Local Elections (Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Order 2021

Baroness Suttie Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd June 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Suttie (LD) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in a debate in which there is so much agreement and consensus; that is not always the case in our Northern Ireland debates in this House. I add my thanks to the Minister for such a comprehensive explanation of the context of this order, which I found enormously helpful and enlightening.

These Benches very much welcome the introduction of this order. As the Minister said, it will ensure that the imprint regime for local elections in Northern Ireland finally mirrors the regime in place for parliamentary elections in Great Britain. This will go some way to improving transparency and open democracy for elections in Northern Ireland, and this is greatly to be welcomed. As my noble friend Lord Alderdice said, Liberals are always in favour of systems that introduce greater transparency and open democracy.

Improving transparency for voters so that it is clear from the election literature who is campaigning and who is supporting candidates at local government elections is something we have long called for from these Benches over many years. It will also introduce greater accountability for political parties, as well as facilitating legal actions and remedies should these become necessary.

However, it is clear from the Explanatory Memorandum that consultations took place back in 2018—three years ago. The Minister explained that Brexit was the cause of the delay, but perhaps he could say a little more about why this has taken three years to come before us today.

These measures were also a key conclusion in the report of the Independent Commission on Referendums, published in July 2018. Can the Minister say what has happened to the associated recommendations from that report? In particular, the distinguished cross-party group that formed that commission on referendums recommended that

“a searchable repository of online political advertising should be developed, including information on when each advertisement was posted, at whom it was targeted, and how much was spent on it.”

Can the Minister say whether any progress is being made on following those recommendations?

The Minister will know that last month the head of the Electoral Commission Northern Ireland again called on the UK Government to change the law to allow it to publish information relating to political donations and loans which occurred before 1 July 2017. The commission’s most recent research in this area, published in February this year, confirms that the majority of the public agree that this information should be publicly available. I appreciate that this is a little beyond the scope of this order, but in the spirit of openness and transparency which this order promotes, it would be extremely helpful to have an update on this matter from the Government. If the Minister is unable to provide a response today, I would be grateful if he might be able to write to me at a later stage.