Political Parties and Elections Bill

My Lords, my Amendment 24 in the group is concerned with political restrictions on staff in Clause 7. Restrictions are imposed on people who have held certain posts as to the time that must elapse before they are able to become members of the staff of the commission. In this case, I wish to increase the basic period of quarantine in proposed new paragraph 11A(2)(c) from one year to three years. I raised the matter in Committee and we had an interesting debate on it. The reply from the Government, in the shape of the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, was: ""I have nothing to add at this point".—[Official Report, 30/4/09; col. GC 132.]" I hope that the Minister will forgive me if I found that a slightly less than obliging response. Therefore, I am returning to the matter and I hope that he will give me a slightly better and more fulsome response this afternoon, failing which I may feel inclined to test the opinion of the House. Since we discussed the matter on 30 April, events have reinforced my view that the 12-month period presently contained in the Bill is too short. It is a truism that confidence in our democratic institutions has taken a battering in recent years and, in the past few weeks, Parliament has moved to the eye of the storm. This afternoon we do not need to go into why, how and where, but it is a fact. Many of us believe that the Electoral Commission in its new guise will play a critical role in rebuilding public confidence. If it were to fail, which we all hope that it will not, the damage will be extremely serious and severe—doubly so, because expectations will have been aroused in the general public only to be dashed. Therefore, I think that we need a belt-and-braces approach to ensure that not only is it above reproach but is seen to be so. In Grand Committee, I took a certain amount of incoming fire. The noble Baroness, Lady Gould—I am sad not to see her in her place; she was here a minute ago —said that what was then government Amendment 77, which I think is now new paragraph 11B, answered my concerns. It gives the chief executive of the commission the flexibility to require, following a discussion with the Speaker’s Committee, other potential members of staff of the Electoral Commission to undergo a greater quarantine period. I entirely agree with the noble Baroness about the need for flexibility. I think that that is an excellent idea and I have no problem at all with new paragraph 11B. The danger is not about posts that are permanently sensitive but about those that are temporarily sensitive. Junior members of the staff of the commission will carry out investigations, putting together documents, searching through files and doing various work, which may or may not lead to a prosecution. It does not seem likely that the chief executive will wish to go to the Speaker’s Committee to obtain clearance to ensure that people who do that have not been involved in politics in the immediate past. Therefore, I think that, while the noble Baroness’s point is entirely fair, it provides only half the answer. The second lot of incoming fire came from the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, who may feel after my slightly disobliging remarks on his Amendment 2 this afternoon that he wishes to return to the matter. The thrust of his argument was that it was one of "mindset"—the word that he used—not time bars. I agree with him that mindset is important, but the problem can be guarded against by lengthening the time bar. If you have a time bar of a week, a mindset would not be easily overridden. With 12 months, you have a little more coverage and, with 36 months, someone has to have a critical and long-lasting attempt to disconcert the Electoral Commission. That deals with the mindset argument. Who would be affected by the amendment? It would be a very small number of people who had shown an above average level of political commitment and interest. They would be an officer or employee of a registered party or any accounting unit of such a party, a donor in the register of donations or a participant in the register of recordable transactions under Part 4A. I urge the Government to think again about this. To have a situation where an officer or an employee of a registered party can become a member of the staff of the Electoral Commission within 12 months seems to me to be extraordinarily dangerous. It is better to be safe than sorry. We should have a longer period for people who have held these quite senior and sensitive roles before they are able to switch—if I may use the vernacular—from poacher to gamekeeper.