Electoral Commission: Referendums and Elections Spending

Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve Excerpts

Thursday 23rd May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The Electoral Commission’s annual report for 2017-18 shows that it issued £126,625 in fines and penalties. Penalties were imposed in 86 cases, £30,000 being the highest charged to any one party, with a further two of over £10,000. As the noble Lord will know, for more serious criminal offences the Electoral Commission can refer the matter to the police and to the National Crime Agency—which it has done—and if anyone is convicted, then the maximum fine is unlimited. So the potential exists to go above the Electoral Commission’s powers. I do not accept his suggestion that we should rerun the referendum, which resulted in a 1.3 million majority of one side over the other. We should accept it; and I do not accept that it has led to the total paralysis of the Government.

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve (CB)]

My Lords, this is the fourth Question that the Minister has answered in this general area during the past week. Although his Answers are detailed and useful, they do not seem to reflect the urgency of the issues. We cannot sit here saying, “Oh, there are consultations and consideration of these problems going on”, because we may face a referendum or election before many of us would wish. We would not wish that election or referendum to be corrupted, as is possible with the range of regulatory powers that our Electoral Commission and our Advertising Standards Authority have.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I accept what the noble Baroness has just said. As I said earlier, were there to be another referendum, there would have to be primary legislation as there was with the last referendum. Noble Lords would have the opportunity to change the law if they felt it was defective in the way that the noble Baroness has indicated. On the other matters, we are taking action. We issued a document earlier this month on the intimidation of voters and candidates, and we are taking action on digital imprints. We are making progress on a number of key issues to uphold the integrity of our electoral system.