---

Political Parties and Elections Bill

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of the great problems that worry many of us about the Bill relates to schedule 19. Under that schedule, the homes of the literally hundreds and thousands of people who volunteer as agents or as candidates—successful or unsuccessful—for councils or Parliament, or of those who give a little bit of money to a party, can be raided on the orders of the Electoral Commission. A justice of the peace has to give a tick, of course, because there has to be reasonable cause. However, if the commission is to do its job, it has to investigate and it will not know whether there is reasonable cause until it has gone into everybody's home to take away any papers to do with party funding. I do not want to get into a dogfight with my right hon. Friend, because I know who would lose, but I put it to him that that provision is a worrying threat to the volunteering instinct of the British nation and to its democratic system.