Political Party Finance and the Electoral Commission

Lord Shamash Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shamash (Lab)]

My Lords, thank you for allowing me to speak in the gap. I declare an interest, having been the election lawyer to the Labour Party for many decades. I will talk about one small, narrow issue. One frustrating issue is the consolidation of the Representation of the People Act—the number of volumes that I have on my desk is so wide. It is about time we did this; it has been called for for years.

I am particularly concerned about enforcement. The way to deal with it is quite tricky. If an MP has transgressed, you can commence an election petition. That is very expensive to do, and parties and people I have advised over the years have had to think twice about whether it something for which they want to take the risk. There is a piece of legislation that many noble Lords will know: the Recall of MPs Act 2015, where MPs can be recalled if they are convicted or suspended by the House of Commons. I invite my noble friend the Minister to think about how we could revisit that legislation and whether the better bits of it could perhaps be incorporated into a separate or amended bit of legislation, with some enforcement powers. When foreign money comes in and seeks to promote whoever it is, and that candidate wins an election, they are there; they are elected. The procedure to get rid of them must be easier, clearer and obvious to the public, otherwise people will give up because they do not have the resources or the political commitment to it. I ask the Minister to think about it, and I am happy to meet him separately to see how we could take this forward.

The noble Lord, Lord Jay, raised the issue of enforcement. It is important for the Electoral Commission to have the power to be able to achieve this, but we must be very careful about giving it too much power, because we do not want it breathing down the necks of all the politicians. I am sure many noble Lords who have been involved in politics over the years would not want that. I thank noble Lords and I hope that the Minister will now consolidate the Representation of the People Act.