Political Parties and Elections Bill

Both factors are involved. The Committee on Standards in Public Life used exactly the same adjectives as my hon. Friend; it said that it was too weak in some areas and too strong in others. The issue is partly to do with its powers. Far from strengthening the total powers of the commission, this Bill qualifies powers and provides additional but more sensible powers. Another factor has been the nature of the commission and the fact that individuals with recent political experience have not served on it. The Committee on Standards in Public Life and the Constitutional Affairs Committee both recommended that a minority of commissioners should have practical experience from across the political spectrum. Those bipartisan reviews also recommended that the commission's regulatory role should be clarified, that its investigatory powers should be changed and that it should be given a flexible range of civil sanctions to enable it to consider alternative avenues in cases where breaches have occurred and where the only options at present—this a part-answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane)—are to name and shame or to refer the matter to the Crown Prosecution Service or the police with a view to a criminal prosecution. The Bill takes forward all those proposals, and I shall come to their detail in a moment. There is already all-party consensus on these changes in principle, and relevant measures are included in the Bill. However, I hope that through the process of parliamentary scrutiny we can carefully examine them and improve their detailed operation where necessary. In addition to reform of the Electoral Commission, the Bill contains important measures to ensure that the true source of donations to political parties is made known to the public. All parties have called for openness and transparency in party funding, so I hope that these measures will secure all-party support as well. It has been a common aim of all legislation, going right back to 1883, that overall spending by parties should be controlled. While of course there may be argument about exactly how to control it, that common aim continues to be shared by the parties. I entirely agree with the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), who said last year that"““we are much more interested in reducing the cost of politics and that is what David Cameron has made clear.””" The Bill therefore includes measures to improve the control of spending. Although there are strong arguments in favour of a comprehensive overhaul of the system of expenditure controls—to pick up on a point made by Liberal Democrats—and Sir Hayden recommended the introduction of what amounted to continuous all-encompassing spending caps, it is clear that there is not currently consensus on taking such a step. Consequently, I have not included those proposals in the Bill.