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Political Parties and Elections Bill

I asked a question about when the campaign begins. It seems clear that, if the Bill is not amended along these lines, the debate on how to deal with this issue will simply begin again the day after polling day following the next general election campaign and we will not have achieved very much with this Bill. I thank, in particular, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, for his support for these amendments and, if I may say so, for hitting the nail on the head when it comes to the Bill’s failure to deal with fundamental problems. Between 1883 and 2000, effective legislation was in place to deal with some of the problems of using money to buy undue influence in a particular constituency. Inadvertently, the trigger was removed in 2000, and, like the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, I wondered long and hard whether the best way of trying to introduce some level of fair play at the constituency level might be to bring back the trigger. However, after talking to all my colleagues, it would seem that nine years after its abolition, it would be very difficult to bring it back. Therefore, there is a need for alternative mechanisms, which are set out in the Bill. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, for at least agreeing that the code in the proposals is clearly wrong and that we need to do something to try to get things right. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Marland, for his sympathy for the amendments. I thank the Minister and the expert team behind him for suggesting some drafting amendments and improvements to this series of amendments that could produce a much better package than is currently in the Bill. The debate around these amendments has focused on two other principles—a balance between bureaucracy and effectiveness. On bureaucracy, raised by the noble Lord, Lord Henley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, I should say that I am the only person in the Room who is currently responsible for administering the bureaucracy on the code of rules for a national party organisation. I have to do that every year in which there might be a general election. In which year would I decide not to have the bureaucratic controls in place on the grounds that there was no chance of a general election? It would never be responsible for me not to have the bureaucracy in place because there might always be the possibility of a general election in any year. Therefore, at a national level the bureaucracy is in place on a permanent basis, and that must be the case in all the major party headquarters. It would be wrong if we did not have that. If we have to have it in place every year in case there is a general election, and we have to track back all our expenditure, which is limited over the 12 months before polling day, we might as well go the whole hog and say that we should have expenditure controls over the life of a Parliament. The other issue is effectiveness. To deal with this problem, which is clear, readily identifiable and recognised by most people, we need to do something to control party-political expenditure and buying undue influence in the ballot box. It is simply not an effective principle to say that we should have controls between the 51st month after a general election and the 55th month in which it must happen. This is a nonsense in trying to control the overall problem. I end with a plea to the Minister and those close to him. They are saying, "This is what we are trying to do with this Bill". I hope that they will look carefully at what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, said and perhaps go to Mr Peter Bradley, the former Member for the Wrekin, and say, "This is what we are planning to do. What happened to you in your constituency in the last general election? How can such a clear abuse of the original principles of the 1983 legislation be addressed by this Bill?" I suggest to the Minister and the Government that it will not address those problems in any significant way. We need to look further at this. However, having suggested that we need to try to refine this package and make it better, I will return to the debate at a later date. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 114 withdrawn. Amendments 115 to 118 not moved.