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Political Parties and Elections Bill

I am very glad to welcome the demise of clause 11, as it did not produce the answers, which many hon. Members were looking for, to a number of problems. Basically, there are two problems, although they are different. One is the Lord Ashcroft problem, which the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) mentioned. It arises when money is thrown at constituencies from a centrally raised fund. The second problem is what might be called the Zac Goldsmith problem, which is where a very wealthy candidate spends money on promoting himself. These two separate problems cannot be solved using the same provision. All through this debate, we have been dogged by the problem of trying to achieve two different things with one suggested mechanism. The mechanism now being proposed in place of triggering is certainly better than triggering, which never really worked. It simply resulted in a lot of angry letters being exchanged between agents, with one accusing another of having started election expenses and then getting a letter back—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) says that it did work. It worked in one sense, in that it represented a kind of background threat, but people who were brazen just got away with it anyway. The triggering mechanism also led to a number of straightforward evasions, such as calling oneself a prospective parliamentary candidate, a parliamentary spokesperson or the editor of the newsletter—[Hon. Members: ““Who would do that?””] I have no idea who would do that kind of thing, but those were all well-known evasions. The process became a laughing stock. The attempt to bring it back was an attempt to solve both the problems that I have just mentioned but, in the end, it was not going to work. A number of meetings took place between experts and the Electoral Commission, and the commission tried to put forward draft guidance, but it became very clear that, as a practical matter, this was not going to work. We have now come back to the suggestion, which I think was originally made by the hon. Member for Battersea (Martin Linton), of having a fixed date from which there would be a period of pre-election control on candidates' spending, and having a second period of controlled candidates' spending following the dissolution of Parliament. That is workable. I do not think that it causes the problem that triggering has—namely, that it cannot be made to work in practice—but it has serious flaws that will have to be thought about as the Bill goes through the House of Lords.