My Lords, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, will speak in this debate, as Clause 19 sort of addresses some of the issues that he raised in the previous discussion.
I am not as old as the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, suggested, although I have to confess that I have been around for a very long time. I have had responsibility for the statutory adoption of electoral law, and as a trade union official I have been acutely aware of codes of practice and procedures and their statutory basis, particularly on employment law—but I will not go too much into that. With these amendments I am trying to probe the provisions in Clause 19 which says that we will amend electoral law. Again, that makes the point that the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, made—we have a proliferation of electoral law and there should have been a much bigger piece of legislation to bring everything together so that people whose job it is to apply the law do not have to have this constant reference back to a whole series of requirements.
According to the Explanatory Notes, the clause says that
“the Electoral Commission may prepare guidance on election expenses for candidates. The amendments are to make it clear that the guidance can cover the application of the rules in relation to expenses incurred. This is to ensure that the codes of practice are sufficiently broad and fully serve the purpose of explaining the rules on spending.”
One issue is that we go from codes to guidance. What is what? It is not altogether clear.
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Clause 19(3)
“amends the procedures to bring into force various codes of practice giving guidance in respect of election expenses under PPERA and the RPA”
to ensure a consistent approach. I have no objection to that, and it says that it will be
“brought into force by a statutory instrument with no further parliamentary procedure.”
I am trying to elicit—it was raised in the previous debate—when such codes of practice are issued, because there is a requirement to regularly update them. Can we build in the provision that there will be a requirement to renew the codes? I suggested that they must be renewed at least every 10 years.
I stress that it is not only about the parliamentary procedures and the status of these codes and whether they are introduced by statutory instrument, which the Bill provides for, but the statutory requirement to consult on them. I agree that the Electoral Commission is the appropriate body to prepare them, and I accept that it has a requirement to consult. However, given the other elements of the Bill, there should be an obligation through the Secretary of State to ensure that there is proper consultation. Bearing in mind the previous discussion on notional expenditure and the fact that expenditure is not just limited to political parties, that consultation should not be limited to political parties either and there should be a broader responsibility. I would like to see that in statute.
The other thing that Amendment 28A seeks to do, which again is legislation that I think everyone in the House would have preferred to have had, is to address how we increase transparency on expenses. That is what we are trying to generate a debate on here in terms of the reports that have been referred to but also the Electoral Commission’s view on this. It comes
back to the necessity of ensuring that if we are trying to have a consistent approach here across all codes and all legislation, it is important to have a much greater focus on transparency, not just on reporting.
I hope that these comments will provoke the Minister to give some commitments, even if he is not prepared to accept the amendment—I have no doubt that he is not prepared to do that. We are trying to generate a discussion in which we may be able to get some more positive commitments from the Minister than we have so far had.