Elections Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-17
Topic: Government Operations
Robert Andrew Stunell (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I think that it might be my turn now. First, I apologise for not being in the House for the session before lunch. I was attending the Committee on Standards in Public Life, of which I am a member. That committee, as I have reminded the House before, has on it a representative of the Labour Party, Margaret Beckett, a representative of the Conservative Party, Jeremy Wright, and a representative of the Liberal Democrats. It is under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Weardale, who is of course a Cross-Bench Member of this House, and it has a majority of independent members As the noble Lord, Lord Harris, just reminded the House, the committee produced a report, Regulating Election Finance, which is quite thick and I would like to say quite substantial. It makes the case eloquently and clearly, based on evidence, about the things that need to be improved in our electoral regime, the things that need to be protected and the things that need to be prevented. It does not contain a recommendation that coincides with Clause 27 I have asked the Minister before whether he would be prepared to give us some kind of ministerial or departmental list in which the 47 recommendations that appear in the report cross-reference with the Elections Bill. His answer last time was that the Government gave their reply to this report last October. I took advantage of the committee meeting this morning just to make sure that I was not mistaken and took another careful look at what the Minister said about the report, specifically what his response said about recommendation 21. The answer that he gave in his letter was that, broadly speaking, the Government were thinking about it A slightly more detailed annexe brings together five or six of the recommendations in the report, including recommendation 21. I will not reproduce exactly the reasons given for not proceeding with any of them because I assume that that will be part of the Minister’s wind-up speech in a few minutes’ time. Broadly speaking, it says, "It is all complex, it could easily make it much more difficult for people, it is not proportionate and really we were taking into account a lot of other views and consideration and it needs detail", et cetera. Noble Lords will obviously be able to hear it in a more refined form when the Minister winds up What the response does not do at all is to answer why recommendation 21 should not form part of this Bill. Paragraph 8.29 of the report says: "The Electoral Commission explained in their 2015 General Election spending report that it is difficult to identify in the spending returns how much targeted spending has been incurred and if it has been correctly attributed to the relevant limits." So the Electoral Commission identified a specific problem of third-party spending targeted but not properly attributed to the relevant limits. The same paragraph goes on to say: "The Hodgson report later made a similar recommendation. We agree that this change should be made to increase the transparency around campaigning that is carried out on behalf of political parties." Recommendation 21 is very similar to the explanatory note attached to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Collins: "Parties should be required to identify what is spent by third parties as targeted spending on their behalf. The government should introduce a specific reporting category for targeted expenditure that non-party campaigners have spent in relation to an authorisation given by a political party."