Elections Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Sentamu

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Committee stage
Tuesday 15th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, I share the sentiment of what the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, has just said. The noble Lord, Lord Collins, is right to seek clarification of what “encouraged” means. However, why is the role given to the Secretary of State, and not the legislation itself, to define it? If we cannot define it, kick it out. Why should this responsibility be given to the Secretary of State, who “must by regulations define” what it means? It is a bit late in the day for that.

I also share the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, about how courts will define what “encouraged” means. I have a problem with it being defined by the Secretary of State “by regulations”. I am one of those who is always very suspicious of legislation, in a secondary way, allowing regulations to grow like Topsy as has been the case over the last so many years. The legislators are allowing it to go ahead. I would have thought that the Bill itself should define what it is. If it cannot define it, do not put it in.

After listening to noble Lords who defined what election agents do and their enthusiasm for the things that they do, I am glad that I could never be such a person, because I do not think that I am worthy of it.

I ask the Minister—because the Government have drafted the legislation and put it into the Bill—to explain to us what he means by “encouraged”. Will it stand up to the standards of the law courts? If it cannot, why is it not just taken out?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I am often grateful I was never an election agent. I fought five elections and was once approached and asked if I would work as an agent for an early election. I am eternally grateful that I did not accept, because I did not begin to understand the complications and responsibilities of the task then. I have learned some of them since, but life has got a great deal more complicated over the last 50 or 60 years as the technology of elections and the power of the national parties, compared with the local parties, have shifted quite radically.

When I read this clause, I was struck by the word “only”, which appears repeatedly. That was the word I wanted to challenge. For example, it says that

“facilities are made use of on behalf of a candidate only if their use on behalf of the candidate is directed”.

Why does “only” keep recurring in various different contexts? It is clearly intended to weaken the possibility that the candidate could, in any way, be regarded as responsible. That worries me. Any good lawyer would be able to unpick the candidate being responsible under most circumstances for what the national party had done within his or her constituency. We well know, from the case to which this clause relates, that the national parties as a whole have come to engage in specific constituencies to target them and to spend a great deal of money from the national level in them. I suspect that candidates are always aware of this, but they may not always have wished to encourage it.