My Lords, I thank the Minister for his thorough response to this debate.
On the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Collins around increasing the threshold, I have a slight concern that, rather than necessarily increasing the threshold, we will be saying, “Other people can also pay for things—it’s not just the agent.” Anybody who has been involved with an election and seen a poor agent trying to put the expenses together will know that if people are allowed to just start spending, it can get extremely complicated and sometimes quite worrying, because the agent needs really good control over the money during an election. I just put that into the debate. If this threshold could be reviewed as part of an ongoing review, that would be very a practical and helpful thing that we could all agree on.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, for preferring my Amendment 25 to that of the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, even though the Minister did not—it is nice to know that somebody felt I was going in the right direction. On the Minister’s response on the CSPL, I was trying to find out about the recommendations that are not included in the Bill—I am aware that some are in it. The Minister said that all the recommendations would be looked at; this House should have an idea of how the Government are taking this forward, whether these things may come forward as SIs in the future, and how they would be implemented.
I was also pleased to hear the Minister say that he believed that publication of new guidance should be both timely and part of the locked-in process of any implementation and that he wants to see the guidance produced as quickly as possible. I thank him very much for his response and beg leave to withdraw the amendment.