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Political Parties and Elections Bill

I make one point: I wish we had fixed-term Parliaments because I believe it would solve many of these problems. I have been saying this since the 1980s, when I was trying unsuccessfully to persuade the Government of that day that we should consider fixed-term Parliaments. I still have great problems with the Government’s position as it is in the Bill. I am still not happy that it is the answer to the question. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, put the question of when does an election start; I have said for years and years, of course, that it starts the day after a general election. A question more often put was, "When does the candidate start to promote himself or herself as a candidate and how does that fit into election expenses?" That, for me, has always been the big question. I am not certain that what we have—I will read it again after what the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said—is the answer to that question. After looking at the amendment, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Henley, that it would create an enormous amount of bureaucracy and that is not a satisfactory solution. This is another of those dilemmas. The Electoral Commission came up some time ago with the idea of having election expenses starting four months before an election, but dropped it because it did not know what four months meant in terms of an election. That proposal was dropped and the solutions that we came up with in the 2000 Act are a part of the problem that we are facing now. Possibly because of my experience, I am one of the people who felt that the triggering mechanism that we had before 2000 worked quite well. It was a shame that the 2000 Act stopped that. Clearly, once one starts to promote a candidate, one has started to promote expenditure. I could see nothing simpler and easier than that, so I do not understand why the Commons was so resistant to the proposals to reintroduce the triggering mechanism. It is with regret that I have to say to my noble friend that I still have a problem with the Bill. It needs a lot more thought and discussion, and I should like a lot more explanation. I said on Second Reading that I hoped that somebody would write it all out for me in words of one syllable so that I could look at each stage to see what it meant. I am not at all sure that we have the answer at the moment. We are stuck with what we have in front of us for perhaps the next general election, but what will happen after that? We do not have the answers to that. I am still not sure, and before we reach Report I will have to do a lot more thinking and work on the Bill, which I most certainly will do.