My Lords, I think that this is the first time I have spoken in Committee, so I remind the House of my various interests with campaigning groups and charities set out in the register of interests, and also declare my lifelong activity as an election agent, which, I have no doubt, will continue.
I, too, thank the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, and his commission for the outstanding body of work they carried out in a limited time and for the reports they have produced. This is only to the good as we look at the Bill in detail. I also thank the Government for the large amount of activity which has taken place. For example, my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire has met something like 40 representatives of separate organisations to discuss their concerns about the Bill, and we had a letter this weekend from my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness making it absolutely clear that the Government are in listening mode. I hope that noble Lords will not get too tied up in whether this is consultation or not. The fact is that we are scrutinising legislation and that the Government are listening to that scrutiny. We do not always get that in Committee in the House of Lords, from different Governments, and we should make it very clear that it is welcome.
Much discussion is still taking place within coalition circles, within the Government and between the Government and other organisations, not least the noble and right reverend Lord’s commission. That discussion must continue and we must continue to do what I believe the Government, or at least substantial parts of the Government, are now doing, which is to seek a consensus on the Bill that will achieve the objectives behind it and will not have the damaging, chilling effects that are feared by so much of civil society.
We have two main slates of amendments here which come through the different groups. One slate of amendments has come from the commission of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and we have another which my noble friend Lord Tyler has been working on with ferocious energy over the past few weeks. Together they add up, if not to a perfect answer, at least to a very satisfactory means of scrutinising the Bill, by putting forward a number of positive suggestions. I understand that the commission has said that it would like us to take its slate as a package. In practice, as the noble Baroness said, if we come up with something successful at the end of this process, we will end up with a series of compromises, as we always do, but the Bill will not be any the worse for
that. There are various other amendments in this group, including three of mine that I will speak to briefly in a minute.
It is absolutely right that the commission chaired by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, looked at all this from the point of view of campaigning groups and charities and of civil society. That is the purpose for which the commission was set up. But I hope that it will be recognised that that made the consultation that the commission carried out, and is still carrying out, incredibly valuable as it is, one-sided in one respect—that is, that people involved in fighting the elections, candidates and political parties, were not part of the consultation. When we scrutinise this legislation, we must find the right balance between protecting the interests not just of candidates but of the democratic process itself on the one hand, and preventing damage to civil society on the other.
The dangers that this legislation rightly sets out to prevent and challenge are, first, that at national level we do not see our national politics taken over by the super-PAC-type organisations that we see in the United States, and by what has been described as “big bucks from big boys”—usually boys, but perhaps sometimes girls as well. In other words, we should not allow money to dominate. That money is inevitably from large corporate interests, most if not all of them on the right. We should not allow them to take over politics in this country as has happened to a worrying degree across the Atlantic. Furthermore, we should not allow people to buy particular constituencies simply by throwing a large amount of money at them—far more than the candidates themselves are allowed to spend under the regulations. Those are issues that we will come to later, but that is the basic aim of Part 2, as I understand it. It is very important that we balance that against all the concerns and the proposals put forward to try to address those concerns.
I have three amendments. My Amendment 159C is similar to an amendment in the name of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries: Amendment 159B. It would exempt from controlled expenditure rules a range of activities related to legislation before Parliament —before devolved Parliaments and Assemblies—and proposals being actively put forward by local government, government agencies and so on. In other words, the normal campaigning and lobbying activities of charities and campaigning organisations ought not to be prevented during the period in which the expenditure is controlled.
Amendment 159D is another probing amendment, more probing than the previous one. It would exempt from controlled expenditure rules any campaigning that was not specifically related to the functions of the bodies being elected during the regulated period. There are obviously major holes in that amendment, and concerns with it, but there is a question as to how far the expenditure controlled by third-party organisations should relate specifically to the functions of the body that is being elected during the election period, and how far it is just general political activity, even if it is totally unrelated to the functions of the Scottish Parliament or whatever it might be.
Amendment 160A would exclude from controlled-expenditure arrangements,
“expenditure”,
that,
“is minor, insignificant, inconsequential or incidental”,
or any similar words that the Minister would like to consider. The question is to what extent there will be in practice a de minimis provision within the Bill and to what extent there will be a requirement to look at whether to some extent, even if it is a very small extent, it might be intended to affect electoral support, and how far it is absolute. It is a similar question to the questions put forward by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, but on a more de minimis basis.
4.45 pm