I was aware of the noble and learned Lord’s point, and I was going to come to it. I take that point—he said quite unequivocally that he did not expect campaigning groups to log all those small items—but the fact is that they are expected under the Bill to take staff costs into account. That is what the Bill states. If they are expected under the Bill to take staff costs into account, presumably they are expected in some way to provide a note of what those costs are. They have to go about that in one way or another, and that involves a lot of scrutinising of the cost of what they do and adding it up.
This is a bureaucratic nightmare. It is no accident that the Electoral Commission is reluctant to support the Bill on this particular issue. It is no wonder that political parties have resisted taking staff costs into their accounts for this very reason of complexity.
This amendment does not have any bearing on the situation about which some politicians have expressed concern, in which a third party may want to second staff to work for a party or a candidate. That is not a situation regulated by third-party rules. Such costs would either count towards a party’s spending limit or a candidate’s spending limit, depending on the timing and nature of the secondment. Ensuring appropriate enforcement, rather than changing the rules, is the appropriate response to such concerns.
This amendment does nothing to frustrate the Government’s purpose of trying to prevent big spenders from distorting elections through third-party campaigns, and it is one that matters very much to charities and campaigning groups, because of the regulatory burden. I beg to move.