My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones for the amendments he has brought forward with a great deal more expertise about this new dimension of campaigning than I have. I first learned about this new dimension of campaigning when I looked into post-Soviet Russian politics and discovered the new term “political technologies”, used by campaigners working for Putin to mould public opinion and to try to interfere in other countries, using the newly available digital media to help their efforts.
Of course, this also costs money. As we have seen in the United States, the use of digital media, data mining and negative campaigning—as has already been mentioned
—is one way in which, unfortunately, American politics is being debased. We do not want that to happen in Britain.
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There are those close to this Government who are good political technologists and we have seen some of their work already. They also have access to a great deal more money than any other political parties, and if we want to hold future elections on anything like a level playing field, we need some tight rules to cope with this rapidly changing area. Part 6 at present starts down that road but, as we have heard, it is weak and has not taken account of recommendations from the CSPL and the Electoral Commission. I very much hope that the Minister will take back that it needs to be strengthened.
We all recognise that we are now up against a very tight deadline for this Bill in this Session. I have said on a number of occasions since the Bill first reached this House that it is better to get it right than to rush it through. If it has to be held over or has to start again, it is better to do that than to leave a deeply unsatisfying Bill with opposition parties feeling that they have been misled and cheated, with the rules biased in a number of ways against them.
I say to the Minister: please take this back as a matter of urgency. This is an area which, as we all know, contains a number of new threats to democracy from the way in which our younger generation, in particular, now live online, and we need to have some strong safeguards.