As my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace has said, I and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, and my noble friend Lord Cormack have a subsidiary but quite important additional amendment, Amendment 39A. I am sure that all four of us welcome the recognition
that my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace has given to the fact that the 2000 Act—this is not about this Bill; it is about the 2000 Act—has caused real problems for any organisations that were encouraged to work together in what were then called coalitions. Since then, the term “coalition” has gained a different connotation, so perhaps we should talk just about “working together”. The way in which this matter was handled in 2000 has caused real concerns. I know from reading Hansard that this confusion was caused at the last minute by a government amendment during the Committee stage of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Bill, as it then was, in this House.
It is curious that, over the years since 2000, very few of us seem to have heard of the problems that were caused by those provisions. Neither the Electoral Commission nor the Charity Commission ever came forward and said that these matters needed review and either repeal or revision. However, we now know, because a large number of organisations have been in touch with many Members of your Lordships’ House saying that this is a real practical problem—hence the Government’s amendment, which is excellent so far as it goes. However, as I shall seek to explain in a moment, there is one additional problem which I hope my noble and learned friend will be able to say he can look at again, since, as he just said, there will be some additional clarification at Third Reading.
As my noble and learned friend has said, the new provisions should be a major help to smaller players in those joint campaigns, ensuring that others can account for their spending, but the approach in Amendment 39 does not go quite far enough. The fundamental problem with the so-called coalition arrangements in the 2000 Act is as follows. If, let us say, Friends of Earth intends to spend £300,000 on a campaign about climate change and does so in coalition with, for example, Oxfam, which contributes £25,000, under PPERA both are deemed to have spent, or to plan to spend, £325,000. Clearly, that is absurd, because that would mean that Oxfam, which had contributed only £25,000 to that campaign, might well then be precluded from doing anything else on other issues, which it is clear was not intended by the 2000 Act and which, I hope, is not something that we would intend to do today.
To prevent people working together and therefore having to multiply the spending limits under the 2000 Act by a factor equal to the number of organisations involved seems to be most peculiar. Removing the rules altogether would create another new loophole. I keep saying to colleagues in the third sector, “We’ve got to be very careful that we don’t increase flexibility for what we think is a good cause only to create a loophole for much less meritorious campaigning activity”. However, what is unfair about the rules is not that some spending on common campaigns is counted together to prevent an overall breach of the limits but the fact that spending by one organisation on one campaign can then restrict the campaigning of another organisation on a totally different campaign. In my example, Oxfam would be deemed to have spent £325,000 not just for the purposes of that climate change campaign but for all purposes. It would then be very close to the
limit, which would then mean that it would have to worry about whether any of its other spending on, let us say, development targets could,
“reasonably be regarded as intended to promote or procure electoral success”,
of a party or candidate.
If that organisation’s trustees believe that the future spending could be so regarded, they would be left with a very small amount of headroom in the national spending limit even though they had contributed a relatively small amount of money to the tune of £25,000. Therefore, £25,000 spent on climate change would mean very little room left for spending on other development targets. I am sure your Lordships will see that that would not be just and right and does not meet the objectives either of the existing law or of this Bill.
Our Amendment 39A would build on the progress made by the amendment moved by my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace in setting out the principle that there should be an overall cap on spending by any one joint campaign or by any one individual organisation. However, new subsection (6B) proposed by my amendment states that,
“expenditure by a third party within the limits set out in Schedule 10 in pursuance of any matter unrelated to an arrangement and which could not reasonably be regarded as intended to achieve a purpose common to an arrangement”,
should not be so restricted by the coalition rules in PPERA 2000.
The amendment would provide for some affected organisations a silver lining in the passage of this Bill. In short, it would remove a very unjust element of the existing law which has caused quite unintended problems for many non-party campaigners. Their arrangements would be improved immeasurably. The amendment would also improve significantly what the Government have so far managed to come up with. I hope that my noble friends will recognise that the problems with the 2000 Act are considerable. This was one very specific problem that was caused to a large number of organisations. I hope therefore that before Third Reading, when, as my noble and learned friend has already indicated, there has to be some further clarification and therefore amendment of the set of amendments that he is putting before the House today, he could look also at this additional problem, which otherwise will go unresolved and continue to cause considerable difficulty for all sorts of organisations.