My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. I express particular appreciation of the welcome that has been given to the very significant increase in the registration thresholds that the Government have brought forward and to the uplift in the spending limit in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. To follow on from my noble friend Lady Williams, it is certainly useful to remind ourselves, as she also did very eloquently in Committee, of the core purpose of the Bill, which is
to ensure that our electoral and democratic system is not hijacked by people who can spend large amounts of money without proper accountability, and that there is proper transparency. It is important that we keep those important points in our minds when we consider the different measures.
Perhaps that is consistent with the point made by my noble friend Lord Tyler, which I addressed in my opening remarks, on not wanting a particular constituency to be overwhelmed. He proposed a threshold of £5,000 and said that he did not wish to find a situation where an organisation could come rattling into a constituency with one week to go, spend £19,999, get away with it and not be accountable for that. It is important that the Representation of the People Act might have a certain impact on that kind of expenditure, if it offended that Act; under the Bill that expenditure is increased from £500 to £700. I ask my noble friend to reflect on that, although I know that he does not overlook it as he knows full well about it.
But, more importantly, there is not that kind of loophole. My noble friend seems to have overlooked—and I did try to draw his attention to it in my opening remarks —that it will be an offence under the Bill to spend more that £9,750 in a constituency, even where the RPA does not apply. One of the consequences of a situation where we are amending another piece of legislation is that it is not always self-evident. Amendment 46 says:
“In subsection (3), for paragraph (a) (but not the “and” after it) substitute … (ii) any controlled expenditure is incurred in a particular parliamentary constituency by or on behalf of a third party in excess of the limit mentioned in subsection (5ZA)”.
I think that the purpose of that is in fact to make a registration requirement if the constituency limit of £9,750 is reached, or at least that is what I am reliably advised and I know that it is certainly the intent that there should be a registration of the maximum for each constituency to make more effective the criminal sanction that will follow if a party or third party spends in excess of £9,750. His example of spending £19,000 could not actually happen under the Bill, in line with the proposed amendment.