Following on from that interesting vote, I should like to point out that had 19 more colleagues voted for the amendment rather than against it, it would have been carried. I am sure that that will be noted by the thousands of people who have sent in requests to colleagues to consider their plight seriously. The fact is that those requests have been ignored by large numbers of Members of Parliament who might well feel that the voluntary and community sectors will be their supporters in the next election. I do not know whether the law will now mean that those people will be able to be prosecuted in some way, but I am sure that the voluntary sector and the charities will study the record with great interest. I also hope that they will study the record of our deliberations on clause 27.
Clause 27 is not about symbols or about gagging, as our previous discussions have been. It is about cash. It is about the ability of charities to put across their point of view, to have the money to do that, and to be able to enjoy the interaction with the democratic process that they have come to know in recent years. This is not about a Government handout or about some back-door way of influencing the Government. It is not about charities having to pay, as a professional lobbyist might.
It is about their freedom to enter the democratic process in an election year. That is a right that they have enjoyed, but it is going to be changed if we allow clause 27 to go through tonight. That is why I wish to notify the Chair that I should like to call a vote on amendment 102. That will allow every Member of Parliament to make a simple statement by answering a very straightforward, black-and-white, yes-or-no question. They could state that the activity that charities have hitherto enjoyed in interacting with our democracy in an election year is fine and that they should continue to be able to do so, and that whatever else we have said about the Bill, the expenditure limits set out before clause 27 are okay. Alternatively, they could endorse the provisions in clause 27.
Those Members who have laboured through the Committee and Report stages of the Bill have probably heard this before. When the Select Committee was denied the right to give the Bill proper pre-legislative scrutiny, we attempted hurriedly to pull together witnesses. They and members of my Select Committee—some of whom are in the Chamber this evening—gave up their time to do some really quick pre-legislative scrutiny. That is absolutely not the way to do it.
One thing that I can say about this Bill—and one thing that we will remember about it—is that there are lots of firsts and lots of examples of how not to conduct a proper legislative process. It may be that the Electoral Commission, set up to deal with these issues, has not been listened to. The Government attitude seems to be, “Don’t let’s talk to them; don’t even tell them that we are changing their terms of reference until very late in the day”; and “Let’s not involve the people who are affected until we have drafted a Bill and it is virtually ready to go into print. At that point, perhaps we will talk to them”; and “Let’s not involve Parliament—a body so contemptible and useless that we do not want to involve this bunch of clowns in a pre-legislative process so that evidence from outside bodies could be gathered and people could come in and provide some advice.” Parliament, it seems, deserves total contempt—“They do not get to do any pre-legislative scrutiny until after a Bill is published; and if they want to do that, we will give them three working days between the Bill’s publication and its Second Reading.”
If we reflect on all that, we can see that the absence of proper pre-legislative scrutiny is not the worst crime that we have seen with this Bill. When it comes to abuse of the legislative process, this is about as bad it gets. Our hope has to be that our unelected friends down the other end of the corridor in the other place will see that, due to the lack of time Parliament has had to discuss the Bill and the lack of input from those affected by it, clause 27 shows the legislative process at its most pernicious. Why? Because as yet—perhaps this is the night—no justification, no evidence and no reason has been given for why clause 27 should exist. I know that the Deputy Leader of the House has been working hard on this during the Bill’s parliamentary stages, and I am sure that tonight is going to be the night on which he is going to tell us why there is a clause 27. Our Select Committee looked pretty hard at clause 27. We asked the Government, as well as other people, to give evidence to us, but we could not find the reason for it. I remain optimistic that we are actually going to hear it tonight, which would be a good occasion for all of us and a parliamentary first on this Bill.
What the Select Committee said about the lack of evidence in this area was:
“We have stated already that we have not seen adequate evidence for the setting of the new thresholds”—
the lower thresholds—
“for expenditure at the levels to be imposed by Part 2 of the Bill. The Government must explain the reasoning behind its decisions during the passage of the Bill. Even if the Government can make the case for imposing lower levels, it must be able to give a convincing account of why it has chosen these particular limits”—
I shall come back to that later in my remarks—
“as opposed to any others. If it cannot do so, we”—
the Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee, comprising Members of all parties—
“recommend that the existing levels continue to apply until such point as the case for change has been made.”
Such was the summation and conclusion of the Select Committee on clause 27. No case has been made, and certainly no case has yet been made about the figures. Why have particular limits been chosen? Again, we are hopeful that the Deputy Leader of the House will tell us this evening.
I understand that we may be seeking a vote at some early moment, so I shall speed through my remarks.