I have a separate amendment in this group. We all welcome the way in which my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire and my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness have responded to the request for an increase in the registration thresholds. This was a key recommendation of the commission headed by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and it certainly deserved to be listened to.
In this last-minute change to the Government’s position, however, there is one new outstanding problem. The interaction between the national thresholds for registration and the constituency limits in the Bill simply do not hold together. As we will discuss in the next group, I believe very strongly that the constituency limits are a very important part of this Bill. Indeed, I am sure Members on all sides of your Lordships’ House are aware that if we did send back to the other place a Bill that did not deal with this point, many people there would think that we were not doing our duty.
For the constituency limits to be effective, those who spend at a constituency level will surely need to make an expenses return about what they are spending. The rules in the 2000 Act and in the Bill rightly also ask where the money is coming from. There is, however,
a problem. As the Bill will stand in the light of these new government amendments, someone could be spending £9,750 in a constituency, or indeed could spend £19,500 across two English constituencies, yet would not have to register. The registration limit is now raised to £20,000, and therefore that spending and its sources would be totally opaque. It would not be transparent even though £9,750 could have a significant impact on the constituency result.
In my own amendments on thresholds in Committee, I suggested that this problem could be dealt with by stipulating that the threshold should be at a particular level which would take that into account. The Government have chosen £20,000, and that is fine, except that all the spending could be concentrated in one target marginal constituency. A group could spend a significant sum—I am suggesting £5,000 in my amendment—all in one place. Surely in those circumstances it should have to register.
The Government’s answer has been that somebody who spends more than £9,750 in one constituency will be committing an offence under their proposals. If that someone does not have to register, because he is below the new registration threshold, how can anyone know that he is committing that offence? I cannot think—and I know a little bit about these things—of any other part of electoral law in which someone who is subject to a spending limit is yet not required to produce any paperwork on what he is spending. Introducing that concept now would make for a completely absurd anomaly.