My Lords, I am very glad that I held back and listened to another contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston, who said many of the things that I would like to have been able to say but could not have done with the same level of experience. There are two points which I would like to add or underline.
First, there seems to be a view in the House this evening, expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, that it would, somehow or other, be unfair to exempt the charities because the other organisations would then be more carefully controlled than the charities. That is the whole point: the charities are already very, very carefully controlled in what they can and cannot do in the public space before, during and at election time. As the noble Lord, Lord Low, has said, it may be that CC9 and the further additional requirements of the Charity Commission are not totally adequate but they are certainly very much more so than they were previously. They are certainly more adequate than the guidance that was given to the charities at the time of the passage of PPERA. I am very sorry to see that the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, has left his place, because he was the main author, I think he would probably claim, of that Act. Therefore, its inadequacies, which have been drawn to our attention throughout today—and, I have to say, have been drawn to my attention in the large number of meetings I have held—relate very much to the inadequacy of the treatment of charities, which are already so firmly circumscribed in what they can and cannot do.
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A number of Members of the House have said that they have not received any representations from charities that they should be exempt. We have now had a very eloquent submission from the noble Lord, Lord Low,
on that precise point, and I have received such submissions, too. I do not know that they would all want me to mention their names, but the Royal British Legion, for example, is very sympathetic to the point of trying to simplify the regulations that it has to live under, so that there is no longer, as it were, double jeopardy of two quite different sets of regulation. Other, smaller charities have made the same point to us. What I think they are saying, large and small, is that they really would accept exemption as the simplest solution to the perceived weaknesses of PPERA and to the inevitable complex strengthening of its provisions in the current Bill.
There is a genuine issue here and I hope that my noble and learned friend the Minister is now fully aware that it is not a one-way street. Not all charities are by any means determined to come under the auspices of the Electoral Commission in this way.
I was about to refer to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, but if he would like to go first, that is fine.