My Lords, I will first echo the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, that it took just 24 hours to reject the advice of this House and of the voluntary sector. I understand that, anticipating another victory today, they are going to do the same tomorrow. They do not seem to take your Lordships’ House too seriously. It also means, of course, that we have not had the opportunity to hear from the Electoral Commission about the new position—although we have heard from the voluntary sector, who remain deeply concerned about the Government position on this.
Just yesterday the Government had another blitz on red tape, boasting how they were removing unnecessary shackles from a number of bodies. Last week, the Government published their Deregulation Bill, which will get its Second Reading in the other place on Monday. Therefore, on the one hand all this red tape is being lifted off organisations, and yet on the other we have here something that will tie up charities, churches, women’s groups, young people’s movements and green campaigners in completely unnecessary red tape and complicated accounting. It is not that simple.
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The problem with constituency limits is not their aim but their workability. The third sector does not organise by constituency—it does not even know most of the constituency borders. It focuses on things like HS2, Heathrow or badger setts. Therefore, it is a bit of accounting and bureaucratic red tape to ask those organisations to do their accounts in a completely different, geographical way—not according to where their staff work or their pay grades, but based on whether they might have happened to spend a bit of time campaigning on something which then became a political issue, either because a party did or did not like it. If the Government cannot understand that, it is only because they have not run those organisations.
I will repeat one more thing that I said earlier. The Electoral Commission has said that these rules may not be enforceable in the timescale of an election. Motion B1, which proposes Amendment 26B—which, as the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, said, would restrict the requirements simply to campaigning that is clearly directed at particular electors—is surely a better way forward than the Government’s way. The noble and learned Lord gave the example of an ad, but that is not the point. Ads are easy; they are like printing things—you know where they will be. Getting a bit of one campaigner’s time, or getting someone who may have helped organise a photo shoot, is what is being asked for, and that is the difficulty.
It is extra bureaucracy and it is the reason why an organisation such as the National Federation of Women’s Institutes has written to all of us, proud of its 99-year history of non-sectarian, non-party political campaigning on issues that matter to women of all ages. It is worried about the Government’s position on this. It says—and its members are not dumb; they have read the Bill carefully—that the,
“Bill and its impact matters greatly to our members, especially as we hope to continue our proud tradition of campaigning into our 100th year in 2015”.
We need to agree this Motion and the following one on staff costs. If we agree them, we hope that the Government will not just take until tomorrow to tell us to think again. Finally, the Government’s rejection of this is not worthy of a Government who profess to believe in the big society.