My Lords, again we are grateful to the noble and leaned Lord, Lord Hardie, for introducing this part of the Bill and the consideration of the overall spending limits. As no doubt the Committee is aware, third parties are subject to limits on the amount of controlled expenditure that they may incur during the regulated period of a United Kingdom parliamentary general election. The initial figures set out in PPERA 2000 set the limit at £988,500 for the whole of the United Kingdom and this Bill, as has been heard, seeks to amend that limit to £390,000. The limit in either case is of course the aggregate of individual limits of each part of the United Kingdom. That means that expenditure is allocated in accordance with where its effect is most significantly felt. If a body has its head office in Scotland, for example, but undertakes and targets its campaign work only in England, then that spending will be allocated to the English limit and not the Scottish one.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, has tabled amendments so that the spending limit for third parties remains as it is in PPERA 2000, and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, has proposed limits that would take the spending limit to £1,406,000 across the United Kingdom as a whole. This substantial increase, as I understand it, is to reflect inflation since the original limit was set 13 years ago. There has been considerable discussion, not just in this House but also in the other place, about third-party campaigners and the potential to incur significant amounts of expenditure in campaigns. This was spoken about very eloquently by my noble friend Lady Williams. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, indicated that her party has no desire to see the cost of politics increase, nor, indeed, do we want to see a disproportionate effect on elections by those who have lots of money to throw around.
There is also the potential, given that limits are imposed on political parties—let us remember that, if we look at this in its full context, there are limits on political parties—that we would undermine that regime if their supporters could still demonstrate their backing by diverting funding to a formally or informally aligned party. Allowing very large sums to be spent to the benefit of parties that are candidates in this way risks, I believe, undermining the basic rules that have evolved over the years in terms of restriction of political spending in elections. The nature of third parties means that controls on their spending are necessary. I do not believe that we have really debated limits, but I do not think that anyone has challenged the principle that there should be some control on substantial spending.
There is some evidence of third-party expenditure increasing. In 2010, eight third-party organisations spent more than £100,000, although, as I think my noble friend Lord Horam correctly pointed out, most who were registered—and only 30 were registered—spent considerably less than that. Indeed, some who were registered spent nothing at all. Although there were eight who spent more than £100,000 in 2010, in 2005 only two groups did so. I believe, and we have said all these things many times, that it is about trying to strike the right balance to ensure transparency. We believe that the figure in the Bill is a reasonable limit for national third-party campaigning. Most campaigns in the last election did not spend anywhere near either the total amount that was available then or the amount that is proposed in this Bill.
It has been argued that these previous campaigns did not require third parties to account for a much wider range of activities, but it is worth reflecting on the fact that the Green Party, a political party, spent £330,000 on its national campaign in the 2010 general election. That campaign activity included incurring expenses on advertising, unsolicited materials, manifestos, market research, transport, media events and rallies—all activities that third parties should also account for. No one can doubt that the Green Party had a very strong voice in that campaign and indeed succeeded in getting its first ever Member elected to the House of Commons. It was a voice within a national debate. In fact, only four out of well over 100 registered political parties spent more than £390,000 in 2010: the Conservative Party, the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats and the UK Independence Party.
We are setting a limit which, as I said, only four political parties exceeded in 2010, and a party that was recognised as having played a full part, albeit without standing in every constituency, in a national election in all its activities spent less than £390,000. We do not believe that third parties should be dominating the electoral landscape—by “third parties” I do not mean political parties but such as we have discussed in this debate, as of course I think third parties have an important role to play in the party-political scene—and creating campaigning inequality among political parties. We believe that the spending limits are appropriate and proportionate.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, drew attention to the differential that exists in Schedule 10 to the 2000 Act, and I accept that this Bill is looking at the UK limits. It will also recognise that while you might have a campaign to be undertaken on a pan-UK basis, it is not quite the same as if you were focusing solely on Scotland for a Scottish election and so I think that there is some scope for a differential.
We believe that, having reduced the limit to a sum that has not inhibited, or would not have caught, the Green Party at the last election or indeed the vast majority of third parties that were registered and campaigned, this is not an unreasonable balance to be struck. I invite the noble and learned Lord to withdraw his amendment.