My Lords, I rise to speak in favour of my Amendment 54 B. There is a lot to commend in the amendment of the noble Lords, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts and Lord Blunkett. It is a serious attempt to establish a new accountability framework for the Electoral Commission. I am conscious that we had some debate in the previous group on the issue that I want to touch on. With the benefit of hindsight, it might have been part of that discussion, but I should like to make other points.
My amendment proposes inserting a new clause in the Bill that would require political parties to report on the amount of controlled spending incurred by third parties as targeted spending on their behalf. This is a relatively simple and straightforward amendment in an extremely complex area. It would increase transparency for voters and other campaigners by making it easier to identify in spending returns how much targeted spend has been incurred.
I tabled this amendment for two main reasons. The first reason is to highlight the importance of the report Regulating Election Finance, produced by the Committee on Standards in Public Life. There have been a number of comments and contributions on that report, and I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, is in his place. He is too modest to say it, but for me this was an exemplar of how to bring forward a balanced, informed and measured approach to the complex and fast-moving world of election finance.
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The report was published on 1 July last year, two days after the First Reading of the Elections Bill in the other place. The Government’s response, in September, was to say that they would look at the CSPL’s recommendations as part of any future reforms. I have to say that this was a huge missed opportunity, and we are consequently now having to table amendments that reflect the report’s conclusions and recommendations. I note in passing that, although the Government did not think there was an opportunity to incorporate that report into the Bill, they did find the opportunity, in Committee, to incorporate the changes to the voting system for mayors and police and crime commissioners, so I think it would have been possible to take on board what was in the report.
A crucial part of the report are the key principles the committee identified that should underpin our electoral process in a representative democracy and its financing. Those principles are extraordinarily strong, and worth repeating: fairness, open to all, transparency, confidence and trust, simplicity and clarity, accountability, and, finally, an independent regulator. If we test this Bill against those principles, I think we will find it in many ways wanting.
The second reason for tabling the amendment is that, as has already been said, it represents a better and fairer approach to third-party funding than that
proposed in Clause 27. It would bring transparency, and it is based on recommendation 21 of the committee’s report, which, as others have said, builds on the Electoral Commission’s own 2015 report and the report by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson. It is a simple and, I believe, practical measure to increase transparency, and I hope the Minister will support it. However, the better, and the right, thing to have done was for the Government, if they needed, to pause this Bill and take proper account of the full recommendations of the committee’s report.