My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, in his amendments. I am acting as a kind of understudy for my noble friend Lord Blunkett, but I cannot say that what I shall say would be his lines, but in his absence, at least there is a Labour Back-Bencher speaking in favour of the amendments.
I should perhaps first declare my interest as vice-chair of Compass, which is a left-of-centre campaigning organisation that has been promoting a progressive alliance for some years, and as honorary president of the Child Poverty Action Group. I worked for CPAG for many years and, during that time, worked on trying to get child poverty raised as an issue in many general elections.
The question of the 365-day limit was raised in the Public Bill Committee: why is it so long? I think the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, made a strong case for it being too long. When questioned, the Minister in the Commons had three arguments. The first was that we all have a fairly good idea of when an election will be. Do we? There is already speculation that there could be an election next year. Indeed, those who have been lobbying about the Bill, sometimes groups in combination, could find that they are in the regulated period already. We simply do not know, now that we are outside fixed-term Parliaments. A prudent organisation would need to start taking steps very soon not to get caught out.
Secondly, the Minister argued that, in effect, we are all in it together: we all have the same amount of information, so it does not matter. I will not be affected by this legislation, but the kind of organisation that I am associated with could well be.
Thirdly, and most worryingly, the Minister said:
“People will need to take that into account when they are campaigning politically.”—[Official Report, Commons, Elections Bill Committee, 26/10/21; col. 314.]
Well, exactly. That is the problem: what is often called the chilling effect will take effect. If organisations involved in campaigning take account politically, that could stop them campaigning for large periods of the electoral cycle. That cannot be right. The noble Lord made helpful distinctions. Looking back, when I was at CPAG, there would have been big periods when we could not try to make child poverty an issue because we would have been caught by this legislation.
Perhaps the Minister will have stronger arguments for why 365 days is appropriate, but certainly the arguments put in the Commons were either weak or worrying. I am not clear why we need any retrospective regulated period. Why can it not just start when the election is called? However, in the spirit of compromise, I am happy to support one or other of these amendments and am very interested to hear what the Minister has to say about them.