The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, makes a fair point that, as a party, the staff costs were not included, but I think one of the reasons was referred to by my noble friend Lord Gardiner on Monday. Political parties’ staff are fully committed and are very transparently fighting an election, whereas one might reasonably assume that, when larger organisations undertake political campaigning—and we accept that they are registered because they believe that their campaigning could reasonably be judged to give an electoral advantage, or disadvantage, to one party or another—their staff’s time is not entirely taken up with it. He makes a fair point, but there is also a distinction because it would not be the entire staffing costs of a particular organisation that would be taken into account.
I wholly accept the point that has been made about the richness of the debate, with groups contributing in ways they have not done before, much of which is made possible, I suspect, by electronic media. Those of us who have had to stuff envelopes in the past probably realise that there are easier ways of campaigning and getting the message across, as well as being cheaper than the printed material which the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, mentioned in his earlier intervention. In some respects, campaigning costs themselves have gone down over the years because of the nature of much of modern campaigning.
1.30 pm
In the end, in the context we are debating here, elections are about getting candidates elected to the other place. In that regard, if third-party organisations are involving themselves in that effort and doing so in ways that could reasonably be seen to influence the outcome of the election—or at least work is done to the advantage of one party or another—it is not unreasonable that there should be some transparency in that. Equally, it is not unreasonable that the rules which have been set about party-political expenditure should not be got around by a much larger amount of expenditure being available to a third-party organisation which may, in one way or another, informally be aligned with promoting the interests of one of the established political parties.
We should bear in mind what is happening in other parts of the world. My noble friend Lady Williams referred to the Crossroads organisation. I am always
two weeks behind with the Economist, but I read it on my way down last Monday. It has an article in the 30 November edition which noted that last year some $180 million was raised by Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, which included 50 donations of at least $1 million. The article goes on to say:
“No one knows who those generous people were”.
That is what we are seeing in other parts of the democratic world and it is something that we have to be on our guard against. On that basis, I invite the noble and learned Lord to withdraw his amendment.