I am sorry to delay the Minister further, but with due respect I do not think he is really facing up to the difficulty of the present definition of qualifying expenses. I agree with him that if a particular campaigning group says, “Therefore you must vote A, B or C”, of course that would need to be regulated. But it still might be liable to be regulated even if it did not do that, because the Bill is quite clear that you do not have to mention a particular party, and that it does not have to be your primary purpose. It could be reasonably interpreted that if one party is supporting an expansion at Heathrow and one is opposing it, by implication the campaigning group wants one party elected rather than another. There are fundamental difficulties here.
Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
Proceeding contribution from
Lord Harries of Pentregarth
(Crossbench)
in the House of Lords on Monday, 16 December 2013.
It occurred during Committee of the Whole House (HL)
and
Debate on bills on Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
750 c1069 
Session
2013-14
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
Subjects
Librarians' tools
Timestamp
2013-12-17 16:17:39 +0000
URI
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