My Lords, I was coming on to say that. While Clause 22 will ban the same organisation from appearing on both registers at the same time, the effect, as noble Lords have said, of existing joint campaigning rules and this proposed extension is to reinforce that by stopping other ways that spending limits could be avoided and so it maintains the level playing field.
Of course, that will not affect groups spending on campaigns, even on the same issues or with the same objective, separately outside a joint plan, in their capacity as an individual recognised third party or political party. Any regulated spending undertaken by an individual group not as part of a joint campaign will only need to be reported by the group incurring the spend. No political party or third-party campaigner should be allowed to use the facade of multiple groups working together to expand its spending limits on campaigns where the various groups are for all intents and purposes operating as a single group.
The noble Lord has proposed an alternative approach, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, rightly said, refers to the CPSL recommendations. By the way, the CPSL recommendations came out after the Elections Bill was introduced. When I refer to some of the things we were doing in the spirit of CPSL, it is in that context. But I did make very clear that we took that committee seriously. The noble Lord’s amendments would require the Secretary of State to introduce regulations for the purpose of requiring political parties to distinguish targeted spending from other expenditure in their spending returns.
I appreciate that the noble Lord’s intention, and that of CPSL, is to increase transparency on this important topic. However, this replacement does not match the extent of transparency that Clause 27 creates. There, we get into a point of difference. Targeted spending is more limited in its definition than joint campaigning. It focuses only on the promotion of a single political party and its candidates exclusively, not campaigning in relation to policies or issues that may relate to the electoral prospects of a number of political parties. Furthermore, targeted spending also does not cover negative campaigning intended to, for example, reduce support for other candidates or parties. I know that Members of the other place are particularly concerned by this issue, and it is right that such activity, which is highly prevalent in modern campaigning, is transparent.
Targeted spending therefore does not include all scenarios where third parties and political parties might actively work together. That is not to dismiss the importance of the amendments that the noble Lord has put forward. But focusing only on targeted spending and failing to tighten the rules on joint campaigning, as the noble Lord suggests, would not, in our submission, deliver full transparency for the public and might allow campaigners for parties to—
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