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Communications Allowance

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who has made a reasonable intervention, as I would expect from my long knowledge and observation of him. I intend to come on to some of those points about the advantages that may or may not be conferred on incumbents. However, let me return to my point about transients. I would be grateful to learn from IPSA how MPs in seats such as mine can be expected to engage with such challenging electorates only on the basis of leaflets about occasional meetings and advice surgeries and contact cards. Of course there were other criticisms of the communications allowance. The Kelly report criticised the self-promotional character of the materials published under the communications allowance. Frankly, it would be disingenuous of any of us here to deny that there had been such an element of self-promotion. None the less, if we are talking about engaging local people in the parliamentary process, surely there can be no more effective means of engagement than information about the MP whose fate they themselves determine. It is my contention that there have been too many photographs, but is it not inevitable that most of the stories will be about the MP? What I strongly dispute, however, is a further Kelly report criticism, which is that there was widespread evidence that the communications allowance was being used in ways that were overtly party political. Yes, there have been some exceptions, and they have been policed and dealt with, and they involved a very small minority of Members. Indeed, the more familiar accusation against materials produced under the communications allowance has been of their blandness rather than their partisanship, and that is because MPs have been reasonably scrupulous about excluding overtly party political content from such publications. If materials published by MPs, or incumbents, have been overwhelmingly non-partisan in character, that same constraint does not apply to their political opponents. As we know, incumbents have been the targets of very highly funded campaigns by their political opponents. It is my contention that the communications allowance has offered at least some small element of balance in the face of highly funded opposing candidates. I beg the House not to misunderstand me. I am not arguing that the communications allowance should be used as a free fighting fund to allow incumbents to beat off challengers—it is right that it should retain its non-partisan character—but I am saying that, faced with a deluge of materials from highly funded opponents, at least the communications allowance serves the minimal purpose of reminding voters that they already have an MP in place. Let me be frank: I believe that there should be some balance, some equity and some fairness in local and national campaign expenditure. I believe that there should be limits on local campaign expenditure, and I believe that that is achievable. Indeed, the attempt to secure at least a rough balance has been at the heart of British electoral practice for more than a century. Since 1883, with the first Representation of the People Act, successive Acts of Parliament have imposed limits on permitted election expenditure by candidates and increasingly there have been attempts to control national campaign expenditure. At the local level, we have a cap on general election spending, and under the most recent legislation in this area, the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009, we have a cap on pre-general election spending, from the 56th month of a Parliament. However, we no longer have any restraint on spending on behalf of candidates in the years between elections. There was such restraint until 2000, when the Political Parties and Referendums Act 2000 came into effect. Pre-2000, the situation was pretty clear. Let me quote the noble Lord Rennard—Baron Rennard of Wavertree, former chief executive of the Liberal Democrats and fabled by-election winner. Speaking in a debate in the other place last year, on the Political Parties and Elections Bill, he said:""Between 1883 and 2000, effective legislation was in place to deal with some of the problems of using money"—" [Interruption.]