Electoral Administration Bill

This is an area on which I agree fundamentally with the principle behind what the Government are trying to do, but agree with the noble Baroness that it is somewhat impractical to introduce this measure. The principle must be right of trying to police in a better way the original intentions of 1883 legislation to say that there should be a level playing field between candidates in an election. We saw in the most recent general election, in 2005, considerable abuse of that principle. I sympathise greatly with the intention behind the legislation that says that we should try to prevent candidates buying their way into the election. However, it is clearly hard to know when the election is going to be when we do not have systems of fixed-term parliaments. I believe that the answer must be to have fixed-term parliaments in due course, and then I shall support legislation on this principle. Until then you cannot expect political parties, largely staffed by voluntary rather than professional agents, to operate as though at any time they might be within four months of an election. Many of us remember changes to expected election dates. I remember particularly well the election expected to happen in the autumn of 1978. Parties geared up that August in anticipation of a general election in September and October, but the general election did not happen until May the following year. The parties would have been trapped by the fact that they had built up considerable expenses in that period and then the election date was changed. Purely on grounds of practicality, we support the amendments and do not really think that the legislation can go forward as originally intended.