Elections Bill

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Tuesday 15th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 31B, 32 and 32A in this group in the names of my noble friends Lady Hayman of Ullock and Lord Collins of Highbury. Amendments 31B and 32 relate to Clause 22, which prohibits an entity registering as both a political party and a third party, which would allow them to access multiple spending limits. I cannot see any reason to oppose this, which would remove a loophole from the level playing field—those words which have been so often mentioned—and maintain the integrity of the existing system.

In the debate on this clause in the other House, a Minister explained that this change was necessary after an entity registered as both during the 2019 general election, therefore abusing the system. Can the Minister confirm which party this was?

Specifically, Amendment 31B intends to probe the application of this clause to minor parties. While we can assume that major political parties, which tend to have governance units, will be aware of these new changes and will be very unlikely to register in both classifications, we should consider whether the same can be said for minor parties. This brings me to Amendment 32, which is intended to probe how the Government will inform third parties of the impact of this section. On the first day in Committee my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock touched on the importance of consultation, and I ask the Minister what consultation there has been on informing third parties of the impact of this section. In particular, I ask about impact assessments on this section. Consultation is particularly important for this Bill. Many of the groups which fall within the definition of third parties can be considered minor organisations which also may not have the necessary structures.

Amendment 32A touches on a similar subject of informing involved parties but relates instead to Clause 23. This clause deals with transitional provision for groups which appear on both registers and would permit them to spend only in one capacity.

I understand that the Minister has been very kind and has had discussions on these matters with my noble friends, but I really hope he can confirm what plans the Government have to involve, engage and inform the relevant parties, and we would really welcome further discussion on this matter. I beg to move.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, I will follow up on the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Khan. It is quite puzzling to see how extensive a problem it could be to have entities registered as both political parties and third parties. Indeed, when the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, did his review of the legislation governing third-party campaigning, he said specifically that he did not see this as a significant problem.

I would like to ask the Minister when he comes to reply whether that situation has changed because of the increase in digital campaigning and therefore ask how this would be monitored and enforced. Whose responsibility would it be? Presumably it would be the Electoral Commission’s, but would it require a new set of digital enforcement measures that it has not had previously?

The other issue that I would like to probe is what engagement there will be with entities that might fall into this category. It is not at all clear to me from the Bill where this proposal has come from and how it is envisaged it will work. I think there is considerable concern among non-party campaigners out there which are small entities that they might fall foul of this when not doing anything intentionally wrong. It would be very helpful if the Minister could tell us the extent of the problem that has led to this having to be put into primary legislation.

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Lord True) (Con)]

I thank noble Lords who have contributed to this short debate. Our view is that no group or individual should have access to multiple spending limits at an election. Spending limits exist to ensure that there is a level playing field, a concept that I think we have agreed on already in this Committee, and any opportunities to unfairly expand spending limits should be removed.

The noble Lord opposite asked about specific examples. What is propelling the legislation is principle but, obviously, there is the case from the 2019 UK parliamentary general election when a group claimed that it could do that—that is, expand spending limits by registering both as a political party and as a third-party campaigner. The organisation that we have in mind is Advance Together, which was used to sidestep election spending rules. It registered both as a political party and as a third-party campaigner, effectively to double its spending limits. I do not want to go too deeply into the motivations there, but that organisation ran negative attack campaigns against incumbent MPs who were supporters of Brexit in five target constituencies. It was mainly staffed by former Liberal Democrats seeking to stop Brexit. Indeed, they admitted on Twitter:

“Our candidates are there to be tactical. Not to win.”


Whatever the politics, this was a clear abuse of third-party local spending limits, which are limited to £700 per constituency under the RPA. That dual registration leap-frogged the £700 third-party spending limit in the constituency, allowing the third party to spend the higher candidate limit locally, and obviously to benefit from the national third-party spending thresholds. It is hard to believe that many groups would wish to circumvent the rules in this way, but I think noble Lords would agree that it is probably best to be prudent in this regard.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, at this late stage, I want to thank the noble Baroness for her introduction. I do not intend to repeat many of the points that she put forward, which were entirely valid.

The history of legislation in this area over the past 20 years is of fundamentally confused aims which are compounded over time and, particularly these days, are exaggerated by new forms of digital campaigning. It becomes increasingly difficult to achieve the stated aims of the legislation, which is to understand who exactly is undertaking campaigning, how they are doing it and where their funding is coming from. Until such time as we sort out some of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, directed us towards, about what legitimate advocacy is and what party-political campaigning is, we will never sort this out entirely.

At every stage of this legislation, we have to ask what problem it is supposed to be answering. Do you know what? It is never very clear. That is a fundamental problem. My understanding of Clauses 24 and 25 is that they try to limit third-party campaigning to specific UK-based bodies and therefore to stop foreign interference. I am not entirely sure about that. As somebody who spent an awful lot of time in the charity world, I look very carefully at the description of entities. The Explanatory Note for Clause 24 states that it

“inserts new section 89A(1) of PPERA, which will prevent any third party from incurring controlled expenditure (including notional expenditure) during a regulated period, unless it is either eligible to register under section 88(2) of PPERA or an unincorporated association with the requisite UK connection”.

Does “unincorporated association” mean a charitable entity? What does “requisite UK connection” mean? Does it mean registered as a charity in the United Kingdom or not? As the noble Baroness said, under Clause 25, the Electoral Commission has something that we might welcome; that is, an ability to stop whole classes of organisations or entities registering, but, at the moment, we do not know what they are or what they might be. If we did, we might agree, but there is something about the way in which this is all written that is unclear.

That leads us on to the key problem that that creates, which is how the Electoral Commission or the police will enforce this, particularly if it is entities of an uncertain nature outside the United Kingdom. It sets up yet another problem. I would therefore welcome it if the Minister could unpick all that and explain to us precisely what is going on here and what it is that we are trying to sort out.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, very generously attributed to us two items of business on this string that were actually submitted primarily by her colleague, the noble Lord, Lord, Collins—that is Amendment 45A—and herself in respect of opposing the Question on Clause 24. I refer to page 8 and 9 of the second Marshalled List of amendments to support the validity of the counterclaim I am making.

The intention to oppose the question of Clause 24 was tabled in the name of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman of Ullock and Lady Meacher, who is in her place and may well want to speak to that proposition. All I wanted to say at this stage is that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, has opened up the big questions that lurk in relation to Clause 25. We will very certainly and definitely want to return to that, and we have stated our intention to oppose the Question that Clause 25 stand part of the Bill. But that is clearly not part of this string, and I think we will be resuming discussion on that at another time.

My noble friend Lady Barker has quite rightly pointed at the fog that surrounds the intended purpose of Clauses 24 and 25, and the lack of what I would describe as a credible justification for the alterations proposed in these two clauses, particularly in relation to Clause 24, seeing as that is the one that is in front of us at the moment. My noble friend Lady Barker pointed out some of the questions that arise from that. My understanding—maybe the Minister in replying could confirm it—is that an unincorporated association would, for instance, include an organisation which I believe is called the West Midlands Industrialists, which channels funds directly to the Conservative Party—entirely legitimately; I am not suggesting anything different. An unincorporated association could be a trade association, formal or informal; it could be some kind of NGO; it could just be an informal grouping that has got its constitution together. It is an entirely separate issue whether they are legitimate bodies to be funding elections—but the law as it stands says that that is legitimate. Except insofar as deleting Clause 24 might form part of the agenda for the rest of this evening, there is no proposal before us to change that. But I think we should perhaps ask the Minister if he or she can rehearse the unincorporated associations question, so we can understand, perhaps a bit more fully, what we will in essence eventually finish up this evening by nodding through. With that, I defer to the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, who I am sure will want to speak on Clause 24.