My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Hughes of Woodside and his wide-ranging speech. I am very glad that my noble friends on the Front Bench have tabled Amendments 21, 22 and 23.
What is provided for in this Bill is trial by petition. The petition process will be the trial of the suitability of a particular Member of Parliament to continue to represent his or her constituents in the House of Commons. A Member of Parliament thus placed on trial deserves a fair trial, just like anyone else who is arraigned.
The principle of fair trial goes all the way back in our history to Magna Carta. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, alluded to Magna Carta earlier today. Many of us have been very conscious, particularly in recent days, of how we should measure our democratic and political standards against the precepts and standards initiated in our history through Magna Carta. It derives from common law and the Bill of Rights, which the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, also referred to this afternoon. It was most importantly articulated in recent decades in Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The principle of equality of arms, which my noble friend Lady Hayter espoused, means that each party should be placed in a position in which
they are able to present their case in a manner that does not put them at a disadvantage by comparison to their opponent. The process must be equitable and neither side should be privileged.
Of course, trial by petition is not trial in accordance with any known court procedures or court rules. There are no safeguards provided in the legislation to ensure that there is fairness for the MP whose conduct and future is in question in the process of recall. But we should, as long as possible, in designing these procedures seek to uphold the principle of fairness: it is fundamental to our democracy and the rule of law. It is extraordinary that the Government have presented us with the Bill in which, as I understand it—I am ready to be corrected by the Minister or any other noble Lord because the legislative drafting is often quite impenetrable—there is no limit to the number of accredited campaigns that can be run to seek to unseat the Member of Parliament. Each of them will be entitled to spend up to £10,000. There is no limit to the number of non-accredited campaigners who can be in the field, each of them entitled to spend up to £500, and there is no bar against funding to support the campaign against or indeed in favour of the Member of Parliament coming in from abroad. The system that Ministers are presenting to Parliament has been stacked against the incumbent MP who is having to defend themselves and whose future is in question. A system so weighted and inherently unjust must be unacceptable.
As my noble friend Lady Hayter pointed out, three or four political parties could join to try to unseat a Member of Parliament for the particular party that happens to hold the seat for the time being.
In our present fragmented condition of politics, three-way, four-way, even five-way marginals are part of the reality of life. There will be intense national interest. The amendments of my noble friends are right. They provide for equality of arms in terms of the capacity to spend for and against the petition. In the provision in the amendment on permissible donors, they would keep out foreign money, pretty largely. They will ensure that donations for and against the continuation of the Member of Parliament are aggregated, so it is essentially a yes/no binary campaign. There are just two campaigns.
I am puzzled—and I have not understood, from our previous proceedings—why, under this legislation, only donations of more than £500 are regulated. Unless I am mistaken, I think under election law donations of more than £50 in other contexts are regulated. I would be grateful to be advised on that. Possibly I have that wrong.
As I understand it, the definition of a permissible donor still allows donations from people living abroad but registered on an electoral register in the United Kingdom. They do not have to be registered on the electoral register in the constituency in question. Equally, businesses that are perhaps registered abroad, based abroad, carrying on the greater part of their business abroad but also carrying on some part of their business in this country are also eligible. They do not even have to be carrying on their business within the particular constituency.
The Electoral Commission offers us reassurance that these recall petitions and campaigns will be essentially local constituency affairs. I beg to differ. I think there will be not only intense national interest; I think there could even, in certain circumstances, be international interest. I think that we have to put in place the strongest safeguards we possibly can to ensure equality of arms and to ensure the process of petition campaigning is not inherently unjust because of the advantages it gives to one side against the other—that it gives to the petitioners against the Member of Parliament.
Although it may well be the case that these amendments do not do everything that we would ideally wish, I support them because they will go a long way to mitigate the worst inequities in this undesirable process.