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Political Parties and Elections Bill

There was a moment of considerable concern in my mind because I was anxious that we should not proceed to look at Amendment 86, which would be a retrograde step. However, I am quite happy with Amendment 85. The government amendments are helpful and will result in a relaxation of the process, not in the sense of making life easy but by avoiding unnecessary burden. That should be an important subtext of all our purposes in considering the Bill in Committee. I am delighted to hear that the noble Lord, Lord Henley, has decided not to move the amendments to which he referred because it would have been an unfortunate step to take. There was quite a lot of discussion at an earlier stage about the thresholds for this purpose. I think we have got it about right. Clearly it will have to be reviewed over the years because life moves on. Even now, when we have nil inflation, we assume that it will eventually return. As we understand it, the mechanism is there for that. If it is not, it can be dealt with by secondary legislation. In the mean time, we welcome the amendments and hope that we will make some progress together, as a Committee, in this direction.