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Political Parties and Elections Bill

My Lords, I rise with some diffidence—and, perhaps the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, will be pleased to hear, briefly—to support Amendment 38. A great deal of money is thrown about at elections, as I experienced in my misspent youth when I was involved in the marketing and advertising professions, with all the profligacy of Russian oligarchs. No one disputes the need for realistic budgets, but the siren voices of advertising and marketing men should be firmly resisted. Nothing disconnects the electorate from the electoral process more than huge sums of money, hitherto camouflaged in some cases, being dispensed in this way, together with the unwillingness of politicians of every party to embrace the idea that the electors themselves should be asked to make very modest contributions to the electoral process. I do not wish to seem cynical, but it often seems that the more the amount of money spent in election campaigns rises, the more the number of people voting in elections falls. Surely this is a very unhealthy state of affairs, which I suggest we can put right today.