My Lords, the problem with including staff costs is the issue of workability. As we have heard from the NCVO, ACEVO and the people who run these charities, what is in the Bill at the moment is simply not workable. As I said earlier, the Bill asks these voluntary organisations to divvy up their staff costs, including national insurance and pension contributions, not only by which part of
the country they live in but by what chunk of their work has gone on campaigning on an issue that subsequently attains high political saliency. This is not even about keeping records, given that the organisation may have to go back and look at something.
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What we are talking about is not just the designing of an election leaflet but the office staff who help to steward a meeting or arrange visiting speakers. It is not for nothing that organisations such as the British Legion support this amendment, as does the BMA. The BMA says that there is a clear and compelling case to ease the bureaucratic burden to help non-party campaigners comply with the legislation. They want to be able to live within the law, which should not be written in a way that makes it impossible for them to keep to it. They do not want to be tangled up with bureaucratic demands that they might fall foul of. Surely we want to help them by not putting unnecessary burdens on them.
Earlier, the noble and learned Lord again used the word “intended”. We had an exchange on that before, but not everyone was here so let me repeat the argument. As the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, said, we are talking here not just about campaigns that are “intended” to promote a candidate. Clause 26 goes much further than that, because it could include things that turn out to help, or indeed harm, a party. Given the exchange between the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and my noble friend Lord Rooker, it could be that a charity has campaigned for fluoridation, which then becomes an issue with one party in favour and another against. The charity, which has been campaigning for fluoridation, would then suddenly find that this is a political issue, so it will need to account for its staff costs. We are not talking about people moving into a constituency; we are talking about charities that campaign on such issues, which could then be caught up in this provision.
What is the purpose of insisting on the inclusion of such costs? This is not about taking big money out of politics. It risks placing motivated, altruistic organisations in a position where they can either campaign freely for what they believe in, provided that they deal with all this red tape, or go quiet. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, may not like the word “gagging”, but if people choose not to criticise a policy because they are worried about the red tape, that sounds like a gag to me. I think this House would be well advised to send this amendment back down the corridor and say that it is unnecessary, unworkable and does nothing about transparency.