My Lords, my noble friend who moved this amendment is a historian, and I wish to add a historical footnote as well as to pay tribute to the chivalry of others involved in the
exercise. In the late 1980s there was considerable embarrassment and concern that the amount of money being spent on parliamentary by-elections greatly exceeded the amount that agents, in signing for those expenses at the end of the election, were themselves putting down. It was a risk being run entirely by the agents, and all parties were involved in the problem.
I suggested to my noble friend Lord Hurd, who by coincidence I am sitting next to at the moment although I have not mentioned this to him, that it would be sensible if we managed to pass legislation briskly to correct this problem. He sensibly advised me that the only way in which that could be done would be if I could reach agreement with other parties, and it was sensible that that should occur. He referred me to the shadow Home Secretary, now the noble Lord, Lord Hattersley, who referred the matter to the noble Baroness, Lady Gould of Potternewton, who had some responsibility within the Labour Party for these matters. She and I had a meeting; we agreed that it was a problem and that, were we to recommend legislation to our respective Home Office Ministers and if there would not be a problem in getting it through the House promptly, then it was worth doing. We also determined that the same legislation should in fact increase the number of years from five to 20, and that was agreed between the noble Baroness and me.
I say that this is a matter of chivalry because she and I reached in private extremely rapid decisions on the matter that then went through the House of Commons in less than a month. I simply say that everyone has been involved in this story quite deeply in the past.