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Political Parties and Elections Bill

I warmly welcome the Government's climbdown on this issue; it is a long-overdue return to an attempt to reach consensus. The Minister is completely right that it is not possible to reach perfect agreement. The Justice Secretary said last summer that he believed that there was a consensus about reintroducing a trigger. When I heard him say that, I looked at what I said in response to his statement on 16 June last year, to see whether I had been at all ambivalent about it. I found that I had said that it would be"““an atrocious abuse of power for the Government to force through restrictions on what parliamentary candidates can spend from money they have raised privately, while sitting MPs can spend ever-more taxpayers' money on promoting themselves””.—[Official Report, 16 June 2008; Vol. 477, c. 694.]" I can see that that was most equivocal, and did not make it at all clear that we had reservations. I must resolve to stop speaking in code and say exactly what I mean. The Government's decision is a welcome return to consensus. The proposal to return to triggering was universally condemned as a return to an unworkable, unwieldy rule that had long outlived its usefulness. It was an attempt to appease Labour Members who were feeling the hot breath of their electoral nemesis on their necks, convinced that their salvation lay in controlling the wall of money that seemed to be heading their way. I know that the hon. Member for Battersea (Martin Linton) has been a long-time campaigner on the subject and is deeply concerned about it. I can reassure him that the amount of support being given by the central party to the excellent candidate against whom he will be fighting the election, whenever it comes, is actually very small. He is right to be concerned about his electoral future, not because of the amount being spent but because there is an outstanding Conservative candidate in Battersea who has a brilliant, enthusiastic team that she has inspired locally. That is where his nemesis lies, and his salvation does not lie in provisions such as he seeks.