on to state:
“The Impact Assessment also estimates that the changes to registration thresholds will lead to between zero and 30 additional campaigners needing to register in 2015 compared to 2010. It is difficult to estimate the likely level of additional registration…but again this appears likely to be a severe under-estimate on the basis of our recent discussions with campaigners.”
Not only is there a lack of credibility, there is now a severe underestimate.
The uncertainty and the burdens the Bill will place on campaigners could be mitigated by recasting the definitions of what is covered, and the Government are making some—only some—attempts to do that. That is not a straightforward process, however, and the complexity of the situation is, if anything, being made worse and the legal uncertainty greater. It will require careful testing for those potentially affected by the definitions.
The shame of the Bill is this: many of us suspect that the level of burden and complexity will be such a disincentive for campaigning organisations that they simply will not bother. If campaigning organisations absent themselves from the democratic process, democracy will be the loser. In the run-up to all elections—in devolved elections, as well as general elections—civil society increasingly plays a positive role in asking candidates where they stand, putting political parties on the spot, asking the difficult questions that us politicians sometimes do not want to answer and raising issues that the general public might not have thought of.