My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, for digging and delving into the background of all this. That is helpful because, all the way through our previous debate, we kept saying, “We don’t understand why these provisions are here”. When the Minister in the Commons was challenged, he said, “We have no intention of using this; it’s just a general power that might be there for anyone to use”, but the noble Lord has put the lie to all that. It is clear that only one party wants to pursue this issue: the Conservative Party.
The Minister said that there is no partisan objective or reason for this but, to be honest, I do not know how he can say that. If only one party wants it and no one else does, then only one party is going to implement it. Without going over the whole of the previous debate, I think a lot of people felt that we as political parties have a lot to do to improve our relationships with the electorate and be seen to represent them on an honest and authentic basis.
This goes in the opposite direction. It is almost collecting data for one purpose and using it for a different one. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and the Minister discussed the example of collecting information on a street stall; we have all done that a bit, in that you can put very generalised questions on a questionnaire which could then be used for all sorts of purposes.
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This is certainly not how we want to proceed and I would like to think that the Conservative Party would not want to proceed on this basis either. Our amendments today are specifically on allowing charities and non-commercial organisations to do it. I think we have accepted that proposal but, as far as we are concerned—I absolutely agree with the noble Lord on this—political parties are a bridge too far. We will return to this on Report. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.