My Lords, as the noble and learned Lord has indicated, this amendment on constituency limits is a significant revision of the amendment passed by your Lordships but rejected by the Commons. It leaves out the first part of our previous amendment in order to meet the reasons for disagreement as stated on the Marshalled List—the Government’s wish to include a “wider range of expenditure” than was previously suggested.
As the noble and learned Lord said in the House at Report stage, he thought that public meetings and events should be brought within its scope. In leaving out the first part of our previous amendment, we have accepted, for the purposes of the Bill where it now is, that this is what the Government wish to do, without necessarily being fully persuaded by their arguments. We have therefore concentrated entirely in this revised amendment on trying to achieve greater clarity about how controlled expenditure could be attributed to a particular constituency.
Sub -paragraph (2) of the amendment states:
“Third party constituency expenditure … shall be attributed to those constituencies in equal proportions, or … shall be attributed solely to that constituency, as the case may be”.
I give as an example a campaign against a motorway extension that goes through three constituencies. On the basis of heading (a), the controlled expenditure would be split three ways in equal amounts. I give as another example a public meeting opposed to a new
development. The development is taking place in a marginal constituency but the public meeting opposed to it is taking place just over the border in the next constituency. On the basis of heading (b), the controlled expenditure would be attributed to the marginal constituency because this is where the meeting was trying to influence voters. This amendment would in fact be a tightening up of the Bill. As the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, pointed out on Report, the Bill as it now stands would enable the kind of public meeting that I have indicated to take place without being caught by the Bill, although the noble and learned Lord has now faced that one and suggested that it might. However, we believe that this part of the amendment would help the Government in trying to stop abuse.
The third part of our amendment states that,
“the effects of third party constituency expenditure are wholly or substantially confined to any particular constituencies or constituency if … there is no significant effect in any other constituency or constituencies, and … it can reasonably be inferred that the third party selected the relevant electors or households (or both) or otherwise distributed the material wholly or substantially to contact electors in the particular constituency or constituencies and not a wider section of the public”.
I take the noble and learned Lord’s point that if the House of Commons were able to accept this amendment, that sentence confining it simply to leaflets might need to be widened to other activities.
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Under the example I have just given of a public meeting to oppose a building development, on the basis of sub-paragraph (3)(a), the controlled expenditure would be attributable only to the constituency in which the development was taking place, even though the meeting was in fact in a neighbouring constituency. That is because in the words of the clause there would be “no significant effect” in it. I give as another example one of the big agricultural shows that take place every year around the country. A number of campaigning groups during the regulated period take the opportunity to hold meetings and give out leaflets on controversial issues in farming methods, such as cruelty to animals, pesticides, badgers and hunting. They are high profile and huge numbers of people from the region or indeed the country who attend the show are given these leaflets. On the amendment that is before us today, that activity would not be caught by constituency regulation, although it would be still be controlled by national expenditure regulation. That is because, according to sub-paragraph (3)(b), it has to be shown that the material is substantially orientated towards electors in a particular constituency or number of constituencies. It is clear from that example that the campaigners did not have a particular constituency or constituencies in mind. Their expenditure would count nationally but not in relation to any one or more constituencies.
This is a common-sense amendment that makes it much clearer for campaigners and better enables them to judge which expenditure will count towards constituency limits and which will not. The noble and learned Lord has suggested that this can be dealt with easily by guidance from the Electoral Commission,
but the campaigning groups were quite uncertain about this area. They believe that it needs to be in the Bill so that they can be crystal clear about what activities will be drawn within the scope of the regulation on constituency limits. For the same reason it will make it much easier for the Electoral Commission to monitor and enforce.
This limited amendment makes it harder to abuse the electoral process, meeting the Government’s main objective, and makes it easier for campaigners to stay within the rules and to know that they are doing so. I beg to move.