My Lords, I thank the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, for this amendment and for the opportunity to discuss these issues on constituency limits. It is an issue that has featured in discussions not only today but at previous stages of the Bill’s passage. It is appropriate that we give consideration to this, which members of the commission might see as the outstanding item still to be addressed. The amendments are very similar those tabled by my noble friend Lord Tyler on Report. My noble friend’s amendment, which we discussed last week, sought to narrow the range of activities which would be considered controlled expenditure for the purposes of constituency limits. Although I made no commitment on the part of the Government to returning to this at Third Reading, I indicated at the close of the debates on Report that we would ensure that officials raised these matters with the Electoral Commission.
I understand the point about simplicity. We have sought in many respects to reduce the administrative burden, but it was clear from the discussions that took place subsequently with the Electoral Commission that there was no technical fix. My noble friend Lord Tyler was almost asking me the same again at the end of his contribution to the debate on this amendment. There was not a technical fix but there might be a policy fix. It is a policy fix that is inherent in the amendment of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, which would remove some categories of expenditure from being counted towards the constituency limit. For reasons that I will explain, the Government are unable to accept that there should be that policy switch.
First, I acknowledge that, in moving the amendment, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, accepted the principle of constituency limits and sought to address one of the points of concern I had raised with regard to the amendment of my noble friend Lord Tyler. He also sought to address the practical issues raised by the Electoral Commission. In the context of trying to relieve some of the administrative burden—going back to the earlier debate, just to remind your Lordships’ House—it is also important that the original proposals had a limit for the constituency spending and a smaller limit for the post-Dissolution period. There was a much smaller limit for campaigning activity that could be spent between the date of the Dissolution of Parliament and the election. We have taken away that interim threshold, again in an effort to help smaller organisations which may be campaigning in one constituency.
We believe that these amendments would require that any expenditure on election material addressed or delivered to households, and any unsolicited telephone calls made with a view to ascertaining households’
voting intentions, would be attributed to a particular constituency or constituencies for the purposes of the limits. The noble and right reverend Lord’s intention appears to be that only expenditure on such activities should count towards constituency limits. He goes further than my noble friend Lord Tyler did last week to suggest considering the costs associated with the distribution of materials otherwise in a constituency—which was the example I gave. I fully accept the example that I gave of activity in a shopping centre, which clearly would relate to the one activity.
I was somewhat bemused by the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, when she complained that there was a loophole. It appears to me that if you take away other activities which have to contribute towards controlled expenditure, the loophole gets bigger. She indicated that it could be a loophole to have a rally just over the constituency boundary. First, whether a rally against a hospital closure that promotes the electoral success of one particular candidate counts towards a constituency limit depends on whether it has a significant effect in that constituency. Albeit that it takes place over the boundary in a neighbouring constituency, it could still have a significant effect in the first constituency and would therefore come within in it. Of course, the loophole that would be created by this amendment would be the rally in the constituency itself—over the boundary it would not count at all. I believe that is a criticism: there are activities that would not therefore come within the definition of “controlled expenditure”.
Constituency limits for third parties mean that they cannot outspend and overwhelm candidates and political parties, who after all are the main actors in an election. The noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn, made an important point, reminding us that elections are about the names of candidates on the ballot paper. It is not right that a candidate or a party campaigning in a constituency could be targeted by a third party with greater means and a greater spending limit at its disposal.
Taking into account both the long and short campaigning period limits, the most a candidate at the last parliamentary general election could have spent was £55,000; that is for the entire period. I may have misunderstood what the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, said, but I thought she said at one point that parties could spend without limit. That is not the case. There is a limit on political parties. Indeed, in the course of the election period—the short campaign from the Dissolution of Parliament—it is roughly £12,000 to £13,000, depending on the number of electors, a figure that was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Cormack in one of our earlier debates.
However, a third party could choose to spend the entirety of its current spending limit in one small area, campaigning against that and other candidates or the parties they represent. That could be very substantial if one allows a range of activities not to be in any way brought into controlled expenditure. We have previously heard concerns that third parties, although an important part of the democratic process, can also be so closely aligned to a political party as to be effectively campaigning to promote that party. It is right that we take account of that. That is why the Bill introduces a number of provisions to give greater transparency to the activities
and expenditure of third parties. The limits on constituency spending are a key element of the entire package in the Bill. The controlled expenditure incurred on the entire range of activities, not just those few proposed by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, should be attributable to constituency limits.
Third parties are not merely in the business of distributing leaflets. They arrange and hold events, rallies and press conferences. They bus campaigners from area to area, delivering large groups of people to distribute those leaflets, or to take part in rallies or other events. Not to include these activities would mean that third parties could still continue to hold local media events on a weekly, or even daily, basis in the run-up to an election without any of that expenditure being brought within controlled limits. It would mean a third party could hold a rally on the eve of an election, secure in the knowledge that it need not account for the cost other than on a nationwide basis. It would mean that a third party could bus hundreds of campaigners into marginal constituencies and overwhelm the work of the candidates in that constituency.
These are all significant activities, and it is right that third parties should be required to account for them on a constituency basis. Narrowing the scope of constituency limits would address only half the problem. On that basis, recognising that in an election the actors are the candidates themselves, it was unfair, particularly in the period from the Dissolution of Parliament until the election, that they were limited to a relatively small sum of money—£12,000 or £13,000—while if you got two third-party groups in the same constituency, they could spend up to £19,750. We do not think that it is reasonable that a loophole should be created.