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Political Parties and Elections Bill

I shall be careful not to get into the Campbell-Savours-Brooke debate. I have some notes here. The only thing that I can say with confidence is that election expenditure before European elections is regulated for four months before the election is held. I shall return to the essence of the debate on those details at the end. Amendment 119 lists the types of expenditure which would be regulated by the spending limits proposed in the earlier Amendments 114, 115 and 116. Sir Hayden Phillips’s proposals sought to regulate the vast majority of a party’s spending with only a few key exceptions, such as interest on debt, legal expenses and intra-party transfers. Amendment 119 instead mirrors the list-based approach taken in current legislation. It largely replicates the list of regulated matters for the existing campaign spending limit, which is set out in Schedule 8 to the 2000 Act. However, the amendment makes several key changes and additions to that list and I shall speak to only a couple of these. Expenditure would appear to qualify whether or not it is, ""for the purposes of the candidate’s election"." This is a very significant change. Specifically, expenditure on the remuneration or allowances of staff would be included, provided that those staff work in any way on matters listed elsewhere as qualifying expenditure, although I note the amendment makes no attempt to define who would count as staff. Staff costs are currently specifically excluded from the list of regulated matters in Schedule 8 to the 2000 Act. This is because when that Act was being discussed all parties recognised the difficulties that staff would have in accurately assessing which part of their work can be said to be on campaign issues and which can be said to be on non-campaign duties. That is particularly so where a member of staff works in part on campaign matters and in part on non-campaign matters. Even if staff were able to do so, verification by the Electoral Commission would likely prove very difficult without it proving unduly burdensome for parties—for example, by the keeping of timesheets or something similar. Without that sort of record keeping there would be significant scope for parties to avoid the rules. For example, rules might be circumvented by changing job titles. All of these problems would come to the fore should the noble Lord’s proposed system come into force. Secondly, any expenditure of more than £100 per year by any person on qualifying expenditure which is intended to benefit a registered party would count against that party’s limit. It would not, apparently, be necessary for the party to have authorised that expenditure. This is not appropriate. Where a party authorises expenditure, it should count against the limit. Where a party does not authorise expenditure, it should be regulated separately by the controls that already exist on third-party expenditure. We have suggested previously that we are open to considering whether the list of regulated matters in Schedule 8 to the 2000 Act needs amendment. We are, as on many other areas of the Bill and associated policy, open to views on this. However, the amendment goes much further than is desirable. It proposes unworkable and undesirable amendments to the schedule. I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw the amendment.