My Lords, first, I endorse the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, about the work of what by way of shorthand we call the Harries commission. The noble and right reverend Lord and his colleagues have done both the charity sector and this House an enormous service.
As we have emphasised, we have two problems about the Bill’s brand-new constituency limits, which obviously apply to the wider issues covered by the Bill, which might in theory have an effect in one or more constituencies. The major problem has already been articulated: it is not their intention or purpose, in the words of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, but their workability. Charities and campaigners simply do not organise or do their accounts or even think in constituency terms. They focus on the proposed path of the HS2, the flight paths around Heathrow, the ground under where fracking will take place, the location of badger sets or the location of a polluting factory. That is the focus for their work.
For them, therefore, a requirement to record and account for their staff time and expenditure on a whole new geographical basis—indeed, on boundaries which are probably unknown to their accounts department—will be highly problematic. It will add enormous bureaucracy when, as we have said before, the Government are elsewhere trying to reduce red tape. Accounting for expenditure on the basis that it might have an effect on a constituency would require those charities and other groups to develop a whole new financial accounting system, a demand which surely cannot be achieved even by the new and welcome date of September.
Our second concern is also one that has already been mentioned. It is the worry of the Electoral Commission about whether the new constituency limits are enforceable in the timescale of an election. There is nothing worse than having a rule or a law that is unenforceable, because it undermines the rest of the law. The Electoral Commission considers that Amendment 11 would at least reduce its enforceability worries, although it still fears that it would often be difficult to get the information and evidence for any breach of constituency-level spending and deal with it before polling day. Amendment 11, which, as we have heard, limits the new reporting requirements to telephone calls, literature to households and physical distribution in a defined area, seems to us eminently sensible. That sort of spending is preplanned and easy to measure. As the Electoral Commission says in supporting the amendment,
“We see benefits in defining the scope of activity covered by the constituency controls more narrowly than in Part 2 of the Bill generally”.
Given the widespread support across the House for the amendment, I think that the Government would be well advised either to heed the wise words of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and accept the amendment or, at the very least, to undertake not to implement
their new constituency rules until after the 2015 election. That would give charities time to think about whether it is possible to do their accounting in that way, and it would give the Electoral Commission the opportunity to sort out those demands on enforceability. I think that the former course is better—to accept the amendment. We certainly support it.
4.15 pm