Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Soley Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

I support my noble friend on Amendments 8 and 9; they are important. I do not want to spend time on this, but I re-emphasise what has been said; on several occasions we have been promised changes and concessions that have been needed throughout the Bill, but we have had nothing. This does not reflect well on the Government; it reflects very badly, and it is a large part of the reason why we have problems on this.

I shall address the issues in the amendment. There is no doubt in my mind that it is important to keep the funding and the financing separate between elections. My noble and learned friend has made that point. The issue is also covered by the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 in that—and I understand that the Electoral Commission has this view—the Act makes it clear that there should always be a distinction between the various elections in the funding available for them. Along with the Electoral Commission, we make the point—I certainly want to emphasise it—that we should continue to make sure that there is a separation in the funding of elections. A referendum should not be muddled up in a party election broadcast that is actually talking about the election of people as opposed to the outcome of a referendum.

The other thing that the Electoral Commission drew attention to—and this was the first time that I had had a chance to think about it—is that Section 127 of the 2000 Act to which we are all referring currently prevents broadcasters from transmitting,

“any broadcast whose purpose (or main purpose) is or may reasonably be assumed to be”,

to further a referendum campaign. That is what we want to avoid, and my anxiety—this is the point that the Minister has to answer—is whether that wording in the Act would cover all aspects of an inclusion of statements about the referendum in any party political broadcast. It would clearly exclude a party political broadcast that focused particularly strongly on the referendum. It would stop a party putting out an election broadcast that focused maybe 50 per cent of the time on the referendum. I am not sure, however, that that section of the 2000 Act would prevent a reference to the referendum in a way that might encourage people to vote one way or the other. For example, the party political broadcast could be almost entirely on that party’s general policies but could end with a statement at the end that, for example, “We also believe that by voting this way or that on the referendum, you will assist our policies”, or, “You will assist this change”. In other words, it is not clear to me that one sentence in that broadcast would be excluded under the 2000 Act. We need some clarity on that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Soley]

I was trying not to intervene but I have to do so in view of what the Minister has just said. The type of statement that would worry me is if the party political broadcast was majoring on, for example, giving more power to the people—which might be about a range of things, local authorities or whatever— and it said, “If you vote this way or that way on the referendum, that will increase your power”. I suppose that we need to go back to the broadcasters on this, but I do not think that that ought to be allowed. The Minister makes a fair point; we want to allow the broadcasters flexibility but they need to be aware that a statement like that would be seen as giving significant support to the referendum one way or the other.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for the way in which he presents a very tricky and complex issue. I think I indicated that one of the difficulties was the possibility of limiting the ability of a party to show how its position on the referendum formed part of a wider policy platform. The point I have been trying to make is that broadcasters have experience in this matter. It is probably invidious for Governments to decide what goes too far and what is on the right side of the line. There is also a question of whether legislating to such specificity on the content of party election broadcasts could risk limiting a political party’s freedom of expression. I do not think that anyone here would wish that to happen.