Political Parties and Elections Bill

My Lords, I support my noble friend. I have been astonished by the amount of paper that I have received on this amendment from the Finance and Leasing Association, the Credit Services Association, the Institute of Fundraising and the UK Cards Association opposing him—I also received something from the Electoral Commission supporting him—so I listened carefully to what he had to say. My concerns are primarily threefold. First is the civil liberties argument. I am always concerned about information being collected for one purpose and then being passed on to be used for another, and my concerns have been increased by the examples given by my noble friend. The second is what I might describe as an ecological argument; that is to say, I suspect that what we are allowing here increases the volume of junk mail that travels through all our letterboxes. It is unnecessary, untidy and wasteful of our resources. The third is what I describe as the economic argument. I understand that the information is provided at cost, and I do not see why there should not be an economic charge for it, which would at least reward the local authorities and those involved for the expense, trouble and management time required to provide it. That does not happen at present; therefore, as my noble friend pointed out, this is a subsidising of the private sector by the state, which is inherently undesirable. My civil liberties argument is the most critical. We should make every effort to ensure that information collected is used for the purposes for which it is collected, and not passed to somebody else for use in a completely different way. Although the Electoral Commission says that it has worries about the drafting of the amendment, it strongly supports it. And given that the Minister has so often in the past prayed in aid the Electoral Commission when rejecting our arguments, I hope that on this occasion he will see the logic of its position and ensure that my noble friend’s amendment is accepted.