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Political Parties and Elections Bill

I am grateful for the support from the two noble Lords who have spoken. My noble friend Lady Gould asked what an "elected officer" means. Schedule 7 to the 2000 Act defines a holder of relevant elective office as either: "(a) member of the House of Commons; (b) member of the European Parliament elected in the United Kingdom; (c) member of the Scottish Parliament; (d) member of the National Assembly for Wales; (e) member of the Northern Ireland Assembly; (f) member of— (i) any local authority in any part of the United Kingdom, including the Common Council of the City of London but excluding a parish or community council, or (ii) the Greater London Assembly; or (g) Mayor of London or elected mayor". Therefore, it is a wide definition of all those elected under our systems. How to make people aware of the existence of the elective office is a more difficult question, but I think that elected politicians—certainly at the other end of this Palace—will know about it. The idea is that there should be some Electoral Commission guidance on this but it is up to individual officeholders to decide whether they want to appoint one. We do not propose to encourage the appointment; it is absolutely up to elected members. This proposal is intended to help those members rather than be something that we impose on them in any sense. The noble Lord asked me about legal requirements. As I have already said, they remain the same, so there is no policy intention that every officerholder should have one—indeed, we do not expect everyone to have one. The noble Lord, Lord Bates, in his turn, questioned the need for an additional compliance officer. The need is as expressed in debate in another place, where a number of Back-Benchers are at some stage faced with quite complicated double reporting. They are universally very busy looking after their constituents’ interests. During the debate, the Government listened to representations about how it might be helpful to be able to appoint such an officer to an individual member to help them with this difficult but important task. That is the reason for it. It seemed to find general support then and I am glad that it does here today.