Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Indeed. Many of the provisions that we will talk about in the main debate this afternoon relate to the combining of polls, but this is the only point in the debate on the Bill when there can be any discussion about party election broadcasts, because this is the only point in the Bill that they are referred to. All the other elements—how many registers of electors there should be, what colour the ballot papers should, how many polling cards there should be and so on—are referred to in the new schedules that we will come to a little later, but not broadcasting, which is a reserved responsibility. The Broadcasting Act 1990 makes it clear that"““any regional Channel 3 licence or licence to provide Channel 4 or 5 shall include—""(a) conditions requiring the licence holder to include party political broadcasts in the licensed service; and""(b) conditions requiring the licence holder to observe such rules with respect to party political broadcasts as the Commission may determine.””" In addition, we specified in section 127 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 that"““(1) A broadcaster shall not include in its broadcasting services any referendum campaign broadcast made on behalf of any person or body other than one designated in respect of the referendum in question under section 108.""(2) In this section, 'referendum campaign broadcast' means any broadcast whose purpose (or main purpose) is or may reasonably be assumed to be—""(a) to further any campaign conducted with a view to promoting or procuring a particular outcome in relation to any question asked in a referendum to which this Part applies, or""(b) otherwise to promote or procure any such outcome.””" It is my contention that this provides us with a degree of uncertainty as to what should happen during the process of the combined elections, particularly in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, but also in England, in relation to party election broadcasts and referendum broadcasts. This will be the first time that broadcasters have had to deal with this set of coincidences—or rather, not coincidences, but this deliberate combination. There is a danger that, if political parties are obsessing too much about the referendum, many voters will worry that there will be an excess of referendum and party political broadcasts next year. Certainly in Wales, we will probably have them from the beginning of February all the way through to May. Some people might think that one party election broadcast a year is enough; I am sure that most of our voters do. The real danger is that there will be conflict between the different kinds of party election and referendum broadcasts, but the argument can also go the other way. If, for example, all the people who appeared in a television broadcast during the AV referendum campaign in Wales were from the Labour party, people might contend that the broadcast in question was not a referendum broadcast but a party election broadcast on behalf of the Labour party. I very much hope that the Government will be able to clear up some of these problems. In the Communications Act 2003, section 333—which is halfway to 666—requires Ofcom to ensure that party political broadcasts, including those for referendum campaigns, are covered by UK regional ITV, Channel 4, Five, Classic FM, talkSPORT and Virgin 1215 services. Obviously, the BBC is separately obliged to cover the broadcasts under the rules set out in its charter and governed by the BBC Trust. I presume that no elements of that are going to be changed by the announcements that the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport made last week. The 2003 Act also requires S4C to cover election and referendum broadcasts, but places regulatory responsibility with the Assembly, not Ofcom. That brings me to another subset of the problem, which is that I am not sure whether there has been explicit consultation with the Assembly on the provision of party election and referendum broadcasts in the run-up to next May. I hope that the Minister will be able to place in the Library of the House all the correspondence that he has had with Ministers in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland on the combination of polls, on the elements that I have raised in relation to the new clause, and on the statutory instruments, which I understand have not yet been tabled, but which the Leader of the House wrote to some of us last week to say would be tabled very soon. I do not think that they have been seen yet, however. I would be grateful if the Minister could answer some of those questions, and lay in the Library of the House all his correspondence with Ministers in the devolved Administrations relating to these issues.