My Lords, I have tabled this proposed new clause with my colleagues, my noble friends Lady Williams of Crosby and Lady Tyler of Enfield and, in a private capacity, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth. We have given it the heading:
“Third parties acting in concert”.
We think that that is a better definition of the problem that has been brought to our attention on many occasions than using the word “coalition”, which might have other overtones.
Among all the groups that we have met, the present PPERA 2000 rules on this type of working between different organisations have emerged as a major area of concern. Indeed, they have caused great confusion
and, more than anything else, given rise to the alleged chilling effect among smaller organisations. I checked with the Electoral Commission earlier this week about what exactly is meant by the present rules. Suppose organisation A contributes £15,000 to a combined operation, which acts in concert in some form of policy coalition. Then organisation B contributes £375,000 to that same campaign. Therefore, under the present rules, A and B have to record £390,000 as having been spent. However, vitally, organisation A, which has spent only £15,000, is recorded as having spent right up to the total of £390,000. That creates an extremely difficult situation for small organisations. Just by being caught up by some joint operation, they get clobbered because they might very well want to take on some different campaign activity that is nothing to do with that original campaign, and then find that they have already exceeded the limit. That is the nature of the present law, and that is the nature of the present problem that so many organisations have drawn to our attention.
The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and his colleagues have a good amendment that would deal with this for small organisations making a contribution below the registration threshold and, of course, that is welcome. Our amendment goes further: it embodies the principle that any one group or any one campaign should be capped at the level of the national or constituency limit. We do this by engaging in the amendment with the phrase,
“common plan or other arrangement”,
which is already referred to in the 2000 Act. We are effectively saying that the money spent on that plan should be capped—it should not then be carried forward for any other campaign of a different nature—or that that money spent by a different organisation should be capped. If, in my example, organisation A was spending only £15,000, that would be the limit of the restraint on it because it clearly would not be contributing a huge sum. Just because organisation B has spent a considerable sum in pursuance of the common plan, it should not be effectively restricted by what has happened with one of their allies.
There is a way around these rules at present, which is to set up an umbrella organisation to accept donations from all the different organisations involved, but if they simply campaign together then they will be caught by the present rules. There is a defect in the 2000 PPERA rules and the Bill is our opportunity to deal with it, remove that uncertainty and assist a number of organisations that feel that this is a real constraint on what they are permitted to do. I should say briefly that, on these Benches, we strongly refute the case for Amendment 182A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, which would seek to take away all the coalition rules. It would mean no constraint whatever on organisations, allowing them simply and artificially to multiply and then provide multiple spending limits. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, is not here to explain exactly the rationale for those original 2000 PPERA rules, which were thought at the time to be both necessary and desirable. Unfortunately, they have proved to be, to a large extent, not very effective and, in some respects, a discouragement to small organisations being involved in perfectly proper campaigning operations.
The amendment of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, goes a long way to dealing with the problem, but we think that our approach goes a little further and we hope that the Government will accept the direction in which it is going. I beg to move.