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Political Parties and Elections Bill

I do not in any way want to imply a degree of conspiracy between the noble Baroness, Lady Gould of Potternewton, and myself, but I indicated earlier in Grand Committee that I am married to the administrator of the fellowship of retired Conservative agents, so I have access to a fair amount of practical, professional advice. I should say that the advice that I am about to read into our proceedings does not come from my wife, but from another, who is a retired agent. He said: ""The proposal to pre-candidacy election expenses for certain elections gives me more concern. The whole idea of permitted expenditure for a person before they are declared, let alone nominated as a candidate is anathema to me. The new Section 76ZA in my view makes a total nonsense of election expense restrictions. In my day the art of an election agent was to get your candidate elected within the then permitted maximum expenditure allowed. Now it is extremely difficult to distinguish when a person becomes a candidate and almost impossible to ensure a level playing field for candidates at an election. In my view the whole section will be a nightmare to deal with especially (3) and particularly when you read at the end of first section of 76ZA the omission of part of 90ZA of the Representation of the People Act 1983"." I do not know precisely the misgivings of the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, but clearly they are shared with Conservative agents on the other side of the political divide.