Political Parties and Elections Bill

My Lords, I will humbly continue the debate. I recognise the rules of the House and would not want to trespass on them. I was talking about the amount of money that is going into elections and the need for a spending cap. This is the point that my right honourable friend David Cameron has made in his personal pledge: an incoming Conservative Government would abolish the communications allowance as a first step and a gesture in that direction. We would seek to reduce the cost of politics and the size of the House of Commons. He has put his finger on the national mood at the moment, which is not inclined to put one penny more towards the political process in these straitened times but wants to see the system managed much more efficiently. It is up to the political parties, through interparty dialogue, to come up with ways in which that can be achieved. I would like to make a couple of other points about expenditure limits. There are many other forms of support that political parties receive from the public purse, a point that was raised in the Neill report and was touched on by Sir Hayden Phillips in his review, where he pointed out the value of freepost mailings of manifestos at election time and of political election broadcasts. Significant amounts of funding are there for the incumbent. We are not saying that there is not a problem; big money—I use the term again with no hesitation—needs to be taken out of politics. "Big money" refers not only to trade unions and major wealthy individuals but to the public purse as well. Some steps have been taken and it is worth putting on the record some of the progress that has been made in relation to national limits. We have just experienced a European election that had a national limit on expenditure. That was a good exercise and a good discipline to impose. The very Bill that we are talking about came forward with a limitation on pre-candidacy election expenses for certain general elections. It introduces a limit, which is a step in the right direction, as it acknowledges that we have to find ways of reducing the amount of funding that is going into constituencies. Section 18 talks about a system of limiting the amount of money expended, kicking in after the 55th month of a Parliament. However, there is an important corollary to the point about the limitations on pre-election expenses under the Bill. I would be grateful if the Minister could put some additional remarks on the record about this. The understanding was that that would be matched by a limitation of the communications allowance used during that period by Members in the other place in their constituencies. It seems only right and fair that any limit that applied to donation income should be matched by a gesture from the incumbent Members in limiting the amount that is spent through the communications allowance. Various statements have been made claiming that such a statutory instrument or convention would be in place by the time the Bill received Royal Assent. It would be good to hear that this is still very much the Government’s intention. I recognise the intention behind the amendments but, for the reasons that I have outlined, we do not want to support them at this stage.