Political Parties and Elections Bill

My Lords, my noble friend recognises that there is a problem and argues that the amendment does not wholly meet it. Of course that is true, but I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, who made the point that, even though this House should probably be reluctant to intervene in elections since we are a unelected House, this amendment gives the opportunity for the elected House to make its own decision, and this is what we should allow it to do. I can see no reason for the Government’s rejection of this. The Government, in a rather civil-servant way, give 1,001 reasons why we should reject this, but do not come forward with any real reasons why this particular anomaly should not be met. The mischief which the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, seeks to meet is very clear; it is the mischief of the buying of elections by rich individuals who are not domiciled in this country. Quite properly the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, mentioned the good inverted US principle of no representation without taxation. Why should individuals have a disproportionate effect on our electoral process? I am thinking, for example, of a very competent colleague in the House of Commons, who lost his seat in 2005 and watched a tidal wave of money pour into his marginal seat from certain individuals in the years prior to the period when it was banned. He could do nothing about it. Clearly, only a relatively small number of marginal seats are laser-beamed in this way. This is not a partisan position. I hope the main Opposition also see the danger to our democracy of having elections bought in this way by very rich individuals. The awful thing for this individual was not that this tsunami of money poured into his constituency and overwhelmed him but that the money came from someone who was non-resident in this country. That is clearly the mischief that the noble Lord is seeking to meet. I simply ask this question of the Government: do they recognise that this is a problem at the very root of our democracy? Over the years, step by step, we have tried to remove the influence of money on elections and corrupt practices—mostly, I concede, thanks to the Liberal Party over the centuries—from the great Reform Act through to secret ballots, seeking to remove various forms of corrupt practice and the effect of money on elections, so that one individual does not have a greater say in the determination of an election result than other, ordinary folk. Why can we not seek some means of doing it? It is not good enough simply to parade a series of individual objections to the points raised. Why will the Government not do something about it? And is the Conservative Party content to allow this possibility to pervert our democracy without accepting what is here and giving the House of Commons—the elected House—the opportunity to debate it and put it right if it is able to do so?