My Lords, I recognise the strength of feeling with which my noble friend Lord Tyler moved his amendment; indeed, it is one to which he has spoken in the past, and one which he, I and—at some stage—my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire have discussed. We debated this issue last week when the Government tabled, and the House accepted, amendments which raised the third-party registration thresholds to £20,000 for England and £10,000 for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
An amendment providing for a new “third” registration threshold of £9,750 was also tabled and accepted. If that was not made clear, I apologise. The point has been picked up by the Electoral Commission. Perhaps I may give some clarity. This third threshold has been introduced to provide alignment with the constituency limits. It ensures that a third party, whether or not it is already registered with the Electoral Commission, will have committed an offence if it spends more than £9,750 in a constituency. In other words, if a third party is already registered, it will be subject to the constituency limit, exceeding which will be an offence. If it is not registered and exceeds the constituency registration threshold, it will also have committed an offence.
I hope noble Lords will recognise that this third registration threshold has not been introduced with the same purpose in mind as that which applies to the other registration thresholds. It has not been introduced to bring third parties into the regulatory regime. Instead, its principal purpose is to ensure that the offence of exceeding the constituency limit operates as intended. For this reason, the Government do not believe that there is a need for a registration threshold lower than the constituency limit.
I hear what my noble friend says about the need for clarity, and I hope that these words have brought greater clarity. I can also tell your Lordships that the Electoral Commission will make very clear in its guidance the operation of the various registration thresholds so that campaigners are left in no doubt about their responsibilities. I hope that the fears which my noble friend expressed on Report, that it would not be possible to keep account of what a third party was spending in a constituency, are resolved by this.
Moreover, the Government have spent a significant amount of time listening to the concerns of campaigners. Perhaps I should address my noble friend’s suggestion of a £5,000 limit. He said that £9,750 is a significant amount. We took seriously the representations made by campaigners, organisations, the commission chaired by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, and other Members of your Lordships’ House. One of the largest criticisms the Bill received, which was made abundantly clear to us, related to the registration thresholds. They were originally set at £5,000 and £2,000 in the Bill but the Government tabled an amendment last week to raise these to £20,000 and £10,000. This major concession was made with the intention of reassuring campaigners that the Bill would not seek to promote the principle of transparency by imposing onerous and unnecessary burdens on third parties. It was a direct response to the debates in and outside this House and I thank again all those who contributed to them. The increased thresholds
mean that small campaigners need not worry that they will be unduly burdened by the Bill’s reporting requirements. The thresholds have been set at a level such that those campaigners who spend only small amounts of money will effectively be excluded from the regime.
I totally accept that this is a judgment call. I hear what my noble friend says about spending up to £9,750 but I also think it was my noble friend himself who made the point in our first Committee sitting that greater transparency goes hand in hand with a greater administrative burden and regulation. We have sought to try to strike the right balance. With regard to constituency spending, we believed that the lower threshold of £5,000 could risk capturing exactly those small local campaigners who have been so clear regarding their concerns about the impact that the Bill would have on them. It was not our intention to do so, and we certainly do not want to unpick some of the important work—