My Lords, we have Amendment 166A in this group. Before I come to it, I have a great deal of sympathy for the approach of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, but with an important reservation. I noted with interest that he referred to the advice of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, but the committee gave much more detailed consideration to some of these issues in its later report of November 2011. That is the context in which we are having this discussion. Our amendment seeks to return to the existing, well known situation of the registration threshold, with one very important qualification, to which I will refer when I also speak to the amendments being proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, and others.
Nursing my cold and cough yesterday evening, I carefully read the whole of our Hansard proceedings on Monday. If anybody has been having as much difficulty in sleeping as I have recently, I fully endorse that as a very good way of avoiding insomnia. I was struck that almost all the constructive amendments to make this part of the Bill more workable and effective came from the Cross Benches, and from the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Benches. This clearly reflects the reality outside the Houses of Parliament. The organisations potentially affected by its provisions want to ensure that the Bill deals with the doubts and the defects in the existing law, the PPERA 2000, rather than simply maintain some of the unsatisfactory features of that status quo.
I have met representatives of literally dozens—scores, perhaps even hundreds—of organisations over recent weeks, some charities and some not, to discuss the perceived effects of the Bill. It is becoming increasingly clear that all serious organisations recognise that the loophole that could enable a single-issue-obsessed multimillionaire or campaign group to target huge sums of money into one or more marginal seats must be addressed. One of the problems with the other amendments in this group is that they do not restrict that targeting into a small number of seats. Our amendment does.