My Lords, my name is also on the two amendments in this group. I start by very briefly saying that, on some aspects of the Bill, the Government have clearly listened and responded positively, for which we are all grateful. That makes it harder for me to say, as I stand up yet again to carp and complain, that I hope that they will not dismiss the words that I have just used. The reality is that the Government are determined to have Clause 29, which I suspect—even if this modest amendment is accepted by the House today—will have little value except to serve as a warning to future Governments tempted to make constitutional changes without first thinking very carefully about them and the consequences.
The constituency limits introduced in the Bill, which, as we all know, reduce the spending limit to £9,750 in the year of an election, do not do that for candidates or political parties but only for non-party campaigners. We were told at the outset that Clause 29 is necessary to reduce the perception of undue influence. That is curious, because there is no evidence—I have not heard any in the course of any of the lengthy debates—to support a claim that there is any such public perception or that the current combination of PPERA and the Representation of the People Act has been in any way ineffective in relation to non-party campaigning so far. There is no evidence that non-party campaigners are currently exploiting the existing law by focusing their spending on a particular constituency. Indeed, no data are presently available on third-party spending by constituencies.
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I appreciate that the Government say, “Ah, well, but this might happen”, and we have heard chilling predictions based on what has happened elsewhere, but the result is a piece of legislation which is a stab in the dark to try to deal with a theoretical loophole. However, the loophole is going to remain wide open because after the Bill is passed there will be no restriction on either candidates or political parties, for which the situation will remain as before. What is to stop a campaign registering as a political party, putting up a couple of candidates and spending the whole of its national limit in one constituency? The answer in the Bill is: nothing.
As the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, said, unlike candidates and political parties, most non-party campaigns are not organised on a constituency basis, so the administrative impact on them will be huge. It will require new record-keeping and accounting systems, which may well cut across their existing ones. It will certainly deter many of those with limited resources, which most small campaigns have, from speaking up at election time and campaigning, which should be their right.
This will entail serious headaches of apportionment for those involved in cross-constituency campaigns, but nothing like as great as the headaches that the Electoral Commission will suffer before it has to provide
guidance for a whole range of possible aspects of constituency campaigning instead of the rightly limited and targeted ones set out in the amendment. What will it say of a rally aimed at a particular constituency but held in the park over the boundary in the next-door one, in the safe seat, where no further spending is intended? What guidance will it give about the meeting that draws people from a number of constituencies; for example, in a campaign to save a local school or hospital with a catchment area that crosses boundaries? What will it advise about the travelling battle bus, with its posters, going back and forth across constituency boundaries? The answer to all those questions at the end of all our debates is: who knows?
What the campaigners make of the Bill, with its disproportionate administrative burden for them and the petty restrictions it imposes, is nothing to what the Electoral Commission will have to try to deal with at election time: the burden of countless allegations from opposing campaigns in constituencies, which the Electoral Commission itself says are likely to be unresolvable,
“within the timescale of an election”.
Apparently, no reassurance or adequate provision is anticipated to enable it to carry out the necessary investigations of those complaints even after polling has taken place.
None of this touches on the ease with which some of the proposed restrictions could be bypassed. I have not yet put my mind to it but I am sure that others will. As I say, what of the rally targeted at the marginal constituency which takes place in the park within the neighbouring safe constituency’s boundaries where no other spending is proposed? Instead of requiring the Electoral Commission, which faces the nightmare task of preparing guidance once this Bill passes, to consider and cover all these possibilities, surely it makes more sense to concentrate the constituency limits on the direct approach—the leaflets, telephone calls and “push-polling”, about which we heard, some of us for the first time, from the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, earlier—aimed at the constituents in that seat. That is what this amendment does.
As the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, said, the Electoral Commission supports this amendment; indeed, he read out its words. It has played a part in approving the drafting. I hope that the Government will support it and, if a vote becomes necessary, that the House will.