My Lords, when at these debates, I have always felt that not enough attention is paid to the real danger of our fragile system of controlling election expenditure beginning to break down altogether. I am strongly in favour of charities having the right to campaign and being free to speak out about what they believe—that is absolutely right—and a huge contribution is made to us as a society in that way. Frankly, however, I am frightened that here, on the edge of the Third Reading of the Bill, we have observed and commented upon two huge anomalies that are still with us and still in the Bill, which open the door to the misuse of some aspects of the Bill in a way that would make the holding of that line against the misuse of public and private expenditure very difficult to hold.
Throughout my whole political life I have been very conscious, like the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, of the importance of the restrictions on the amount of money that passes into the British political system and what a huge benefit that has been to us in terms of retaining a democracy that is genuinely a democracy of the right of every individual to vote. Some of my colleagues in this House will know that I have been very much affected by the recent history of the United States, having been for 10 years an elective politics professor at Harvard, between 1986 and 1996. I will quickly say what so frightens me.
In 2010, the American Supreme Court decided to lift all restrictions on what amounts of money could be given by either corporations or trade unions directly to campaigns at the federal level. One of the outcomes of that—a decision that was made, let the House not forget, in 2010—was that in 2012 no less than $6 billion was poured into federal elections in the United States in a one-year electoral cycle. That was not enough. The sweeping away of all those restrictions was based upon the constitutional right of free speech, in my view distorted in a very troubling way. Today, the Supreme Court of 2014 has on its agenda yet another proposal, McCutcheon v Federal Election Commission, which would enable any individual, without restriction, to contribute any amount he or she wishes to the election of an individual named federal candidate—in other words, it is back to Eatanswill and the buying of politicians.
The United States is a great and very open democracy, but we are rapidly seeing the gradual distortion of its democracy by huge expenditure of money for other purposes than simply a desire to register a particular campaigning goal. I fully take the point that every step that can be taken has been taken to avoid that in the Bill. I am dubious about the proposal of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, to increase substantially the limit. However, I appreciate that the original limit was almost certainly too drastically cut. There is a median way there.
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I will not detain the House for very long, but two things that have been raised in this debate trouble me very much. One is the example given by my noble friend with regard to the possibility of piling together expenditure in one or a small number of constituencies. The wording of the Bill adequately defends against that real temptation, which could have a major effect in the case of particular named persons that others would like to see taken away from Parliament. The second danger was reflected in the very wise remarks of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, when he gave us the example of a number of individuals who met for dinner together who decided each to set up their own particular little group and that that little group would then go for a particular objective. There would be nothing to link the two in such a way that they would count as a coalition group under the legislation before us.
I do not wish to detain the House at this late hour, but those anomalies are still only too patently with us. They open an opportunity for serious misuse of the Bill and of the electoral expenditure system. Given what we as a House and the other place have been through as regards other expenses, it is vital that we make sure that those anomalies are dealt with, that the Government consider what to do about them, and that before this legislation passes into history, serious thought is given to how the Electoral Commission in the non-charity field can make moves to try to look into any questions of this kind.
I will conclude with a rather dramatic fact. In the United States a special element in the American tax system enables non-party, non-governmental organisations to contribute to electoral expenditure on the basis of being exactly what we have been talking about—non-party, non-governmental organisations. That has seen expenditure of that source rise from $10 million in 1988 to $470 million last year, and rising. It has become the most significant single source of expenditure in elections on candidates by non-partisan, non-governmental organisations. We should be warned.