Political Parties and Elections Bill

My Lords, I repeat the point that I made in Committee, to which the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, has referred. It is extremely important that we should not imagine that the threshold of the number of years will be absolutely the deciding factor; the deciding factor will be the mindset. In support of the argument that the noble Lord has given, I accept that 12 months is not very long. In recent weeks, we have had interesting examples of people in very sensitive positions who were still political activists. The classic case was of a member of the private office of the Home Secretary who then gave information to an opposition spokesperson, Mr Damian Green. The person concerned was very much still an activist. I do not know how long he had been inactive—I suspect not very long. He had previously stood as a Conservative candidate. We have had the more recent example of a member of staff, somewhere in this building presumably, who has felt it necessary to leak substantial information about the circumstances in which Members of the other House—and, for all I know, Members of this House—made claims for allowances. Therefore, this area is very sensitive. The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, has done us a great assistance in bringing this back to the House so that at least the Minister can examine this issue. What worries me more than the particular case that he refers to—12 months versus 36 months—is the division between new paragraph 11A and new paragraph 11B. I remind the House that, under new paragraph 11B, a number of less important posts can be subject to the discretion of the chief executive of the commission. Might the Minister, in responding to this brief debate, look again at where the dividing line between the paragraph 11A categories and the paragraph 11B categories comes? That is important, as perhaps it is in that area that we need to be more clear about what considerations will be taken into account, what can be left to the discretion of the chief executive and what needs to be on the face of the Bill and eventually in statute.