Political Parties and Elections Bill

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, will know that unfortunately I dissent from the position that he has taken. I ask him to forgive me because we work together very well in a number of areas of the Bill. I did not move my amendment because I wanted to concentrate on the essence of the noble Lord’s case. This is not about risk to Members of Parliament; the issue in this case is the risk to the families of Members of Parliament. In Committee, I drew attention to two occasions: the first was when a Member of Parliament was in Paris and an incident was about to take place; and the second was the incident that took place outside the home of the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, when the police were brought in and there were subsequent prosecutions. In the latter case, there was clearly a risk to the family. I am worried by the fact that the case put by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, seems to be based on the proposition that, because we are in public life, our families have to take into account the fact that we may be placing them at risk. He was not quite as blunt as that, but that is the implication. I want to give an example. If a person anywhere in the world were to Google the names of every single Member of Parliament—their names and addresses would be available on the internet following a general election campaign—that person would have a database that could be used against each individual Member. They could dispatch from anywhere in the world envelopes containing biological material or other dangerous agents and send them to the homes of those Members of Parliament. The mail that we receive here is screened but we all know that that is not the position with mail that goes to our homes. We are advised at every stage in our political lives to be more diligent and careful with regard to our personal arrangements because of the dangers from terrorism and I cannot believe that a political party would argue that we should not have that in mind when taking decisions on this issue. We cannot place the families of Members of Parliament in that position. The noble Lord has said that this material is already available. Of course it is. You could have gone to my former constituency in Workington and asked on the streets, "Where does the Member of Parliament for Workington live?", and you would probably have been told the answer within a road or two. However, when you are in some obscure country in another part of the world, you do not have access to that kind of material. When I oppose the noble Lord’s amendment, I am referring to a completely different kind of threat. I am also concerned about the impact of international terrorism on how Members of Parliament conduct themselves in a public place—particularly in the Chamber in Parliament, where their remarks might be heavily publicised. Even though they are protected by privilege, if Members of Parliament feel constrained in any way because of the possible danger to their families that might arise out of any statements that they make in Parliament, I believe that we have a responsibility to try to remove that possibility of constraint. We must place Members of Parliament in a position where they feel confident that what they say will not lead to unnecessary risk to their families. I am afraid that the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, do not really address that. I am sorry to say that, because we have worked together well on this Bill. However, this is an area where we have a fundamental difference of opinion. As I said in Committee, my views on this matter stem basically from the noble Lord’s lobby. I supported the principle of absolute transparency that he advocated until I had the conversation with my wife, to which I referred in Committee. She explained what happened in our family during the Iraqi debate in the 1990s, when I was quite involved with the Iraqi opposition. Now is the time to change the nature of the debate in this area. I appeal to the noble Lord not to press his amendment to a vote today because I think that it sends out the wrong message. For all the goodness that lies in the libertarian values that he and his party colleagues hold, this is one area where I am afraid that too much transparency will place individual Members’ families at risk in a totally unacceptable way.