My Lords, I, too, should declare my interests as listed in the register; in particular the fact that I am a trustee of the Woolf Institute. I would like also to thank the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, for working so assiduously, conscientiously and sincerely to try to move this terrible Bill on from where it started off in order to achieve something that might be workable.
I should like briefly to comment on the attempt by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, to achieve a better definition of “controlled expenditure”. The commission thought very hard about that definition but, in the end, we felt that in the time available we could not come up with anything better than what we
have at the moment. We reckoned that the political reality was that we had to work with what we have under the heading, “Meaning of ‘controlled expenditure’”. However, our strong recommendation is that this is one of the areas that is to be considered by the review, which the Minister has assured us will take place after the 2015 election. Certainly if the definition of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, were to be accepted, it would immediately exempt all charities from the Bill because, of course, their primary purpose cannot be to promote or procure the election of a particular party.
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I should like to comment, again briefly, on Amendment 159B in my name, which concerns legislation going through Parliament during the regulated period. It is fundamental to the working of our democracy that if legislation is going through Parliament every non-violent means to oppose it should be allowable. Another point, which the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, has made, is that an unscrupulous Government might reserve their most controversial legislation for the election year in order to mute or dim down any possible opposition. I therefore very much hope that the Government will bring forward an amendment along those lines.
I have added my name in a personal capacity to the two amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, Amendments 160B and 160C. Both seem to be pretty obvious and I shall not repeat the reasons he gave. However, perhaps I may anticipate, rather too boldly, the response that the Government are likely to make: that these kinds of issues can be dealt with in guidance. However, the strong message that we picked up from charities and campaigning groups was that they would like to see far more clarity in the legislation itself—exactly what the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, was calling for. These are just the areas in which clarity in the law is essential. For instance, as regards score-cards, mentioned by the noble Lord, members of the commission and charities generally picked up two conflicting messages from two different Ministers in the other place. One seemed to suggest that score-cards were perfectly allowable and would not be caught by the Bill; the other seemed to suggest precisely the opposite—and we have that on record. If two Ministers in the other place who are meant to be supporting the Bill are actually sending out different messages, this highlights the need for something to be stated as clearly as possible in the Bill.