Representation of the People (Variation of Election Expenses and Exclusions) Regulations 2024

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Tuesday 19th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to offer the strongest possible Green Party support to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Rennard. This is indeed a great cause for regret, although I follow the noble Lord in saying that I entirely accept and agree with the security clarification that, unfortunately, is clearly necessary; I have absolutely no problems with that.

On social media, you know you are catching the zeitgeist, and that people are recognising what you are saying, when it gets repeated back to you. A couple of phrases that I use often on social media are increasingly repeated back to me. One is:

“#democracy - it would be a good idea”.


The other is:

“We get the politics that the few pay for”.


The second is simply and undoubtedly a statement of fact. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, set out such figures as £10 million, but even a donation of £1 million or—in the context of the elections we are talking about —£100,000 are potentially election changing. As the noble Lord said, this is happening at the last minute. The only way that this money will come in is through a few rich people.

We have to ask this question, and I would love the Minister to answer it: why does she think people give a donation of £10 million or £1 million or £100,000? Surely they do not give it for nothing. What do they get in return?

I should perhaps make a declaration of non-interest here since, as far as Green Party election spending is concerned, this is all entirely irrelevant. We were never going to spend up to the old limits, so this does not matter to us at all except that we will face a deluge of paper and social media posts, which will attempt to flood out our modest attempts to reach and speak to the electorate. That is the practical reality.

The noble Baroness, Lady Vere, likes to ask where people will say the money should come from. I very much accept the figure from 2011 of a maximum donation of £10,000. I could set it lower, but that will do for starters. I will say what is often considered the unsayable: we need state funding of political parties and election campaigning. Instead of the few paying for the politics we get, that would mean we get the politics that everyone has chosen.

That is effectively how the Green Party funds things, how we are funding these elections and how we will fund the coming general election: by crowdfunding—people putting in their £10 or £20 and making the choice to support a local candidate. But we have a cost of living crisis. The people who would have put in £20 can now put in only perhaps £10 or £5. Yet the millionaires and billionaires are getting richer, so their donations get bigger and bigger.

I have one final point to make. The security element of this really made me think of things that can get in the way and stop candidates running, and this deserves to be raised in this context and every electoral context. I refer to the access to elected office fund for disabled people, which was closed in March 2020 because of the Covid pandemic. We can discuss the continuation of the pandemic, but I do not think we are in an emergency situation any longer. The Government have failed to reinstate this fund despite its inclusion in the Disability Action Plan. There was an open letter written to the Government in the November by a whole coalition of disability groups calling for this small, modest measure to find a little bit of money to enable disabled people to compete on a level playing field in elections. So my question to the Minister is: will the Government reinstate the access to elected office fund? It is probably too late for these elections—not too late for billionaires, but for disabled people to start to run —but we could at least do it for the next set of elections, which will be the general election.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I add to what my noble friend Lord Rennard said just a few brief comments. First, on the timing, I note that when the committee considered this, the Minister in the Commons said:

“I will be perfectly frank … we could have delayed this until after the elections in May”.—[Official Report, Commons, Third Delegated Legislation Committee, 5/3/24; col. 6]


The Government should at least have asked themselves: how does this looks to a cynical public? Why rush it in just after it has been announced that they have received some huge donations? It looks like last-minute changing of the rules in favour of the Government.

I declare an interest as a Liberal Democrat. I recall the Electoral Commission commenting some years ago that we had a much larger number of donors to our party than the Conservative Party but, of course, a much smaller total of what had been given, because our donations tend to come, at best, in £5,000 or £10,000 chunks, rather than in chunks of £1 million or £2 million or more. It looks bad.

Secondly, as my noble friend has said, the Committee on Standards in Public Life report has been on the table for some time now. It is clear that the political parties ought to be coming to a consensus on what to do about that and what to set as a limit. I am sorry that the Government have not moved in that direction. I very much hope that, immediately after the next election, whatever Government come in will move on that.

Thirdly, we have a severe problem with public confidence in our democratic politics and it is a shame that the Government are not addressing this. The sense that money counts in political campaigns is part of the worry. The whiff of corruption that comes with donors being seen to be close to the Prime Minister, with big donations coming from companies that have made their money out of public contracts given by the Government—all of those things add to disillusionment with our politics, which is fundamentally corrosive of our democratic system.

I add that we now have a right-wing television station that made a loss last year of £31 million but, in spite of making a loss, is paying over £1 million to Conservative and right-wing politicians. The £340,000 increase that my noble friend mentioned is almost exactly the sum that Jacob Rees-Mogg is receiving for the few hours a week that he puts in as a television presenter. That is all corrosive of public confidence in public life, and the Committee on Standards in Public Life is correct to say so.

This SI, coming now, adds to the sense that money is what counts in British politics. We look across the Atlantic and see what has happened in American politics as big money has taken over. We do not want that to happen here, and I deeply regret that this Government are moving in that direction.

Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Committee stage
Thursday 20th April 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I support this amendment. I will speak to my Amendment 108, and first make a couple of preliminary observations.

The Minister referred to “eradicating” corruption—a wonderful aim. I do not recall any economy or political system that has entirely eradicated corruption, but minimising corruption is a necessary part of any market economy. I grew up within Barclays Bank. They moved us every five years; they moved their local staff because it was a way of minimising corruption—stopping my parents getting too close to their clients. That was the sort of petty corruption that unavoidably crept into the British financial system.

Now that we have an entirely different financial system the opportunities for corruption are very different. What we are trying to do here is minimise levels of corruption in a globalised economy and financial system. I say to the Minister: even if we were to succeed in eradicating corruption entirely in this country, which would require some quite astonishing changes in our culture, we would still import corruption from abroad, as we have painfully discovered in the past 30 years. The best that we can do is to hope to mitigate and minimise.

On trusts, secrecy is often an aid to tax avoidance or tax evasion. We all know that the boundary between avoidance and evasion is very delicate, managed by large numbers of well-paid accountants and lawyers based in London, the Crown dependencies and elsewhere, and that tax evasion is an economic crime.

I have been concerned by extent clauses in a number of Bills since I entered this House. I have been increasingly puzzled by the way in which such clauses are used, partly because they normally come at the end of a Bill by which time everyone is exhausted and does not want to discuss them. I note that, in the National Security Bill—the last Bill that I dealt with—Jersey and Guernsey were included in the extent clause, but the Isle of Man was not. Moreover, the sovereign base areas of Cyprus were included in the extent of the Bill but not most of the other overseas territories; I was unable to discover why the other overseas territories in which we have military bases, such as the Falklands, Tristan da Cunha and Ascension Island, were not included. The Minister then was unable to answer that question.

This is an area of quite astonishing ambiguity—deliberate ambiguity, in a sense. The Crown dependencies and the overseas territories are not part of the United Kingdom, but they are not foreign. They are governed under British law, but they do not immediately implement all changes in British law, as my noble friend remarked. That is very convenient but, occasionally, it leaves room for ambiguity, which can be exploited.

I remind the Minister that there have been substantial problems in some overseas territories; for example, the Turks and Caicos Islands and the BVI. There are, of course, enormous temptations in territories with a small population and a huge amount of money going through. We have seen that in the past in the Channel Islands—we very much hope that things are much better there now—and more recently in some of the Caribbean territories. So we must be careful and well aware that, if this Bill is to become a successful Act with enforcement, our close financial connections with the overseas territories and Crown dependencies must form part of what we address and part of what we make sure they follow.

In one of our briefings, we were told:

“We are comfortable with the journey that the overseas territories are on, but they are not yet there.”


We are concerned that they should get there, and in good time. We are all conscious that the overwhelming majority of properties owned by overseas entities are registered in the overseas territories, primarily the BVI. So why are they not in the extent clause, given that some Crown dependencies and overseas territories have been included in the extent clauses of other Bills passed in this Parliament? How are the Government going to ensure that the commitments made that the territories will follow changes in British legislation are carried through? How will we ensure that we follow up on that? I say that with a degree of embittered experience: I recall several occasions over the past 15 years on which Ministers from different Governments promised that changes in British law would be followed within a limited period by the overseas territories, only for us to discover three or four years later that those changes had not been implemented by some of them.

This is an important area; I know that the Minister will recognise how important an area it is. The personal, financial, accountancy and legal links between Britain, the Crown dependencies and the overseas territories are extremely close, intricate and fairly opaque. We therefore need, again, some reassurance that this Bill, when it becomes an Act with the hope that it will be enforced effectively, will be enforced throughout those British territories that are not part of the United Kingdom.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, and to speak chiefly to Amendment 108, to which I attached my name. I entirely agree with everything he said, and indeed with the introduction to the group. I will just add a couple of points.

My first point is about the cost. A few years ago, Transparency International calculated that the economic damage resulting from corporate secrecy in the UK’s overseas territories alone significantly exceeded the UK aid budget. These are crimes that have real victims and real costs. We must not forget that. The fact is that one hand is operating one way and the other another way, unless we take some action.

The Atlantic Council is not necessarily an organisation with which I am always 100% in agreement, but it produced an article in January entitled “Authoritarian kleptocrats are thriving on the West’s failures. Can they be stopped?” It recommended that the UK should

“address the close connections between the City of London and British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies”.

A further recommendation was that the UK should:

“Reduce regulatory mismatches between the primary UK jurisdictions and the Crown Dependencies.”


There is a real hole here. We can drive a cart and horses through the gaps between what is happening here and what is happening in the Crown dependencies and overseas territories. To extend the metaphor a little, for which I apologise, we might be slamming the stable door, but we are leaving the barn door open unless we address this issue.

In thinking about how these two amendments are connected, and to join them up, let us be really charitable about the capacities of these overseas territories and Crown dependencies. The population of the 14 overseas territories is 270,000 people; that of the Crown dependencies is rather less. Let us be charitable when we think of the size of their Administrations and their capacities, and think about the extreme inequality of arms between the kleptocrats and their enablers and those organisations. Even if those territories and dependencies want to do something, with the best will in the world, how can they conceivably have the capacity to do it? We have a responsibility, given the UK Government’s role, for this economic crime Bill to include this coverage. This is protection, support and assistance, as well as something that protects the whole world.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

Report stage
Wednesday 7th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, my name is on Amendment 30, which is an alternative version, and I wish to add my concerns. The Minister will know that there has been a lot of controversy about the overall public appointments process. There has been criticism in the press and from people who have been involved in acting as independent advisers on public appointments, in general and in particular.

The appointment of the current chair of the Office for Students was particularly controversial. There was criticism that the balance of the appointing committee appeared to be much more political than expert, and that the person appointed appeared to have no previous qualifications or expertise for the job, beyond having been a Conservative MP who had lost his seat and managed Boris Johnson’s campaign to be Prime Minister. That does not give us great confidence in the appointment of a freedom of speech champion; it also lessens confidence in the sector that the appointment process had been started so early. The Minister will be aware from the letter she had from a number of leading academics that this is one of their active concerns.

Given the particularly controversial nature of this appointment, if you want to achieve a degree of public confidence among those who will be affected by it in universities and elsewhere, it pays if it is seen to be a fair, open and reasonable process. That is not the case at present, and rumours of the sort of people who might be appointed—the names scattered around include those of one or two other Members of this House—would not at all assure the sector, so this is a particularly important process and appointment.

I ask the Minister to give us an assurance, as strongly as she can, that Universities UK, the Russell group and other stakeholders will be consulted about the process and the qualifications needed in such a person; that the appointing committee will be appropriate to the task to be undertaken; and that the Government will ensure, as far as possible, that the person appointed commands the confidence of those whom he or she will be regulating. That is not too much to ask but, against the context of what we have seen with public appointments in the past three or four years, it is a necessary ask. I hope she will be able to take us some way in that direction.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I have attached my name to Amendment 29 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Collins, and the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, which was so ably presented by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton. Having heard those two speeches, I will be extremely brief because the case has been very powerfully made. At this stage these are probing amendments, but there is a need for a strong response from the Minister.

As the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said, there is very grave concern about the nature of public appointments in many areas. If you combine that with the very grave concern that has been expressed from all sides of your Lordships’ House about the Bill and its operation, it makes this a particularly crucial response from the Minister.

I also note that in Committee there was an amendment to put a sunset clause on the Bill. It was not my amendment, but I attached my name to it. It was not brought back so I have not pushed forward with it, but that would have been an alternative way of tackling this problem; in some ways it would possibly have been a stronger way. Given where we are now, at the end of Report, we need to hear some very strong reassurances.