My Lords, the noble Lord’s track is also rather familiar to the rest of us, if we are going to trade comments of that sort.
Of course, when it comes to the recall process, campaigners can use their financial capacity—subject to the £10,000 limit—during the regulated period. Then we come to the question of whether, if several campaigners agree to work together, the sum of all expenses incurred as part of this common plan would count towards the spending limit of each campaigner—an issue that some of us battled over in the transparency of lobbying Bill. This does not prevent a number of groups campaigning for the recall of an MP and each spending £10,000, provided that they do not co-ordinate their plans.
This would not necessarily always be on one side. In the event of an MP being convicted of an offence on what may be considered a point of principle, there would no doubt be many others who would rally to his or her support in a recall petition—I have to say that it would be a very exciting experience to watch at that point. We do not therefore see that a lead campaigner is desirable or practicable. We wish to encourage local, grass-roots campaigners to be actively engaged in deciding on who should be their representative.
9.30 pm
The Electoral Commission, which the noble Baroness proposes should be responsible for designating the lead campaigner, opposes this amendment, stating that the proposals give,
“accredited campaigners a monopoly over the arguments for or against an MP’s recall”.
It has also identified several workability issues with limiting the number of accredited campaigners on either side of the outcome,
“including the limited amount of time available there would be to receive applications, assess them and make a designation decision”,
thus delaying the process. It continues by stating that,
“it is also questionable whether a national body, such as ourselves, should be given the responsibility of registering campaigners at an essentially local electoral event, especially when it may have limited prior knowledge of the local context and when campaigners might find it difficult to evidence how representative they are of local opinion”.
Amendment 65 is intended to say that campaign literature should concern itself only with the issue of recall and not with other issues. We do not regard this as either desirable or practical. It is in the nature of any campaign that other issues will come into it. There will of course be limits; for example, public statements or behaviour that incite race, religious or other forms of hatred during the recall petition are matters for criminal law, and wider electoral law also contains specific provisions on campaign literature relating to false statements about candidates and details that campaigners must include on election publications. These are important features of electoral law that the Government want to see extended to recall petitions. It is intended that these will be delivered through the regulation-making powers provided to Ministers under Clause 18. It is intended that these provisions will apply to all campaigners at a recall petition whether they are accredited or not.
Although I understand the belt-and-braces intent behind the noble Baroness’s amendment, I hope I can assure her that it is not necessary and that her second amendment would cramp the style of the recall petition further than is desirable, practical or necessary. I hope that that answers her constructive concerns and that, on that basis, she will not press her amendments.