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Political Parties and Elections Bill

This group of amendments attempts to set out an alternative to the proposals in the Bill, which we consider to be rather unworkable and particularly bad legislation as we are sure that they will apply only to this Parliament. Had they been introduced previously, they would have applied to something like only two of the past 12 Parliaments. The Bill proposes to control expenditure in a way that I think all parties accept needs to be done but to do so purely in the 55-month period after a Parliament has begun. It would seem to be a much more sensible system, and one that should attract consensus, if there needed to be limits in every year and not just in the last few months of the occasional Parliament, which will go the full five years. I will briefly outline the scheme’s basis. All registered parties will be subject to the spending controls. In particular, spending controls will then apply to the whole of a Westminster cycle. The maximum limit for a full cycle will comprise a five-year running-costs figure and a general election premium recognising that parties will spend additional sums when there is one. In calculating the limit for Parliaments that run for less than the permitted maximum of 61 months, the running-costs figure will be adjusted by the relevant fraction of 61 months depending upon the actual life of the Parliament. The general election premium will then be added back to calculate the enforceable limit. This is much more in line with the scheme discussed in the Hayden Phillips process than is currently in the Bill. A single overall limit will apply to the expenditure of each party, including all its constituent organisations whether national, regional, local or other. The spending controls will cover all of the party’s spending except certain defined categories. A number of parties will have difficulty with a number of issues if spending is capped on, for example, paying the party employees’ existing pension fund deficits, which is a problem for a number of parties; or interest on debt or the repayment of debt; or legal expenses, where it would be difficult to say that they should be subject to a spending limit when you do not know what legal battles you may have to fight; and so on. Expenditure which would be classified as capital expenditure under accounting standards would be depreciated as usual in the party accounts, in accordance with the accounting policies, with an appropriate asset life. Only the depreciation figure would count towards the limit. We suggest in the amendments that the appropriate limit would be £150 million for the full term of the Parliament, including a general election premium of £20 million. These limits should apply to all parties that put forward candidates in at least 90 per cent of the constituencies at the general election at the end of the cycle, and should fall pro rata on parties—here we are thinking particularly of the nationalist parties, but it would apply to all parties on a pro-rata basis, in steps of 10 per cent for parties fielding fewer than 90 per cent, with a floor of 10 per cent of the total limit. For the agents, who need to know where they stand on these things, the existing controls on candidate spending under the Representation of the People Act will continue but will be tightened. My noble friend Lord Tyler will refer to this, but we must tighten those expenditure regulations during the course of the campaign itself so that, for example, direct mail and apportionment of the cost of phone bank activity targeted at a particular constituency are brought within the reportable limits. Sir Hayden Phillips suggested in his report that we must do more to curb campaign spending: ""We should limit it through generally accepted, easily understood, and enforceable rules"." I suggest that the proposal in the Bill does not meet that test. The alternative proposal is rather more easily understood and enforceable, as it will apply over the whole length of the Parliament. Those of us who have perhaps trained as party organisers or agents in the past will know that one of the most frequent election law questions put to us is, "When does the election campaign begin?". Sometimes that is a campaigning question and sometimes it is an expenditure control question, but my answer is always the same: the election campaign begins the day after the last one has ended. I suggest that that is actually true. We are now in a period of continuous campaigning. Long gone are the days when things went quiet for political parties, perhaps for several years, after the general election and stepped up immediately before it. Now, all political parties are engaged in activity throughout the year and throughout a Parliament. Sir Hayden Phillips forcefully argued that we need a system throughout the entire Parliament. He said that this would, ""make compliance more straightforward. In the current situation, parties must limit their spending over a period beginning 365 days before the general election, but do not know the date of the election until a few weeks beforehand. This oddity gives rise to great complexity in the regulations and distorts patterns of party expenditure"." I know from my own experience what a nonsense this is. In 2000 I argued that it was nonsense to say you would limit expenditure only for 12 months before the general election. If we in this place and another place accepted the sensible proposal that there be fixed-term Parliaments, it would be viable to say that expenditure should be controlled for the 12 months before polling day. But having to run a rolling operation and not knowing when polling day is, and to be limited in your expenditure knowing that polling day might be 12, 24 or 36 months away, is a nonsense in the present legislation. If the current proposals in the Bill are passed and we have controls only after the 55th month of the Parliament, I suggest that in a very short period of time we will recognise again that that is nonsense. The amendments allow for variation of spending limits, which is appropriate and sensible, and we can review them in due course through the affirmative procedure. It is also important to recognise that this ideally is what we should have done immediately after the previous general election campaign. We have to have arrangements to cover transitional arrangements, and they are set out in Amendment 144. The amendment provides that for the period between the Bill receiving Royal Assent and polling day in the general election—which, of course, will happen by May next year—parties can spend no more than 75 per cent of the sum specified in the amendment of the national spending limit—that is, 75 per cent of £20 million. That would be a much more workable and practical proposition than is currently set out in the Bill. I beg to move.