My Lords, first, I thank the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, for welcoming the amendments made by the Government. He was characteristically generous about that and he gave quite a long list. Secondly, I thank my noble friends for what they have done, despite being incapacitated for a period, in bringing amendments of the scope that there has been in this case. Certainly, I, as a supporter of the Government, have been surprised by the extent to which the Government have agreed to the amendments originally put down.
I take the point made by my noble friend Lord Cormack that the Government were deficient in the way in which they failed to do pre-legislative scrutiny. One has to agree that post that situation, with the pause and with the extent of the amendments that the Government have put down in the past few days, they have responded generously to the points fairly made by Members on all sides of the House.
In his short remarks, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, mentioned Amendment 34 in particular. He said that, for instance, if a new Bill came before Parliament during the regulatory period from September 2014 to the general election in 2015, it would be a big issue in any particular constituency and that therefore the Bill would inhibit discussion of the new town in that constituency, which would be wrong.
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The point is really not that. Obviously there would be a huge outcry in any constituency if a new town was proposed; there is no doubt about it. Vigorous discussion would take place between the parliamentary candidates during the regulated period and with outside bodies that may be set up to campaign on this issue. Clearly, that would happen. The question is to what extent they would be allowed to finance a campaign about a new town by comparison with what the local political parties could spend in that constituency. Under the Bill they are allowed to spend, in round figures, more or less £10,000 on a campaign over a new town in a constituency during the regulated period. That is roughly the amount.
Frankly, any local party that can raise £10,000 to fight in a local constituency is doing well. I do not think that I ever got as far as that in my constituency of Orpington; it is a lot of money. Local parties are not very affluent these days and do not have many people in them. Many are collapsing from inside. They have few members and great difficulty in raising money. Therefore, £10,000 is a lot of money to inject into a constituency. If it was only that constituency and nowhere else in the country that party members were campaigning, they could inject £300,000.
We are not talking about any restriction on discussion of an issue that is before Parliament in the regulated period; it will be discussed. We are talking about the balance between what a campaign could spend on promoting a particular interest—whether it is for or against the new town—and what the local political candidates could spend. The Bill is about a balance between what local parties can spend, in a constituency and generally, and what lobbying interest groups of this kind can spend—whether they are charities, trade unions or whatever.
I am a member of the Electoral Commission, but I speak for myself on this occasion. The commission is against the amendment in the name of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries. It said clearly in its briefing to the House before Committee that more proportionate thresholds and spending limits would reduce the need for exemptions of the kind for which he is calling. In effect, the thresholds for regulation—which, I accept, as I said in previous debates on the Bill, were too low—and the spending limits, have been raised by the Government: for example, to £10,000 and to £20,000
for the registration threshold. That gives room for people to campaign on these issues, but not to swamp local political parties, as they are swamped in America, where you get super-PACs swamping the official Republican and Democratic candidates. That is what this Bill is about—a balance between what an interest group can do in a constituency, and what the political parties that are fighting and standing in a general election can do. The Government’s sensible lifting of these limits to meet the fair and correct opposition to the lower limits —which were too low—has done this. The Government’s balance is right.
There is a further point. The amendments to which the noble Lord referred at some length form a package; as he acknowledged several times during our debates, these things are linked. If you make one concession, it has an effect somewhere else. I hope that those who are concerned about the effect of the Bill will realise that this is a complete package, and that by raising the thresholds, the Government have dealt with the points that noble Lords made and therefore that the exemptions they seek are unnecessary. While acknowledging the understandable opposition, in particular of Members on the Cross Benches and in the Labour Party, I hope that they will see that this is a genuine attempt to reach consensus on how elections are conducted in this country. This is now a well balanced set of proposals. Therefore, any further attempt to carry on and unpick them would be disastrous for elections in this country.