Scotland Act 1998 (Modification of Schedules 4 and 5 and Transfer of Functions to the Scottish Ministers etc.) Order 2015

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend will be astonished to hear that I agree with him on one of the main points that he has been making. However, it is about time that somebody from another part of the United Kingdom commented on my noble friend’s very proper regard for the consequences that he has identified for other parts. I am a fellow Celt, but I cannot pretend to be speaking on behalf of Scotland. He is of course correct that this is not something that can simply be left across the border. We would not be speaking about it in your Lordships’ House if it did not have wider implications.

I want to return—this is why I felt the need to speak—to the Constitution Committee’s report, particularly to the contribution of the chairman, my noble friend Lord Lang of Monkton. The critical sentence in the report is the warning about this potentially piecemeal and incremental approach to changing the voting age. What the committee should have gone on to do—this is the missing sentence, if I may humbly submit this to members of the committee and its chairman—was say that the Government should have picked up my Private Member’s Bill, the Voting Age (Comprehensive Reduction) Bill of the previous Session, which received a Second Reading in your Lordships’ House with encouragement from Members on all sides.

I thought that the Minister very neatly put on one side the implications of this order for other parts of the UK, as I will come back to in a moment. Obviously, it is unacceptable in the UK that the critical foundation stone of our representative democracy—the franchise—should be quite different in different parts of our United Kingdom. If Scotland had decided to separate from the other nations of this country, this could have been a discrete issue for the Scottish Parliament, but it is not, they did not and therefore it is of relevance to us all. As my noble friend has indicated very effectively, there has already been a very practical demonstration of the maturity of young people in the Scottish referendum campaign. I am delighted that my noble friend Lord Cormack is here because it was he who gave a practical example during the previous debate of the way in which his granddaughter took a very active and well informed part in the debates.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

I apologise for intervening—I missed the first part of this debate—but I must make it plain that, although I have the highest regard for my granddaughter’s intelligence, I do not believe in votes at 16, for all the reasons that my noble friend Lord Forsyth cogently made in one of the best speeches I have heard in this House for a very long time.

[Lord Tyler]

I also enjoy my noble friend’s speeches, whether or not I agree with them, because he takes us back to Wolf Hall and other Tudor examples of the behaviour of Governments. In this case, we can look at more recent history. It is not true, as was implied by the Constitution Committee and my noble friends, that this matter suddenly appeared on the political agenda; that is simply not true.

I shall take just one example. I am amazed that no one else in your Lordships’ House seems to have read the excellent Youth Select Committee report from last autumn, published soon after the example that we were given in Scotland, which was very properly given some extra credence by Mr Speaker in the other place. In that report, the very cogent argument for reducing the age of the franchise to 16 is set out in great detail, answering a lot of the points that have already been made in your Lordships’ House. Also, as my noble friend Lord Purvis said, at the end of their secondary school experience with citizenship, in the parental circumstances that they are likely still to be in, young people are much more engaged in the issues that affect them than they are when they go off to work or higher education at 17 or 18. That is why, interestingly, the turnout in Scotland was better among the 16 and 17 year-olds than it was among the 18 to 24 year-olds. Not only that, and I do not know whether everyone in your Lordships’ House will agree with this, but they also voted by a majority to remain in the United Kingdom, while middle-aged men—I emphasise “men”—voted by a majority to separate. It was young people who saw with maturity the advantages of remaining in the United Kingdom.

Scotland: Draft Legislation

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 22nd January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

Any of us following the Scottish media, and probably even further than the boundaries of Scotland, saw that appalling scene when the report was burned. In fact, I have an instinctive gut horror at people burning any literature or writing and I find it very insidious. The SNP members of the commission signed that report and should be held to that. If they start complaining, they should be reminded of that. Nor was it signed at a low level: the Deputy First Minister signed on behalf of the SNP, along with Miss Fabiani. Therefore, it was signed at a high level and backsliding will be exposed.

What can be done about local government is a matter for the Scottish Parliament, which we can pursue within our respective parties. I do not think that it is really a matter for this Parliament to start legislating for local government in Scotland but we can create some of the mood music. I know from debates we have had in your Lordships’ House that from all parts of the United Kingdom and all parts of the House there has been a strong view of the need to decentralise more power in this country.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, if we are to have stability and if this is going to be an enduring settlement, would it not be reasonable, particularly bearing in mind what the noble Baroness said a few moments ago, to have within the final Bill a clause which rules out a referendum for at least 10 years?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, my noble friend will recall that the referendum required a Section 30 order to be passed by this House. It was certainly the view of the United Kingdom Government that there was no legal competence within the Scottish Parliament to do so and there is nothing in these draft clauses that would change that. It would still be a matter for this House and the other place to pass a Section 30 order if there were to be a further referendum.

Scotland: Smith Commission

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that, while of course promises given by leaders must be honoured, and we accept that clauses—which I hope will be debated in this House in detail—will be produced by 25 January, there is a real danger in deadline democracy? There is no situation in politics or any other aspect of life that is not made worse by panic.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I heed what my noble friend says. It is also fair to say that much in the heads of agreement that has emerged today is based on previous work. In my party’s case, it was done by a commission under the chairmanship of my right honourable friend Sir Menzies Campbell. Proposals came from the work done by the Labour Party. The Conservative Party produced proposals through a committee chaired by my noble friend Lord Strathclyde. So the Smith commission had a considerable volume of work available to it to help to formulate its proposals. My noble friend, and my noble friend Lord Baker, mentioned the opportunity to debate. My noble friend the Leader of the House is here, and the understandable wish for further debate will certainly be taken on board by the usual channels.

Scotland: Devolution

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Wednesday 29th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, we are having a fascinating debate, as we always do on these topics, and we have heard some remarkable speeches, including a very notable maiden speech.

There is a danger of losing sight of the fact that it was a very positive result. If in the general election next year one party had 10%-plus more votes than the other, the papers would be writing about landslides. That is the context. We also have to remember, as someone pointed out earlier, that the percentage of the Scottish electorate who actually voted for independence was 37%. The figures are just under 45% of those who voted and 37% of the electorate. However, that should give us no cause for complacency.

We have heard various views and I want to turn to England in a minute, but one thing that has run through this debate is that everyone believes that the pledges that were made must be honoured. I happen to believe that some of those pledges were unnecessary and that some of them were made as there was a lurch from complacency to panic based on one rogue poll. Nevertheless, we must not devalue the political currency or the credibility of the United Kingdom by reneging on those pledges.

I agree very much with those, including the noble Earl, Lord Stair, who say that it was a pity that in the immediate aftermath of the referendum a commitment was made to accelerate the examination of the wider implications and to fix an English timetable. I was in the other place when we debated devolution in the early 1970s. I did not vote for it because I feared—and I said so at the time—that some of the things that have happened would come to pass. However, that is all over; we cannot go back. We have the Scottish Parliament and we must sustain it, but the West Lothian question has been around for 37 years and it does not need to be solved in 37 days.

Concerning the acronym EVEL, I would say, “Speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil”. “English votes for English laws” is a phrase that comes trippingly off the tongue, but it does not recognise the fact that almost 85% of the population of the United Kingdom is in England. We are not able to have a normal federation in this country, nor do I want to drift down that road. However, the 85% have to exercise a degree of magnanimity in order to maintain the union. Although, when new powers have been devolved, there has been a case for fewer Scottish MPs—there is a precedent for that both in Ireland and in Scotland itself—I do not believe that there is a case for having two classes of MP at the other end of the corridor. I think that would be a retrograde step and it would indeed be playing to English nationalism.

The noble Lord, Lord Birt, talked about the difference between patriotism and nationalism. English nationalism could be a very ugly force. It could do great damage and could indeed lead to the break-up of the United Kingdom. I hope very much that there will be considered reflection in high places and that all the calls that have come from this Chamber today for a commission or a convention will be heeded. I personally would favour a royal commission, and I am glad to see the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, who I thought made a brilliant speech, nodding at that point. There are not trite solutions that are right solutions, and there are not glib answers that are glad answers. It is crucial that we get this right because we have to look to the future.

Half my family is in Scotland. My eldest grand-daughter voted at the age of 16. I do not necessarily agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, on that, but I know that my grand-daughter and all her classmates took this matter exceptionally seriously. Why did they vote as they did? They did so because they believed that the opportunities and the heritage would be greater if they remained British and part of the United Kingdom. That is something that the campaign lost sight of. How right the noble Lord, Lord McFall, was to talk about how unfortunate we were to put ourselves in the position where, to maintain the United Kingdom, people had to vote no. That should never have been conceded. If there is a referendum in the future, it has to be under the auspices of the United Kingdom Parliament and we have to look very carefully at the question. I hope and believe that that will not be necessary.

I believe profoundly in this United Kingdom and I believe profoundly in the good that it has done. We should not forget that the greatest days of this country were when there was one Parliament for one country. Although those days will not return—I accept that entirely—we should try to recreate the spirit of the United Kingdom. It took us through the war and we will be commemorating the 70th anniversary of its end next year. As we commemorate that and the 50th anniversary of Churchill’s death, let us remember that the United Kingdom together is, as we have said before, so much more than the sum of its constituent parts. In satisfying certain demands within England, we must not forget that magnanimity in victory should always be our English slogan.

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[Lord Stephen (LD)]

My Lords, I compliment the noble Lord, Lord Soley, on his insightful contribution. I share his deep concern about the dangers that we faced at one point of this referendum: of losing so much of what the union has been over the last 300 years.

This has been a very good debate and there have been some very wise comments, particularly on the nature, appeal and real dangers of nationalism. Nationalism has the ability, in the right place and at the right time, to whip up passion and fervour among those who feel disconnected, disengaged or disfranchised. I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, was the first to point out that there was a very nasty edge to this referendum campaign. I spoke in a previous debate about the treatment, for example, of JK Rowling or that of the mother of a disabled child—who dared to say that she intended to vote no—by the First Minister’s media adviser. You could see it on the streets as well. What did it for me was seeing not the treatment of Jim Murphy but rather the ugly heckling and barging of an elderly woman who dared to approach him, simply to ask a question about the campaign. That is not the sort of Scotland that I ever want to see again.

I have no doubt that if the yes vote had won, there would have been a carnival of triumphalism. George Square and its fountains would have been occupied for days. The no voters are very different. There was a sigh of huge relief across Scotland after weeks of agony about the outcome but no triumphalism there. Instead, there was sensible and constrained silence except, sadly, as several noble Lords such as my noble friend Lord Steel and the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, have pointed out, from the steps of No. 10 Downing Street. Rather than the Prime Minister’s essentially partisan speech which was trying to gain party advantage that morning, he and the other party leaders should have travelled to Scotland together to give substance to their pledge, show respect for the decision of the people of Scotland and help to unite and heal. There is still time for that to be done.

I have considerable confidence in the ability of the noble Lord, Lord Smith, and his team to deliver a radical set of proposals for significant new powers on both tax and policy to Scotland. It is worth pointing out that, for the first time, the Scottish National Party is participating in the process of delivering a stronger, more powerful Scottish Parliament. It turned its back on the Scottish Constitutional Convention and the Calman commission but now it is part of the Smith commission, which is a good thing. I wish all members of that commission well in their endeavours. I have considerable confidence in their ability to deliver home rule for Scotland—home rule of the kind for which my noble friend Lord Tyler and I, along with many others in this Chamber, have always campaigned.

There is a kind of federalism which is beginning to develop momentum for the rest of the UK. I have heard many noble Lords, such as the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, talk about federalism in a passionate way, which bodes well for future debate on this issue. However, I have considerable concern about the issue of shaping the future of the rest of the UK. I do not care whether it is a commission or a convention, frankly, or whether it is royal or not. What I care about is that it should be rapid, radical and federal.

By “rapid” I do not mean that it has to be decided in the next 100 days or by Burns night, or whenever the deadline might be. Quite clearly, Scotland has to come first and that is the vow. However, it does mean getting on with it for the rest of the UK. By “radical”, I do not mean that I want to force a particular solution on England; it means that giving more powers to local government in England is simply not nearly enough. By federalism, moreover, I do not mean a single, fixed solution but more the federalism of the kind emphasised by my noble friend Lord Tyler and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead. It is the sort of approach that can be taken in Australia, South Africa, Canada or Spain. There are so many examples around the modern democratic world but it appears not to be able to be grasped here in the United Kingdom.

[Lord Cormack]

But there is no federation where one country within that federation has 85% of its population.

[Lord Stephen]

Exactly, which is why we must devolve within England; this is exactly the point that I hope to come on to. We can have different approaches in devolving power across England. We need a coherent structure for that, but we can be very flexible inside that structure. Canada is a very good example. However, the current focus on a purely English solution—a sort of English nationalism—is for me simply not good enough. I believe in devolution, not simply because Scotland is a nation and is the only part of the United Kingdom that deserves these powers, but because decentralising power is a good thing. It makes for better decision-making. A decentralised United Kingdom would in my view be a better democracy for us all.

If the referendum in Scotland leads to this—to a better more decentralised democracy for all of the United Kingdom—then there could be no better tribute to those who quietly but passionately voted no. Those who trusted the Westminster party leaders and had faith in something better are the people who have created this opportunity. It is now our responsibility together, across the political divide, to deliver. The very future of our united nation depends on it.

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[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, my experience is that Cabinet committees tend to be that. They are Cabinet committees. However, as we have experienced in this debate, the debate is not confined to those members of the committee. It would be very helpful if there were contributions from not just the two coalition parties, which, as the noble Baroness points out, are not entirely at one in this, as the article by my right honourable friend David Laws has shown. It would be very healthy if we had views, not only from the other political parties but others as well.

[Lord Cormack]

I am extremely grateful to my noble and learned friend. A variety of views on English laws have been expressed in the debate. But surely one message has come through very clearly: people do not want to rush this. Many people who have made this point have also said that this is an appropriate subject for a commission or a convention.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, we are not just going to park it. I was coming on to the very point that my noble friend makes about the convention. I have a whole list here—I am not going to read it out—of noble Lords who have talked about a convention—that constitutional change should be achieved through a convention. I make it clear that the Government will consider proposals for the establishment of such a convention because, while debate is needed in both Houses, it is important that we engage with the public as well. We should not simply be continuing our constitution behind closed doors, if that is what the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition was suggesting. We must listen to other people’s views and opinions on this. The noble Baroness, Lady Quin, and my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford said it should not be a top-down approach. Many of us would accept that view.

Scotland: Devolution Commission

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I think I was answering very directly the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Palmer. I made the self-evident point that there was a difference between people elected to represent a territorial part of the country and Peers of the United Kingdom. However, the so-called West Lothian question is a live issue that has been around for far longer than even Mr Tam Dalyell. A number of proposals have been put forward, including comprehensive proposals from the McKay commission. I know that my right honourable friend Kenneth Clarke chaired a commission for the Conservative Party, and my right honourable friend David Laws has put forward ideas on behalf of my own party. It is important that these issues are addressed. The Prime Minister set up a committee under the chairmanship of William Hague to look at this issue, among other things, and I very much hope that it can proceed on a cross-party basis, if possible.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, is it not important that Mr Hague’s committee does not come to premature conclusions? What the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, said about categories of Members of Parliament and of this House is exactly right. What is at risk is the future unity of the United Kingdom, and any short-cut solution on the basis of the glib “English votes for English laws” will not necessarily safeguard the long-term interests of this country.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I think that I am on safe ground in otherwise difficult territory in saying that the one thing that everyone is united upon is the importance of the United Kingdom. Proposals on any part of constitutional reform must be looked at on the basis of whether they will sustain the United Kingdom. There would be no point, having gone through the trauma of a referendum and having established Scotland’s place and integrity within the United Kingdom, going about constitutional proposals that start unpicking the ties that bind us.

Scotland: Independence

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I feel that this is rather the graveyard slot. Those who have delivered their speeches have departed to refresh themselves, while a few are waiting to enlighten us. Having listened to every single speech, as has my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness, to whom I pay a real tribute for his stamina and resilience, I might be tempted to go and have a little refreshment later myself.

Whether I am driving along the lovely lanes of Lincolnshire, as I was last week, or driving in Scotland, where I spent the whole of the war as a young boy, growing up—

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Which war?

[Lord Cormack]

Not the First World War, like the noble Lord opposite; I cannot claim to rival his longevity. But whether I am driving there or in Scotland, I feel, in the words of Walter Scott, already quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis:

“This is my own, my native land!”.

I am British. My family comes originally from Scotland. My elder son, known to the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, is settled in Scotland and I do not think will ever leave, and my eldest grandchild will have a vote on 18 September. I deeply regret that I shall not have one. But I very much hope that she, along with the other enfranchised 16 year-olds, will vote a resounding no, and I am confident that she will. She spent some time with us a fortnight ago and we were talking about this. In her school in Edinburgh, they had had a poll of all the girls, and 90% had voted no. In the boys’ school next door, she was slightly disappointed that it was only 88%. That gave me some real encouragement. Like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, I regretted the way in which Mr Salmond wound the Prime Minister around his finger in getting the 16 year-old vote, but I had some reassurance from what she told me. When I asked her why, she said, “Because we don’t want to cut off our opportunities”—and that, in a sense, is what it is really about.

I have talked before in this House about the difference being between remaining in a Great Britain or in a little Scotland. Of course, Scotland could be independent and go it alone, but we would be deprived—and I believe that my friends and family in Scotland would be deprived—if they did that. I profoundly hope, as I think virtually everybody who has spoken in this debate hopes, that they will not.

Only 9.1% of the population of the United Kingdom lives in Scotland. I will not repeat all the lists of Prime Ministers, economists, scientists and writers who have been referred to this afternoon. But if any part of any country has punched above its weight, Scotland, which is a nation, has punched above its weight in the United Kingdom—and I want it to continue to do so.

In 1984, I had a very interesting experience during the long Summer Recess from the other place. I spent a semester at the University of Austin in Texas. It was the time of the presidential election and a number of the cars that were driving around had a little sticker on the back that said, “Secede”. I said to my Texas host, “Some of them talk as if they mean it”. “Oh”, he said, “that’s just the heart expressing itself—the head knows that it would be total madness”.

Much as I respect those who have a different point of view, I hope that those who are contemplating voting yes in September, and still more those who have not yet made up their mind, will reflect on what a great country this is—and it is a great country because of the contribution from Scotland, which is way beyond its percentage of the population. I very much hope that there will be a resounding vote on 18 September, and that the people of Scotland will say that, yes, they want to remain part of the United Kingdom. I do not want my granddaughter to become a citizen in a foreign land, and she does not want her cousins—the children of my other son, who live in London—to be foreigners, with different passports.

Somebody talked about borders. I had the great good fortune to be the chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee in the last Parliament, and I saw the difficulties created by a border there. Unless you have absolute similarity between taxes and revenues, what it does among other things is to encourage organised crime, which is a very real cross-border problem between the Republic and Northern Ireland. I rejoice at the settlement, and I am not one of those who feels deeply unhappy about Her Majesty receiving Mr McGuinness; we have made enormous progress. But the fact is that there are two countries on one island and there is a border, and that creates problems. We do not want to have that here.

We have to recognise that we are exceptionally fortunate. My noble friend Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, and the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, whom I regard very much as a friend in the context of this and many other issues, pointed to the brilliance of Alex Salmond. I referred to that before in this House. But we need to have robust debate, and what he has been saying is very misleading. We have had many examples, quoted during the last three and a half hours. Salmond’s approach really is that of eating the cake and having it, to put the phrase the right way round. I have often thought, particularly over the past few weeks, of the reputed remark of the great conductor Richter to the third flute, “Your damned nonsense can I stand twice or once, but sometimes always, by God, never”. The people of Scotland are being misled. As my noble friend Lord Forsyth said, they are being asked to take a leap into the dark. It is a step into the unknown.

Of course, many have talked about changes that will come about. Like my noble friend Lord Forsyth, I was against devolution but that is all over now and we have to make it work, and make it work even better than it has done—of course we have. However, it would be a constitutional and a political tragedy if we were all in this United Kingdom plunged into the uncertainty that a yes vote would create. I devoutly hope and pray that it will be a no vote and an emphatic one, and that we can more warmly embrace each other across the border. I hope that it will not become an international border, and that we can continue to recognise the enormous importance that Scotland has and the enormous contribution that it makes to this United Kingdom of ours. Long may that United Kingdom flourish.

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[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, what an independent Scotland does after independence day would be a matter for an independent Scotland. I think that is common ground. If it wants to legislate nonsense then it can. That would be the decision of an independent Scotland.

[Lord Cormack]

I am very troubled about this, as many of us are, against the background of the deal the Government did with the Scottish Government. My friend the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, nods vigorously. Can we at least have an absolute undertaking from my noble and learned friend that when the Government have considered this we will have a full Statement in the House and an opportunity to ask questions?

Scotland: Independence Referendum

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, who, not for the first time, has brought his tremendous and forensic skill in his subject to the debate in this House. It has been a remarkable debate, and I think that we are all very much in the debt of my noble friend Lord Lang for introducing it with such quiet passion and so comprehensively. I very much hope that this debate will be read in Scotland. I would draw attention to one or two speeches without in any way casting aspersions on others, but I hope that what the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, has just said about medicine will be taken in, as I hope will be what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Cullen, said about research. I hope that what the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said about the possible membership of the European Union of an independent Scotland will be taken into account, because he did for that subject, with his forensic skill, what the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, did yesterday when he talked about the implications of a common currency between an independent Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom.

Like many of your Lordships, I can claim a mixed lineage. I am not quite as mixed as my noble friend Lord Caithness. I must say that the words of the Scottish play came to mind: “Who would have thought that the noble gentleman could have had so much blood in him”.

My earliest vivid memories of Scotland are of being in Stranraer in May 1945, where my father was stationed throughout the war, when victory was being celebrated. Even now, I can think of the wonderful excitement of that day. I was brought up to believe, with my Scottish ancestry, that I was part of a very great country that had done the world a very great service. My two sons have been educated in Scotland. One of them fought side by side with my noble friend Lady Goldie, whom we are delighted to see today, in the election in 1999 for the Scottish Parliament. He lives in Scotland with his family, and at least three of them will be voting in the referendum next year, including my 16 year-old elder granddaughter. That is not at all untypical of people in this country. The noble Lord, Lord Maxton, talked of the unfairness of part of his family being able to vote and the other part not

In 1707, the most remarkable national marriage of all time took place. The marriage metaphor has been used several times during this debate—very tellingly by the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, when she talked about divorce. The question is: has this marriage, having lasted for more than 300 years, reached the stage where we should have a divorce? I would argue most passionately that it has not. As I have said before in this House, this nation is much greater than the sum of its individual parts. Scotland coming into the United Kingdom transformed North Britain into Great Britain. My noble friend Lord Forsyth, in a truly remarkable, passionate and eloquent speech, talked about all the contributions that Scotland had made to philosophy, the arts, architecture, science, commerce and medicine. How right he was to do so. We have heard of all the Scottish parliamentarians who have held supreme office in the United Kingdom Parliament.

This has been a partnership of equals, although one of the countries is very much smaller in population than the other. If we move towards an independent Scotland, we move towards a little Scotland. Those who are attracted by the eloquence of Mr Salmond—he is remarkably eloquent—should bear in mind that they would be voting for a much reduced country, a country with far less influence in the councils of the world. The point was ably made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, that Scotland really punches above its weight.

It would be nothing short of a tragedy, in a world where large power blocs will increasingly dominate affairs, if we cut our kingdom asunder. We need the Scottish people in the United Kingdom, and I believe that they derive strength from being part of the United Kingdom. That has been a constantly reiterated theme in this debate. Should we have divorce? No. Why not? For the same reason that many individuals should not have divorce: for the sake of the children. I think of my grandchildren growing up in Scotland. I want them to grow up as proud citizens of the United Kingdom, deriving all the advantages that they currently can. I do not wish them to be part of a small, if perfectly viable, nation that has turned its back on history, that has turned away from the opportunities that it still has.

I want Scotland to continue to be an integral part—a national part with its own absolute identity—of a great country that occupies a position in all the major councils of the world. That is what is at stake in September of this year, and I sincerely hope and devoutly pray that the people of Scotland realise that we want them and we need them, as much as I hope that they will realise that they need us.

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[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, in her excellent short book, Acts of Union and Disunion, the historian, Linda Colley, points out that nationalist sentiment in the UK has always increased during periods of peace. Thus, during the long Victorian peace, we had the Irish issue and home rule; in the inter-war period, Plaid Cymru and the SNP were founded; and now we have an SNP Government in Scotland and a referendum on Scottish independence in the autumn.

Every state in the world has fault-lines of this kind. We are quite normal in that respect and should not excessively beat ourselves up just because we have this problem at this time. Indeed, as migration and globalisation increase—and they will—and memories of our distant wartime past diminish with time, these fault-lines may increase. This problem will not go away. It is also a problem that is a challenge to the whole British polity; it is not just a problem for our Scottish friends. I believe profoundly that the answer to the problem lies in imaginative leadership. As my noble friend Lord Lang so eloquently put it in his introductory remarks, leadership is crucial in this area. We need to look at not only good leadership and good governance but the framework for governance.

In her book, Professor Colley argues that the next thing we should do is establish an English Parliament to match the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies. Indeed, an English Parliament would be the only way to deal with the West Lothian question. You can ameliorate it by other means but you cannot resolve it. The noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, made the point about the English dog which is not yet barking. This would deal with some of the underlying English resentment, which I felt as a Member of Parliament both in the far north of England and in London. In those two situations, I felt that bubbling away even though it is incoherent and not yet particularly evident. Given that an English Parliament may be sited outside London, I even think that it could deal with some of the north-south tensions which are growing at the moment. The pull of London is still extremely strong and is likely to continue to strengthen. Therefore, the establishment of an English Parliament and proper devolution around the whole country would ease a number of the problems we are faced with at the moment.

If this were to be a viable runner—obviously it is an argument—when should we begin talking about it?

[Lord Cormack]

Never.

[Lord Horam]

My noble friend Lord Cormack and I have to disagree. We agreed the other night on that terrible Bill of which we have finally disposed but we have to disagree on this. I note that he lives outside London and perhaps has some interest in the north-south dimension. None the less, the noble Lord, Lord Lang, made the pertinent point that it would be wrong to discuss the possibility of an English Parliament and wider devolution before the choice is made in the autumn. I respect his judgment on that and perhaps that is where the political wisdom lies. However, in the context of the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, looking at this from afar, as an Englishman trying to see the scene in Scotland as it unfolds, it has occurred to me that adding the idea of an English form of devolution would add something to the Better Together campaign and give it a positive role, which it sometimes lacks at the moment. The noble Lord, Lord Parekh, talked about playing on fear. I do not go that far, but nonetheless it would be a positive element to that vision.

If not before the referendum, I am absolutely at one with the noble Lord, Bourne, in saying that something has to be said about this after the referendum. There has to be some discussion of this problem because again, like the noble Lord, Lord Lang, unionism has to be refreshed. It has to be renewed and we can do that. Again, as the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, said, echoing his hero and mine, Jo Grimond, we have to bring government closer to the people. We have become too centralised in this country and people feel impotent. Wider devolution could perform that excellent service which I believe is necessary at this stage in our history.

There is an old saying “never waste a good crisis”. This is not a crisis but it is an opportunity. We should not waste it.

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Tuesday 28th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I regret the position that we seem to have reached now on constituency limits. Your Lordships’ House may recall that I proposed a very simple amendment on this issue in Committee and on Report. I suggested then that only election materials directed at electors or households in particular constituencies, or telephone calls to electors in those constituencies, should count under the specific constituency limit. That was very simple.

The Government argued that that approach was too simple and excluded too much activity, particularly the potential for handing out leaflets in a town square. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, has been diligent in attempting to deal with that problem, but I think that in the process we have been sent round in a circle. Sending information to a household is an easy test, because it is easy to know where a household is and therefore in which constituency its occupants are likely to vote. However, handing out information in a public place is different, as has been indicated, because people move around and could be from all sorts of different constituencies.

In the amendment in the name of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, we are faced with a further test: can it reasonably be inferred that the third party selected the relevant electors or households, or both, or otherwise distributed the material wholly or substantially to contact electors in the particular constituency or constituencies and not a wider section of the public? In other words, did the organisation, in doing what it was doing, mean to do it? That is quite a difficult question for anyone to answer, let alone the Electoral Commission. I am still not convinced by that and I am particularly not convinced about it in relation to election materials that are sent to households. It is perfectly clear that such materials would be constituency campaigning, and no extra test should need to be applied for such campaigning to count under a constituency limit. So this is a muddle.

The Bill as it stands says that,

“the effects of controlled expenditure are wholly or substantially confined to any particular constituencies or constituency if they have no significant effects in any other constituency or constituencies”.

I had hoped that the issue of so-called “significant effects” could be done away with—it is extremely difficult to adjudicate on that—but neither the amendment nor the Government’s position appears to do so. The amendment adds the additional test I referred to just now, and I certainly do not think that it helps in terms of clarity and transparency.

I want to put on record again my continuing concern that in raising the threshold for registration, which was welcome on a national basis, we have got ourselves into a further muddle on the application of constituency limits. This is a classic case of unintended consequences resulting from a late-stage concession.

Mr Andrew Lansley, the Leader of the Commons, put this very clearly in the other place just last week:

“Campaigners may now spend the entire constituency limit of £9,750 at any time during the regulated period, or just in the last few weeks before the election if they so wish. That makes it less restrictive and easier to comply with”.—[Official Report, Commons, 22/1/14; col. 352.]

What he did not acknowledge is that campaigners who are spending entirely in just one or two English constituencies could still spend up to just below that limit—£9,749.99—in each of the two constituencies and not even register because the threshold is £20,000.

A trade union, a maverick millionaire with an anti-European bee in his bonnet or, even, another group wanting to influence the outcome in a marginal constituency could spend serious money without anybody knowing until it was too late. So much for transparency and accountability. Under the radar, such intervention could take place without either the amount spent or who paid for it being disclosed. That remains a mistake, an unfortunate loophole weakening these measures in the Bill.

At Third Reading, I set out a simple way in which to improve the position so that those campaigning in one or two constituencies would have to register at £5,000 or, if that was thought to be too low, at least at a lower figure than the £9,750 spending limit. That would have made for the continuum that I described in that debate, where registration occurs at point X and the limit on spending occurs at point Y. The Electoral Commission, on whose advice we have to rely in matters of this sort, specifically advised that X and Y should not be in the same place, and I very much regret that the Ministers in both Houses have not been able to address that point.

These issues can really now only be dealt with in guidance from the Electoral Commission, and I wish it luck with that. As my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness said earlier, we look forward to some very substantial round-table discussions, and I hope I may be able to play a small part in them because I think this is an extremely important issue.

The introduction of a constituency limit on non-party expenditure is an extremely important principle, and really the most important measure in Part 2. I am sure Members of the other place, when they are faced with very considerable sums of money being invested in trying to unseat them, will agree with that. I welcome it for the fact that it is here in the Bill, even though I think there were two improvements that could still have been made to it. I believe those issues will now be central to the post-legislative review of the Bill after the 2015 election. I look forward to that review.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, this is a case of confusion worse confounded, so I am very much in sympathy with the points made by my noble friend Lord Tyler in that respect. I thank my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness. He has been exemplary in the way that he has sought to respond and consult, but he has been in a bit of a straitjacket for two reasons.

First, as has been said so often during the course of this Bill, if ever a Bill needed pre-legislative scrutiny it was this one, but it did not get it. That decision was taken probably at a pay grade above that of my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness, but it was a mistaken decision.

The other problem that we face, and here I make a plea to the Minister, is that we passed these amendments in this House last week and within 24 hours they were reversed in another place. That is no way to treat your Lordships’ House. There should have been wider consultation and discussion. Clearly, my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness had fruitful, although not totally successful, discussions with the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries. For that we should all be grateful, because the noble and right reverend Lord did so much with his commission and in other ways to try to improve this Bill. However, those discussions, however well meant and however protracted, were not enough. There should have been a proper opportunity for real discussion before we had to face the answer from the other end of the corridor. This is no way to treat your Lordships’ House.

As far as this particular series of amendments is concerned, we now have to rely on those round-table discussions. I am glad that the Minister felt that that was a useful suggestion and am grateful to him for acting on it and discussing it with the Electoral Commission already. I hope that those discussions will take place and that they will take place soon, but that they will not be rushed, because this is an extremely complex and difficult situation.

I know very well why the Minister said what he said this afternoon, and I also understand the argument elegantly put by my noble friend Lord Tyler. This is complex. All of us who have stood for election to the other place, or indeed for election to local councils, know that the distribution of leaflets is an inexact science. When you are doing it outside a shopping centre or a railway station or other places where people congregate, you have no idea to whom you are giving the leaflets and which constituency they come from. You have a rough idea that most of them may come from your own constituency, but many of them will not.

Let us have these discussions. Let us hope that they are fruitful. Let us hope that they can build upon the imperfect base that this Bill provides for them. Therefore, let us move on this afternoon.

[Baroness Mallalieu (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendment of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries. This amendment is plainly a compromise. It does not frustrate the intention of the Government to impose strict constituency limits. That is accepted in the amendment. It responds to the concerns of Ministers both here and in the other place that not all activity had been regulated; now it is. It meets exactly the objection of the Commons. It now includes campaigning activities of all kinds that are clearly targeted at a particularly constituency or constituencies to influence voters.

Above all, the amendment has the merit of clarity for the campaigners themselves, is more practical and is more readily enforceable. I employ, if not the exact words then the spirit, of the wise advice of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, at an earlier stage, that we should not reject an improvement in pursuit of perfection. There can be no perfection in this Bill because it has been conducted at such speed. However, this is a simple improvement that I hope that this House will insist on.

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Tuesday 21st January 2014 Lords Chamber

As the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, said, the Electoral Commission supports this amendment; indeed, he read out its words. It has played a part in approving the drafting. I hope that the Government will support it and, if a vote becomes necessary, that the House will.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I shall not detain the House for more than a few moments. I put my name to the amendment for all the reasons that the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, so splendidly and lucidly outlined. I will underline just one point, which was touched on by the noble Baroness in her concluding words. We have established in this country an Electoral Commission. It surely makes no sense to fly in the face of the commission and make its work more difficult and more complicated when it will have a difficult enough task monitoring the election in May 2015. My noble and learned friend, who has been extremely helpful and has listened with care, has come back to us with a number of improvements to this very unsatisfactory Bill—he himself has made it much more satisfactory than it was when it first came before your Lordships’ House—but I urge him to go just one step further and accept the good sense that is contained in this amendment, and to bear in mind that it has been in part drafted, as the noble Baroness said, by the Electoral Commission. We should listen to its sage advice and incorporate this amendment in the Bill.

[Lord Martin of Springburn (CB)]

Does the noble Lord envisage the third party groups being registered charities? Does he see any inhibition on a third party group being a registered charity?

[Lord Cormack]

I suppose that the answer to that question, which is a perfectly reasonable one for the noble Lord, Lord Martin, to ask, is that some would perhaps be eligible but others would not. We know from what we have debated in this Bill that not every such body can become a registered charity; it depends on what the aims are. It is possible that some could, but certainly not all of them.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, in respect of the comments made a few moments ago by my noble friend Lord Cormack about the Electoral Commission, perhaps I should put on the record that I sit on an informal cross-party advisory group for the Electoral Commission. It is not a pecuniary interest, but it means that I take very seriously its advice.

As the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, said, Amendment 11 builds on my own amendment on Report last week, and on Amendment 170A in Committee, and I welcome the fact that it is still here for our discussion. However, I believe that too much building has taken place, and I regret to say that I think that the lawyers have been too clever by half. The purpose of my amendment was to simplify drastically the operation of the constituency limit. I wanted to do away with any need for anyone to work out what did or did not have a significant effect on whom. That was the previous test, which I thought was extremely ineffective and very difficult for small organisations to address without great bureaucracy.

In my estimation, if election material that can reasonably be regarded as seeking to promote or procure the electoral success of a party or candidate has been sent directly to an elector in a constituency, it should be counted under the relevant constituency limit. That seems to be a very simple test. Likewise, if unsolicited telephone calls are made to ascertain or influence voting intentions, it is easy to know where the people whom you are calling live and to allocate those costs to a constituency limit. The amendment on Report was about simplicity.

However, my noble and learned friend the Minister made a compelling point on Report last week. He said that materials could be distributed within a constituency other than by delivering them directly to electors’ homes—they could be handed out in town centres, for example. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, has rightly tried to meet that point in proposed new sub-paragraph (1) of his amendment, but the complication of considering whether materials handed out in a town centre are trying to influence a constituency result has led him and his advisers to complicate the amendment with proposed new sub-paragraphs (2) and (3) of the amended schedule. Therein lies a problem.

The cumulative effect is to ask those campaigners—many of them small operations, as we have been constantly reminded—to consider their spending against not one test, as I advocated last week, but three. First, there is my test, which I have already given: are the phone calls and election material directed at a particular elector or household? That is easy. Then we have in this amendment, secondly: does the material have a significant effect just in the constituency to which it was sent? Who can tell? When can they tell? Perhaps they can tell only after polling day. Therein lies another problem. Then there is the third qualification: can it reasonably be inferred that the third parties selected the electors in order to contact electors in that constituency,

“and not a wider section of the public”?

Who will adjudicate on that and when?

I do not know how one can be sure of either of the latter tests, either in terms of the Electoral Commission and its very proper responsibilities, to which my noble friend Lord Cormack has just referred, or of the organisations that have been in touch with us over the past few weeks. I can see that it may be necessary in relation to the narrow issue of handing out leaflets in a town centre. After all, leaflets handed out in the town square of my old North Cornwall constituency would almost certainly be directed at North Cornwall’s results and voters, but leaflets handed out in Trafalgar Square might not be directed only at voters in the City of London and Westminster.

That is a problem—one brought about by the Minister’s legitimate concern about the distribution of leaflets in a town square. If we had more time for drafting, I would be able to find some additional tests, but only for this additional activity of handing out leaflets rather than for all deliveries that could take place. It is a rather complicated point and I apologise for that to Members of your Lordships’ House—but it is an important one.

As the amendment is drafted, it means a loophole is created, permitting direct communication with voters outwith the constituency limit because it could somehow be deemed under sub-paragraphs (2) and (3) of the amended schedule that the materials sent to them were not really supposed to influence the constituency result. I do not buy that, and at this stage it leaves a real lacuna. If you write to a voter in a constituency to promote or procure the electoral success of a party or candidate, I am confident that you are trying to promote or procure their electoral success in that constituency. That is a simple rule, and one it would be simple for campaigners big and small to follow.

At every stage of the Bill, from Second Reading right through to Report last week, I have been concerned to simplify and clarify the requirements placed on campaigners, reflecting what they—the campaigners, who are charities and other organisations—have said consistently to me and my Liberal Democrat colleagues in both Houses, and no doubt to many other Members of your Lordships’ House. None the less, I regret the position we are now in since I have pursued this issue right from Committee.

I return to the point made by my noble friend Lord Cormack: the Electoral Commission still says that it has concerns about the enforceability of a constituency limit. There needs to be a constituency limit. A revised amendment along these lines would make that more effective and much easier to enforce. Combined with the sensible changes to the constituency threshold that I outlined in the debate on the previous group of amendments, the whole regime would be much tighter and more workable, which is what the Bill sets out to achieve.

Following up on the point made by my noble friend Lord Cormack, I promised to refer to the advice given to us by the Electoral Commission. At the end of its advice to us for today, referring to Amendment 11, it said:

“We think this amendment would reduce this problem, but in practice it will still often be difficult to obtain adequate evidence of a breach at a constituency level and deal with it before polling day”.

That is an extremely important point. To that end, I hope that my noble and learned friend the Minister will respond positively to this amendment, even if it means that some simplification must be achieved in the other place tomorrow.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I thank the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, for this amendment and for the opportunity to discuss these issues on constituency limits. It is an issue that has featured in discussions not only today but at previous stages of the Bill’s passage. It is appropriate that we give consideration to this, which members of the commission might see as the outstanding item still to be addressed. The amendments are very similar to those tabled by my noble friend Lord Tyler on Report. My noble friend’s amendment, which we discussed last week, sought to narrow the range of activities which would be considered controlled expenditure for the purposes of constituency limits. Although I made no commitment on the part of the Government to returning to this at Third Reading, I indicated at the close of the debates on Report that we would ensure that officials raised these matters with the Electoral Commission.

I understand the point about simplicity. We have sought in many respects to reduce the administrative burden, but it was clear from the discussions that took place subsequently with the Electoral Commission that there was no technical fix. My noble friend Lord Tyler was almost asking me the same again at the end of his contribution to the debate on this amendment. There was not a technical fix but there might be a policy fix. It is a policy fix that is inherent in the amendment of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, which would remove some categories of expenditure from being counted towards the constituency limit. For reasons that I will explain, the Government are unable to accept that there should be that policy switch.

First, I acknowledge that, in moving the amendment, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, accepted the principle of constituency limits and sought to address one of the points of concern I had raised with regard to the amendment of my noble friend Lord Tyler. He also sought to address the practical issues raised by the Electoral Commission. In the context of trying to relieve some of the administrative burden—going back to the earlier debate, just to remind your Lordships’ House—it is also important that the original proposals had a limit for the constituency spending and a smaller limit for the post-Dissolution period. There was a much smaller limit for campaigning activity that could be spent between the date of the Dissolution of Parliament and the election. We have taken away that interim threshold, again in an effort to help smaller organisations which may be campaigning in one constituency.

We believe that these amendments would require that any expenditure on election material addressed or delivered to households, and any unsolicited telephone calls made with a view to ascertaining households’ voting intentions, would be attributed to a particular constituency or constituencies for the purposes of the limits. The noble and right reverend Lord’s intention appears to be that only expenditure on such activities should count towards constituency limits. He goes further than my noble friend Lord Tyler did last week to suggest considering the costs associated with the distribution of materials otherwise in a constituency—which was the example I gave. I fully accept the example that I gave of activity in a shopping centre, which clearly would relate to the one activity.

I was somewhat bemused by the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, when she complained that there was a loophole. It appears to me that if you take away other activities which have to contribute towards controlled expenditure, the loophole gets bigger. She indicated that it could be a loophole to have a rally just over the constituency boundary. First, whether a rally against a hospital closure that promotes the electoral success of one particular candidate counts towards a constituency limit depends on whether it has a significant effect in that constituency. Albeit that it takes place over the boundary in a neighbouring constituency, it could still have a significant effect in the first constituency and would therefore come within it. Of course, the loophole that would be created by this amendment would be the rally in the constituency itself—over the boundary it would not count at all. I believe that is a criticism: there are activities that would not therefore come within the definition of “controlled expenditure”.

Constituency limits for third parties mean that they cannot outspend and overwhelm candidates and political parties, who after all are the main actors in an election. The noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn, made an important point, reminding us that elections are about the names of candidates on the ballot paper. It is not right that a candidate or a party campaigning in a constituency could be targeted by a third party with greater means and a greater spending limit at its disposal.

Taking into account both the long and short campaigning period limits, the most a candidate at the last parliamentary general election could have spent was £55,000; that is for the entire period. I may have misunderstood what the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, said, but I thought she said at one point that parties could spend without limit. That is not the case. There is a limit on political parties. Indeed, in the course of the election period—the short campaign from the Dissolution of Parliament—it is roughly £12,000 to £13,000, depending on the number of electors, a figure that was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Cormack in one of our earlier debates.

However, a third party could choose to spend the entirety of its current spending limit in one small area, campaigning against that and other candidates or the parties they represent. That could be very substantial if one allows a range of activities not to be in any way brought into controlled expenditure. We have previously heard concerns that third parties, although an important part of the democratic process, can also be so closely aligned to a political party as to be effectively campaigning to promote that party. It is right that we take account of that. That is why the Bill introduces a number of provisions to give greater transparency to the activities and expenditure of third parties. The limits on constituency spending are a key element of the entire package in the Bill. The controlled expenditure incurred on the entire range of activities, not just those few proposed by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, should be attributable to constituency limits.

Third parties are not merely in the business of distributing leaflets. They arrange and hold events, rallies and press conferences. They bus campaigners from area to area, delivering large groups of people to distribute those leaflets, or to take part in rallies or other events. Not to include these activities would mean that third parties could still continue to hold local media events on a weekly, or even daily, basis in the run-up to an election without any of that expenditure being brought within controlled limits. It would mean a third party could hold a rally on the eve of an election, secure in the knowledge that it need not account for the cost other than on a nationwide basis. It would mean that a third party could bus hundreds of campaigners into marginal constituencies and overwhelm the work of the candidates in that constituency.

These are all significant activities, and it is right that third parties should be required to account for them on a constituency basis. Narrowing the scope of constituency limits would address only half the problem. On that basis, recognising that in an election the actors are the candidates themselves, it was unfair, particularly in the period from the Dissolution of Parliament until the election, that they were limited to a relatively small sum of money—£12,000 or £13,000—while if you got two third-party groups in the same constituency, they could spend up to £19,750. We do not think that it is reasonable that a loophole should be created.

[Lord Cormack]

I would be most grateful if the Minister would reflect on one suggestion. I think that he would agree with me that Clause 29 is not the easiest of clauses to understand, particularly for those who are not familiar with legislative language. Would the Minister be prepared to have a conference with the Electoral Commission to try to draw up some mutually agreed guidelines to, and interpretation of, this new law? It is very important, and that would be extremely helpful—particularly bearing in mind that we have this ridiculous businesses of the Bill being in another place tomorrow. I cannot see the reason for that; maybe the Minister could comment on it.

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

Before the Minister finishes his speech, may I, too, ask him a question, to which I would be grateful for a response? All the examples that he has cited seem to be hypothetical. What examples does he have of the kind of conduct that he is railing against actually taking place? Where is the mischief that he seeks to legislate against?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, very briefly, we are much indebted to my noble friend Lord Horam for what he said. He has clearly demonstrated admirable restraint during this Bill, knowing—as he has now made clear—that the Electoral Commission was far from happy and that he, as a member of that commission, shared at least some of that unhappiness.

This is an object lesson in how not to do things. I warmly commend my noble friend and my noble and learned friend—the brace of Lord Wallaces—for all they have done to make a very bad Bill palatable. They have exercised infinite patience, great care and unfailing courtesy, and we should all be extremely grateful for that. But that does not absolve the Government from blame for bringing in a Bill of this complexity in this way. I have said before, and will say again for the final time on this Bill, that if ever a Bill cried out for pre-legislative scrutiny it was this one. I sincerely hope that that lesson has been learned and that in future complex Bills of this nature, touching as they do on constitutional and parliamentary issues, will have the benefit of pre-legislative scrutiny. We have had a series of patch, make-do and mend amendments, many of them introduced by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, himself. I repeat: we are grateful for that, but that is not a substitute for a carefully drawn-up Bill that really meets a need.

My noble friend Lord Horam touched on the complexity of the Bill. Legislation should be readily understandable by those to whom it applies. When one brings in a whole range of new provisions that many of the bodies with which the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, has been involved never anticipated, they really should have the benefit of consultation. We now have placed before us what is a bit of a catch-all, Henry VIII clause. In principle I do not like Henry VIII clauses, but I concede that in this particular Bill something like it is probably necessary.

I am grateful to my noble and learned friend for responding so positively to the suggestion I made earlier about a round-table conference. That is good and he rightly said in that context that he wanted to go beyond the Electoral Commission. It is also very necessary that there are detailed discussions with the Electoral Commission directly. I suggest those involve leaders of the Opposition, too, because this Bill is likely to last quite a long time. As it is worked through, we need to make sure that all—or most of—the things we have said we feared do not come to pass.

My final words on the Bill in this House are that this has been an interesting exercise. I do not believe that we have produced something truly worthy of the important subject, but I agree with my noble friend Lord Horam that we have been able to demonstrate the value of this House in making a very bad Bill palatable in the way we have.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD)]

My Lords, I dip the tiniest of toes into the waters of this Bill, not as chair of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee but as somebody who knows a tiny bit about Henry VIII clauses, just to reassure noble Lords that this kind of power is well precedented and here it is very narrowly drawn. The House need not worry that the Government are in some way exceeding their powers or doing something they should not on this occasion. That is all I wish to say on this, but it has been very instructive to sit here and listen to the last few hours of debate on the Bill.

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Wednesday 15th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morris of Aberavon]

Given that the definition I have quoted refers to “production of material”, I assume that that material is included in the definition. You cannot usually translate anything unless you have something on paper to look at, which enables you to translate it. Therefore, this is an initial step in production. I emphasise, for the third time, that the definition refers to,

“the production … of material which is made available to the public”.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I very much hope that the comments made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, will be taken seriously by my noble and learned friend, as I am sure they will be. However, I will direct some very brief comments to Amendment 34, which was moved with commendable brevity by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth.

We live in a very different age from people who were active in politics even 20 or 30 years ago. I do not know whether the mass membership political party is a thing of the past or not, but it is certainly not a thing of the present. We live in an age in which single-issue groups and associations predominate and have a collective membership far in excess of the Conservative Party, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrat party put together. One can illustrate that with one statistic: the National Trust now has over 4 million paid-up members. In this new age, we have to be very conscious of the fact that we should pass no legislation in this House that in any way inhibits the expression of legitimate opinion. The Bill endangers that expression of legitimate opinion.

If ever there was a Bill that cried out for pre-legislative scrutiny, it is this one, but it has not had it. In saying that, I level no criticism at my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness, who has been exemplary in the manner in which he personally has sought to meet and discuss with people who have legitimate concerns and interests. Therefore, I exonerate him from all blame, but I still say to him that this is a Bill that is far from perfect. It is a Bill that should never have been presented in this form to either House of Parliament.

Another thing that makes the present age different from very recent ones is the dynamics of the fixed-term Parliament. Until a future Parliament has the good sense to repeal that Act—which I hope will not be too long distant—the fact is that we know when the next election will be and the election after that and so on. So we have a year of purdah as far as interests groups, charities and others are concerned. The simple aim of Amendment 34 is to try to alleviate some of the problems that that creates.

I very much hope that when my noble friend responds to this brief debate—and I hope that it will be a brief debate because we have a long day before us and many important issues to discuss—he will acknowledge the powerful arguments put forward by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, which are supported by many of us. If the Minister cannot give the assurances that we seek, I hope that he will at least give the assurance that he will reflect on this matter, have further discussions and come back at Third Reading, because we need to make this very, very imperfect—no, this very, very bad—Bill a little more palatable than it is currently.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, I have two amendments in this group. In preparing my notes, I had intended to say precisely what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, said just a few minutes ago. It is the responsibility of this House to try to make sure that anything that leaves us is as good as it can be and as perfect as we can achieve. Today, therefore, we are all together in seeking modest amendments in most cases, but important ones that make the Bill more workable, more acceptable and more democratic.

Before I come to the two specific amendments on which my name leads, I should very much like to support the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, in his Amendment 34. It is important for the sake of civic society that we enable people to get fully involved in the dialogue with Parliament about the legislation that goes through the two Houses. I hope that, in one way or another, my noble friend will be able to make that absolutely clear. It must surely be right that, when legislation is going through both Houses of Parliament, our fellow citizens are in a position to campaign without let or hindrance to improve that legislation. I very much hope that we will have reassurance on that point.

Amendment 40, which stands in my name and in the names of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, my noble friend Lord Cormack and the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, is quite simply about bringing the concept of supporter up to date. I echo here a point made by my noble friend Lord Cormack a few minutes ago. When I was first involved in politics, those of us who wanted to engage in the political process, in the main, joined a political party. I did so as a student and I suspect that many others in your Lordships’ House did the same. Some then drifted off into other occupations. I stayed with politics, to my obvious detriment in terms of income compared with the lawyers in your Lordships’ House. From that period to now there have been dramatic changes in society. Many then did join parties; others might have joined campaigning groups. Some of those groups are still with us and still have a mass membership. In those days, it was very much the culture of the age, particularly among young people, but people today support campaigns à la carte. They do not get involved in just one campaign and stick with it to the exclusion of all others. They are involved for a time but their priorities change, just as in the consumer world people expect now to pick and choose. You go to one supermarket for one purpose and to another for another, to one airline for an outward flight and another to come home again. You do not necessarily feel that you have to join up to one hospital even—you choose. It is part of the culture of our age.

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[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

Which, of course, it has not done. I suspect the reason is that when the person I was speaking to went back to the chief commissioner and the chief executive, they said, “My goodness, we can’t go into print admitting that we’ve made a mistake”.

[Lord Cormack]

I am very grateful. Of course, I was also minded to support my noble friend. However, time is at a premium. There is clearly a problem here. Would it not be better to have discussions with the Charity Commission and the Minister between now and Third Reading, and then, perhaps, to table an amendment that does have their support? We can waste an awful lot of time on this. I am not being critical of my noble friend, for whom I have very real regard, but he has been speaking for a quarter of an hour or more and we have very important issues that we must determine today.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I am in a cleft stick; I have indeed got 15 minutes on the Clock, but my noble friend will accept that I have been interrupted five times now, which takes a wee bit out of one’s available argument time. I will keep this as short as I can. It is unfortunate—let us put it that way—that we have a letter at the 59th minute of the 11th hour which is, at best, unclear.

I know that a number of my colleagues have different points to make. It has been said, time and again, that there should be a level playing field between non-charitable NGOs and charitable NGOs. Well, yes and no. First, we have a whole lot of improvements for the non-charity NGOs. Secondly, however, the reason we persist in seeking this important change is precisely because charities are basically different in kind, not just because they have a separate branch of law and a separate regulator.

The bureaucratic consequences for charities having to meet the demands of two regulators will be significant. Although the thresholds have been raised, which is important, the number of charities that will still be swept up by this legislation is far greater than many Members of this House may think. It will be many thousands. It does not take a great deal to rack up £20,000 if you are a charity with a few branches around the country.

Secondly, given that the vast majority of charities have no paid staff, the people who will have to implement this complex bureaucratic stuff are not professionals but volunteers. Simply tooling up a charity that is wholly run by volunteers to cope with this new regime and all that it means will be a massive and demoralising task for so many of them. Frankly, volunteers do not want to spend their precious hours getting to understand the legislation that we are in the process of putting on the statute book and then trying to get to grips with it in practical terms, filling in the forms and all the rest of it. The consequences, I put it to the House, will still be huge, despite the number of charities that are, on the face of it, taken out of the purview of these provisions by the raising of thresholds and the rest of it. I cannot emphasise that too strongly.

Let us suppose that you are a trustee of a charity. You will not have a paid chief executive, so it may be a senior volunteer who comes to you and says, “Look, Mr Phillips, we have this new legislation. We do not think we are touched by it because we do not think we will reach the threshold, but what do you want us to do?”. I am afraid an awful lot of trustees will say—

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[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I strongly support the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, on this amendment. Indeed, we had very co-operative discussions about how best to tackle this problem. I am grateful to him and, indeed, to others who effectively endorsed an amendment we tabled in Committee on this crucial issue.

Given that there was much quotation of the Electoral Commission’s advice earlier, it is important that it has very explicitly said that Amendment 45 offers some advantages over the current position in the Bill. With this amendment, at least, we have that endorsement.

As I said in Committee, the Electoral Commission actually thinks that counting staff costs for political parties’ election expenses would be an appropriate way to proceed. Of course, that is not in front of us today; it may be for another day and another Bill. For the purposes of this Bill, the NGOs have been dealing with a considerable problem: namely, that the Bill includes not only staff costs on direct campaigning but what are called “background costs”.

As my noble friend will no doubt point out, staff costs for non-parties are already regulated for the production and distribution of election material. Our amendment suggests that this should continue but that costs should also be accounted for if they are incurred in direct relation to canvassing voters. In that context it seems that it would not be very difficult to identify the particular costs; equally, however, we do not want to increase the difficulties that could be caused by burdensome regulation on background costs that are not in any way so easy to account for. For example, the costs in relation to organising meeting rooms, travelling to a venue or setting up a press conference might be a matter of a few minutes of somebody’s time—and therefore, for many small organisations, a considerable absurdity.

Bluntly, I do not think that anyone cares if a policy officer, whose job for the rest of the year is something completely different, spends a little time booking a room for an election rally, or incurs costs travelling to it. These matters cannot be said to be likely to greatly affect the outcome of an election in that particular area, or nationally. However, if the regulations go through without us thinking about the implications, they could unnecessarily tie up campaigners in accounting for their time—and, worse still, could deter some from campaigning at all.

As was said so forcibly earlier, there are many organisations in this country—and thank God for them—that rely entirely on time being given voluntarily to this sort of activity. Would it be necessary to try to cost that time, or would it be difficult, in any case, whether they were employed or volunteers? Many a charity and many a non-charity would find that totally inconsistent with the Government’s intention of avoiding unnecessary spending on unnecessary bureaucracy.

This amendment, along with some of the others, helps the Government to do what they say they want to do. I hope, therefore, that my noble and learned friend will be able to find some way of making a sensible compromise on the whole issue of staffing costs.

The Government have moved sensibly in so many ways to try to meet the concerns and anxieties about the so-called chilling effect that many of us have understood to be the case with organisations with which we are involved. Many noble Lords are active members of charities and non-charities that do such important work in civil society today. Surely, the last thing that we want to happen is for the time, energy, enterprise, inventive activity and, indeed, the cost of those organisations to be unnecessarily distorted by new bureaucracy of the sort that could occur. Therefore, I very much hope that the Government will see that this is a sensible compromise on the whole issue of staffing costs.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I have attended a number of meetings which the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, has convened and I, for one, am extremely grateful to him for the leadership that he has given and the amount of time he has devoted to the Bill over the past few months. Last week, following those meetings, I met with the chief executive officers of two important charities. I do not intend to name them because I did not say that I would, but when I asked them, “If we could get only one amendment through the House next week, where would your priority be?”, they said that it would be on staffing costs.

Any regulations imposed as a result of the Bill should be clear, simple and, above all, fair. The problem with this is that we would be faced with regulations that would be far from clear or simple, and which would most certainly not be fair. Because I do not want to take the time of the House when we have already had a clear and brief exposition from the noble and right reverend Lord, all I will say is: let us this evening make sure, as far as we can, that that clarity, simplicity and fairness is in the Bill.

I, too, am grateful to my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness and to the other Lord Wallace, my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire, who we are all delighted to see back—but I urge them to go this one further step. They have done a great deal to try to make a bad Bill better; they can take another step this evening.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, the inclusion of staffing costs is hugely burdensome for large and small campaigning organisations. We have heard that tonight and we have all received e-mails and had discussions with campaigning organisations. Like the Electoral Commission, our preference would be for all staffing costs to be taken out for the 2015 election period. However, we recognise that this is an excellent compromise and I urge the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, to accept it. Later on this evening the noble and learned Lord will be putting a review into the Bill, which could be an opportunity to revisit these things, so I very much hope that he will accept the amendment.

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[Lord Tyler]

I have a separate amendment in this group. We all welcome the way in which my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire and my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness have responded to the request for an increase in the registration thresholds. This was a key recommendation of the commission headed by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and it certainly deserved to be listened to.

In this last-minute change to the Government’s position, however, there is one new outstanding problem. The interaction between the national thresholds for registration and the constituency limits in the Bill simply do not hold together. As we will discuss in the next group, I believe very strongly that the constituency limits are a very important part of this Bill. Indeed, I am sure Members on all sides of your Lordships’ House are aware that if we did send back to the other place a Bill that did not deal with this point, many people there would think that we were not doing our duty.

For the constituency limits to be effective, those who spend at a constituency level will surely need to make an expenses return about what they are spending. The rules in the 2000 Act and in the Bill rightly also ask where the money is coming from. There is, however, a problem. As the Bill will stand in the light of these new government amendments, someone could be spending £9,750 in a constituency, or indeed could spend £19,500 across two English constituencies, yet would not have to register. The registration limit is now raised to £20,000, and therefore that spending and its sources would be totally opaque. It would not be transparent even though £9,750 could have a significant impact on the constituency result.

In my own amendments on thresholds in Committee, I suggested that this problem could be dealt with by stipulating that the threshold should be at a particular level which would take that into account. The Government have chosen £20,000, and that is fine, except that all the spending could be concentrated in one target marginal constituency. A group could spend a significant sum—I am suggesting £5,000 in my amendment—all in one place. Surely in those circumstances it should have to register.

The Government’s answer has been that somebody who spends more than £9,750 in one constituency will be committing an offence under their proposals. If that someone does not have to register, because he is below the new registration threshold, how can anyone know that he is committing that offence? I cannot think—and I know a little bit about these things—of any other part of electoral law in which someone who is subject to a spending limit is yet not required to produce any paperwork on what he is spending. Introducing that concept now would make for a completely absurd anomaly.

[Lord Cormack]

Will the noble Lord not agree with me that there would be more logic in having a figure that was close to that which an individual candidate is entitled to spend? No individual candidate is entitled to spend as much as £20,000 in any constituency in the United Kingdom.

[Lord Tyler]

My noble friend is right. He and I have relatively recent experience of these things. The normal figure is around £12,000 during the election period. As I will come to in a moment, that could be swamped under these proposals, and therefore this is an absurd anomaly. I understand why the Government have arrived at their position. Their formula sounds simple, but it may be so simple as to be unequal to the task in hand. Equally, the move in Amendment 53 to do away with different limits for constituency spending seven months before an election, and constituency spending seven days before, seems to me to lose what is an important and not particularly complex distinction in the name of simplicity—and I am not sure the Government have got this right.

I ask the Minister to consider carefully the horror story that could emerge. Imagine: a campaigning group could come into a constituency and spend £19,999.99 in the last seven days of the campaign with the aim of affecting the outcome in that constituency, and it would not need to register. A second group, unrelated to the first, could, during those seven days, do the same. It would not register. A third group, unrelated to the other two—not a coalition, not working together— could do the same. In the last few days of a campaign in a marginal constituency, just under £60,000 could be spent, completely swamping the amount permitted for a candidate and a party, which is around £12,000, in one constituency. The candidates are, as I say, limited in those final four to six weeks.

Because this spending would not be registered, it might not be revealed until after polling day. Think of the mess that that would cause to our electoral law. Because such groups, though technically in breach of the law, would not need to register, no one would be any the wiser about what they had been up to. My noble and learned friend has said that he is looking at this section with a view to some clarification, and I think he will have to agree that there is a major loophole looming in front of us. I therefore request that he look carefully at Amendment 46ZA. He may find a better solution but a solution must be found, otherwise political parties and those who will be looking at this legislation when it goes back to the other place will not have seen this particular problem, because until now the registration threshold has not been so high. It is only under the present Government’s changes in this House that it has been raised to this height.

I hope that my noble and learned friend will be able to give some reassurance to those of us on all sides of the House who are concerned about such spending that the Government are not prepared to accept this loophole.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

My Lords, Amendment 46A in my name concerns the spending cap for England. First I would like, on behalf of the commission, to warmly welcome the raising of the registration thresholds by the Government. I think that has done more than anything else to reassure the smaller charities; we give the Government a very warm thank you. We also warmly welcome the raising of the spending cap for Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. The spending cap for England, unlike that for Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, has been reduced by 60%. That reduction has taken place with an increase in the number of activities to be regulated and without taking inflation into account.

It is true that not many campaigning groups and very few, if any, charities would spend a high figure coming anywhere near that. The one I have checked that does spend quite a lot of money is Hope not Hate, which campaigns against racism all over the country. It is not a charity but a campaigning group. In 2010 it spent £319,231. That is very nearly the limit for England as we have it under the Bill, which is £319,800.

There was no evidence of abuse with the previous spending caps for England, and no rationale has been given for this reduction by 60%. Even if the Government are not willing to revert to the PPERA limits for England, I ask the Minister whether he sees any scope for some kind of compromise between the drastic reduction which has been brought about by the Bill and the spending limits there were for PPERA.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I will add just a few words to what I said a few minutes ago. I fought 12 general elections, in 10 of which I was elected, to go to the other place. In every one of those the expenditure that I was allowed was very clearly defined. The returns that one had to make afterwards were minutely examined, and there have been cases within our memory where candidates have been challenged on their returns because they were a little careless in submitting them. We have to be extremely careful. The last election I fought was in 2005, and if I remember rightly I was allowed to spend around £8,000 or £9,000. My noble friend says that it is now about £12,000, and I accept that—I am sure he is right. It was all very carefully defined, and we have to be careful, much as we all want to protect free speech and engagement in campaign and all the rest of it, that the expenditure of candidates who stand for particular political parties or as independents is not put into the shade by the expenditure that is allowed to campaigning organisations within individual constituencies. Although I do not suppose that my noble friend Lord Tyler will push his amendment to the vote, I hope that the Minister will reflect upon what he and I have said.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby (LD)]

My Lords, when at these debates, I have always felt that not enough attention is paid to the real danger of our fragile system of controlling election expenditure beginning to break down altogether. I am strongly in favour of charities having the right to campaign and being free to speak out about what they believe—that is absolutely right—and a huge contribution is made to us as a society in that way. Frankly, however, I am frightened that here, on the edge of the Third Reading of the Bill, we have observed and commented upon two huge anomalies that are still with us and still in the Bill, which open the door to the misuse of some aspects of the Bill in a way that would make the holding of that line against the misuse of public and private expenditure very difficult to hold.

Throughout my whole political life I have been very conscious, like the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, of the importance of the restrictions on the amount of money that passes into the British political system and what a huge benefit that has been to us in terms of retaining a democracy that is genuinely a democracy of the right of every individual to vote. Some of my colleagues in this House will know that I have been very much affected by the recent history of the United States, having been for 10 years an elective politics professor at Harvard, between 1986 and 1996. I will quickly say what so frightens me.

In 2010, the American Supreme Court decided to lift all restrictions on what amounts of money could be given by either corporations or trade unions directly to campaigns at the federal level. One of the outcomes of that—a decision that was made, let the House not forget, in 2010—was that in 2012 no less than $6 billion was poured into federal elections in the United States in a one-year electoral cycle. That was not enough. The sweeping away of all those restrictions was based upon the constitutional right of free speech, in my view distorted in a very troubling way. Today, the Supreme Court of 2014 has on its agenda yet another proposal, McCutcheon v Federal Election Commission, which would enable any individual, without restriction, to contribute any amount he or she wishes to the election of an individual named federal candidate—in other words, it is back to Eatanswill and the buying of politicians.

The United States is a great and very open democracy, but we are rapidly seeing the gradual distortion of its democracy by huge expenditure of money for other purposes than simply a desire to register a particular campaigning goal. I fully take the point that every step that can be taken has been taken to avoid that in the Bill. I am dubious about the proposal of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, to increase substantially the limit. However, I appreciate that the original limit was almost certainly too drastically cut. There is a median way there.

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[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

I support the amendment for the reasons that the noble Lord has set out. Constituency limits have been of very great concern to charities and campaigning organisations. I am fully aware of the kind of concerns raised by the noble Baroness, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, indicated, this issue has also been a very great concern for the Electoral Commission because it does not see how it can regulate and enforce this area. The noble Lord’s amendment will make it far easier for charities to be regulated by the law and for the Electoral Commission to regulate it.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, an amendment that can produce a joint letter from the National Secular Society and the Christian Institute clearly deserves careful consideration. When they take into account that the Electoral Commission also believes that there is good sense in this proposal, I hope that your Lordships will feel likewise. I hope that we will not have to exercise ourselves by going into the Lobbies. I hope that my noble and learned friend will be able to indicate at least a significant degree of sympathy with this and, if he cannot accept these precise words, that he will undertake to come back at Third Reading next week with something similar.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, we also strongly support the amendment. It is not the provision’s intention that we have problems with but its workability. It will add an enormous bureaucratic burden. When people campaign against the proposed path of HS2, flight paths around Heathrow or fracking and so on, that is not divided up by constituency. It is strange that a Government who are cutting red tape elsewhere, and who on Monday said that they could not possibly ask special advisers to list their meetings with lobbyists, seem to want this for really small organisations. Amendment 52, which limits the requirement to telephone calls and literature aimed at households, is immensely sensible. I hope that the Government will do one of two things: either accept the amendment or put off their new rules until after the next election.

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[Lord Tyler]

I very much welcome the initiative that my noble friends have taken on this. It is vastly preferable to a sunset clause, precisely because it will start at the right moment. The timing is going to be critical, as the noble and right reverend Lord and my noble and learned friend said, because it will see right through the process of the next election and beyond. For that reason it is preferable to a sunset clause.

I, too, wonder whether the precise definition of a “person” is appropriate to this, but we will have to judge it on its results. Because my noble and learned friend has put into his amendment that a copy of the report will be laid before Parliament, the process thereon is extremely interesting. If major changes are required in this legislation, we will need to know quite quickly in order that we do not run into another period of rapid digestion, as we have on the Bill.

I particularly want to underline the point made by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, just now. We should have this review of the 2000 Act. I take some responsibility, because I sit on a little, totally informal cross-party advisory group for the Electoral Commission. We were never forewarned of all the problems with the 2000 Act that have now come to light—not least, the coalition issue to which the noble Lord has just referred. It has been 13 years; the Electoral Commission never forewarned us of the difficulties it was encountering in giving appropriate advice to organisations that wished to campaign in this field. The Minister has taken elaborate and proper precautions to make sure that the situation never arises again, and I congratulate the Government on that.

[Lord Cormack]

Briefly, I add my congratulations and thanks. Those who criticise—and I have been very critical of aspects of the Bill—should always praise when the right thing is done. I am exceptionally grateful to my noble friend and his ministerial colleagues for putting this amendment into the Bill. It is a very satisfactory outcome and I agree entirely with what the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and my noble friend Lord Tyler said.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, we, too, warmly welcome this amendment and the fact that there will be a review, and that a report will be laid before Parliament. The timing is absolutely correct. Should there be a Labour Government after 2015—and in 2016 when the report is laid before Parliament—as I very much hope, if there are any recommendations for change I will guarantee at this Dispatch Box that there will be proper consultation and that if any legislation is necessary, there will be pre-legislative scrutiny of such legislation.

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[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

I feel deeply privileged to belong to such a broad church as is suggested by this amendment. I little thought that I would have the privilege of standing in the same rank as the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, and the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, but I am utterly sincere in the support that I give to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. When he very respectably sought to accost me some days ago to support this matter, I had misconceived the situation. I thought he was seeking to place political parties on a charitable basis, which of course would have been utterly improper. The definition of charity, however impractical it may be in the modern period, is well laid down in the statute of Elizabeth I and in the authority of Re Pemsel, which I still remember from my student days.

That is not at all what the amendment is about. It is a question of what fuel there should be available in a democracy to any political movement. That fuel, I suggest, is the united will of millions of people, of government, opposition or a third force, or a fourth, for that matter. That fuel is the desire and hopes of millions of individual people, possibly for tens of thousands of different reasons, but it is the amalgam of that united force that gives politics significance.

If you interfere with that system from above by the injection of vast amounts of money, you corrupt that system. It was Oliver Goldsmith, in the 18th century, who had these words:

“Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,

Where wealth accumulates, and men decay”.

In this case, wealth will diminish completely the significance of democratic politics. Now, we will say, “That is highly idealistic and immensely impractical”. It may well be, but we are deeply grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, who is a brave, iconoclastic, reforming character and to whom the House owes a great debt.

In America, in the two elections that President Obama has won, it may very well be that there were tactical and highly materialistic reasons why he chose to rely on millions of people rather than on the support of a few wealthy, almighty subjects. Be that as it may, it gave those campaigns impetus and significance. That is exactly what this amendment proposes. It may very well be that the amounts that are mentioned could be debated high and low. That does not matter at all. The significance is that we wish to see politics as an amalgam of millions of people with desires supported, we hope, by the substantial subvention of most of those people.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I have always believed that public life is a vocation. I greatly regret the decline in membership of political parties over the nearly 44 years that I have been in the Palace of Westminster; I touched upon that in an earlier amendment today. We do not know the precise figures, but our three major political parties in this country together have probably less than a quarter of the membership of the National Trust. That is a dismal statistic, which we should all take to heart. However, we have to recognise the realities. One of those is that if the proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, were adopted—and in principle I support them—they would not have an immediate and enormous transforming influence. I am glad to see him nodding assent.

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[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords—

[Lord Cormack]

I will finish in one second. As one of our colleagues pointed out, this does not confuse political parties with charities but elevates the role of the political party in our national life, and it would be right to have some form of tax concession for those who nail their colours to a mast, be it blue, red or yellow.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

I have fought long and hard about the point the noble Lord has just made. The difficulty is this: I know that among those who will vote against my amendment in the Lobby tonight there will be many who support it.

[Lord Cormack]

Of course—I was going to say “my noble friend”, but he is my friend—the noble Lord may well be right. However, I remember the famous words of Jack Straw, when a lot of people in the other place voted for an all-elected second Chamber on the advice of the Labour leader of the campaign for an appointed second Chamber, although he then acknowledged that he had made a tactical mistake. Jack Straw kept saying, “A vote is a vote, and that’s all that counts”. That is what will be said tonight. The noble Lord should reflect very seriously on that.

We also have to consider whether the Bill is the right one in which to insert such an amendment.

[Lord Tyler]

I am very grateful to my noble friend and I know that he shares with me the same objectives. I think that he is advancing the old, old argument of unripe time, which we hear in this House so often. If you wait for the ripe time, it is usually when it has gone bad again, when it has gone beyond ripeness. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, by saying that the actual introduction would not take place until beyond the next general election, is simply insisting that we should put down a marker of the direction in which we wish to go. If we are not permitted to do that, what are we allowed to do in this House?

[Lord Cormack]

Of course we are permitted to do that, but at the same time it is not unreasonable to talk about the practicalities. The fact of the matter is that if we have a vote tonight, this amendment will be very heavily defeated. It will not advance the cause. Whereas if we do not have a vote tonight, the statement of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, which I believe not to be hyperbole but to be accurate—that there are many, many members of your Lordships’ House who are sympathetic to this point of view—will stand on the record. What will stand on the record if we have a vote is that because of a very, very small number of people, for a variety of reasons—one of them being that this may not be the right vehicle for such an amendment—the figures will not be encouraging to our cause.

I end by pleading with noble colleagues in all parts of the House that we seek in our respective parties to begin a campaign to advance this and that we talk to our colleagues in the other place as well. That is crucially important, as they are the people who get elected. Tonight is not the moment to be heavily defeated when we know, and the noble Lord in particular knows, that there is such widespread sympathy for the principle that he has very reasonably advanced.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

Surely—

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord, but I am very conscious of the Companion and I am very conscious that we are at Report. I sense that noble Lords would like to make progress. I apologise for intervening.

[Lord Cormack]

I was just about to sit down anyhow.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

My reason for having supported the noble Lord in Committee and again tonight is that if, like me, noble Lords participate in the Lord Speaker’s outreach programme, they will know that when you go to schools up and down the country the issue that comes up again and again and again is that of money. We have a generation of schoolchildren about to go to university who have grown up with the idea that this is a dishonourable place where rich men and influential groups have a power because of their ability to fund.

The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has put forward some incremental steps, which I support. I can only believe that the Front Benches cannot support them because they believe somehow, or they fear, that the comparative advantage, or competitive advantage, will be lost forever. They cannot think what it is, but something might come out of the woodwork that leaves one party at a disadvantage forever.

Sometimes, somewhere, we have to be brave, because against the £2 million to £3 million that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has said that it was going to cost, is the drip, drip, drip of damaging information about the behaviour and performance of this Parliament. That cannot be right for our country, whatever your political beliefs. Someone, sometime, somewhere has to be brave, and we need to give them a nod tonight to get on and be brave as soon as possible.

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[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

I am happy to have added my name to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, for the reasons that he articulated so clearly. Reading through the guidance provided by the Charity Commission, both its general guidance and its specific guidance for election periods, it is clear that it covers the same kind of ground as the guidance of the Electoral Commission—it has to give the same kind of detailed guidance—and it must make total sense for the two bodies to produce some co-ordinated guidance. I do not think that we need any reminding that guidance for future elections will be crucial. There are so many complex areas here, and this whole subject has been so raised, that charities and campaigning groups will need to be crystal clear as to what part of their activity is covered by the regulation and what is not. I am therefore very happy to support the amendment.

[Lord Cormack]

I am glad to add my name to the amendment. I was delighted to hear what my noble friend Lord Horam had to say, but I see no harm in putting this provision into the Bill. I hope that when my noble and learned friend the Minister replies, it will not just be with honeyed words but with a promise of a taste of honey.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, this will be my shortest contribution through the whole length of this Bill, as I hope the night shift will appreciate. I want to make just one point: I am not sure whether the solution suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, is right; I am absolutely convinced that there is a problem. I instance that by saying that, as somebody who has been involved in this area for years, I have never had advice or guidance on the problems that we have heard about so often in recent weeks from anybody in the Charity Commission. The first time that I ever heard from the Charity Commission was at 6.30 last night. There is a clear need for comprehensive, careful and co-ordinated advice from the two organisations. It has not been there in the past. They have not fulfilled their responsibilities to Parliament, to which they are responsible, over many years, and it is about time that they did. Throughout today’s discussion, it has been apparent that this lack of co-ordinated information from the two organisations has been one of the major problems that many organisations have had to face, as well as parliamentarians.