My Lords, in moving Amendment 209, I will also speak to Amendment 210, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for adding his support.
These amendments return to the major debate that we had on day 2 in Committee regarding direct marketing for the use of democratic engagement. It is fair to say that no-one was convinced by the Minister’s arguments about why that relaxation of the rules for political parties was necessary. We will no doubt return to that issue on Report, so I shall not repeat the arguments here. Meanwhile, Clause 113 leads into the democratic engagement provisions in the Bill and provides a soft opt-in for the use of electronic mail for direct marketing for charitable, political or other non-commercial activities when the data has been collected for other purposes.
As we made clear in the previous debate, we have not asked for these more relaxed rules about political electronic marketing. We believe that these provisions take us fundamentally in the wrong direction, acting against the interests of the electorate and risking damaging the already fragile level of trust between politicians and voters. However, we support extending the soft opt-in for charities and other non-commercial organisations. This is a measure that many charities have supported.
Of course, we want to encourage campaigning by charitable organisations to raise awareness of the critical issues of the day and encourage healthy debate, so extending their opportunities to use electronic marketing for this purpose could produce a healthy boost for civic engagement. This is what our amendments are hoping to achieve.
Therefore, our Amendments 209 and 210 would amend the wording of Clause 113 to remove the relaxation of the rules specifically for political parties and close the loophole by which some political parties may try to negate the provisions by describing themselves as non-commercial entities. We believe that this is the right way forward. Ideally, these amendments would be combined with the removal of the democratic engagement provisions in Clause 114 that we have already debated.
I hope noble Lords will see the sense of these proposals and that the Minister will agree to take these amendments away and rethink the whole proposition of Clauses 113 and 114. I beg to move.