Elections Bill — House of Lords, 2022-04-25
Topic: Government Operations
Robin Granville Hodgson (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I have an amendment in this group—Amendment 59, previously tabled in Committee as Amendment 45B. The purpose of the amendment is very simple: it aims to increase transparency about third party campaigning by inserting this new clause, "Disclosure of status as a recognised third party" It is not concerned with the question of the imprints on electronic or printed material, which are, essentially, transitory—they come and go—and which are the target of the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, to which the Minister will reply in a minute. It is much simpler than that. It focuses solely on the homepage or the website, if it has one, of a registered third party campaigning organisation. If the amendment were accepted, the homepage of that registered organisation would be required to carry a statement along the lines of "XYZ"—the name of the campaigning organisation—"is a registered third party campaigner under Part 6 of PPERA 2000", or similar wording The purpose behind the amendment is to ensure that individual members of the public viewing the website of a particular organisation are unequivocally, and at all times, made aware that the organisation is an active political campaigner. I have never suggested that this is going to bring about any radical change, but by increasing transparency about who is doing what to whom, it follows the direction of travel that the Government have said underlies the Bill In his reply in Committee, my noble friend the Minister was rather encouraging when he said: "On the specific amendment of my noble friend, while the Government entirely agree with the principle that the public should clearly be able to identify recognised third parties, I can reassure the noble Lord that the current rules, supplemented by new rules in the Bill, will provide for that."—[Official Report, 17/3/22; col. 477.] He went on to say he wanted to go away to consider it further and asked whether I would withdraw my amendment, which I duly did At that point, my noble friend took the trouble to write to me. By this stage, I am afraid his remarks were rather less encouraging. He went on to say in his letter on 4 April: "I … wanted to reiterate the Government’s position on your proposal to require registered third parties to disclose their registered status on a prominent place on their website, where they have a website … The Government entirely agrees it is right that third-party groups campaigning at elections should be transparent and clearly identifiable. Registered third party campaigners are already … listed on the Electoral Commission’s website, and the Elections Bill will introduce further requirements to ensure that any UK-based group spending over £10,000 registers with the regulator." If noble Lords read and consider that carefully, the outcome is quite different from that which would be achieved if my amendment were implemented. Yes, there will be rules about imprints on digital material, which might be strengthened by the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, if they were accepted, but unless a member of the public is visiting the organisation’s website because he or she has just received some imprinted material with a digital imprint on it, there will be no way of knowing whether or not the organisation in question is a registered third-party campaigner.