Overseas Electors Bill (Third sitting)

Ben Bradshaw Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Christian Matheson]

I thank hon. Members for their contributions during this section of the Committee’s considerations, and in particular I thank the Minister for her detailed response. I reassure both the Minister and the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire, for whom I and other hon. Members have both respect and affection, that it is not our intention to delay the implementation of the Bill. I must say rather cheekily that if the hon. Gentleman wants advice on how to delay the implementation of a Bill, he should perhaps seek the Minister’s advice on not moving money resolutions for other private Members’ Bills. That is an argument for another Committee on another day in another Committee Room.

I say to my friend the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire that Opposition Members—both in my party and in others—support the aims of the Bill and are keen to see it go through. My right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter is very keen to see it go through, and has been for many years.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

Better late than never.

[Christian Matheson]

Again, I respect my friend the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire immensely and there is no intention to delay the Bill. However, it is the role of the Committee to test the legislation, taking into account detailed evidence from parties such as the Association of Electoral Administrators. I am pleased that the Minister slightly tripped over that name because I have been doing that in rehearsals all week. I speak in jest, of course.

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[Layla Moran]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh. Now I have the right clause in my head. The other one was about overseas constituencies, and I am partly sad that that did not pass, but this is the clause that I feel passionately about. New clause 2 tackles, or tries to start to tackle, some of the issues around donations that will arise as a result of this Bill. I prepared the clause with the Electoral Commission and we have had many conversations about its concerns regarding donations to do with this Bill. I strongly urge hon. Members from across the House to bear some of these things in mind.

The issue arises because by removing the 15-year time limit we will by definition have many people who were not at some point in the past on the electoral register. The way that political parties are currently allowed to accept donations is that it is quite easy to look up whether someone has previously been on the electoral register at some point in the past 15 years. Let us face it, we probably have the data from the lists that we have kept over the years. Even if someone came to us and said, “Right, I’ve been living in Belgium”—or Cambodia, or whatever—“and I would like to make a donation. I was on the electoral register at this address at this time,” it would be very easy for us to check.

The problem with this Bill arises because there will now be a large number of people who are absolutely—as is right—British citizens and allowed to vote, who will now be allowed to make political donations but will not have been on the register at any point in the last 15 years. What the Electoral Commission would like, which is not what I have proposed, is clarification in law that someone has to be on the register now in order to make a political donation, so that that grey area is completely removed.

We could say, “Well, you could just make sure they are registered,” and a political party could just ensure they are on the register. The problem arises because there is a Supreme Court judgment from 2010 that said that political parties, and anyone accepting a donation, must bear in mind the permissibility of being on the electoral register. They do not have to be on the electoral register; they just have to be allowed to be on the register by the current law.

This Bill thus opens up a large number of people who could possibly donate into the UK and puts a huge onus on political parties to decide whether to accept the donation. In this new clause we are simply asking for a report. I know that reports are all the rage in all these new clauses, but the report would come after the Bill was enacted and would not stop anything, but would ask the Government to look carefully at the specific matter of donations to do with this Bill.

I know that the Minister has said in other arguments that the Government want this to be a very closely defined Bill, and I understand that. However, the problem I am raising arises only because of the Bill, so it is right to make a provision to assuage the Electoral Commission’s concerns about the issues that it will bring up. We are asking for a simple report on, first, whether political parties have faced situations where they could not tell whether donations coming in were from permissible donors. Incidentally, the flip side of that is that British citizens who are now within their rights to vote and want to be able to donate to political parties will have trouble doing so. We need to ensure that that is as easy as possible. Secondly—this is critical—the Electoral Commission is worried about its ability to enforce whether donors are permissible.

[Mr Bradshaw]

The hon. Lady may or may not be aware that the biggest donation to the Democratic Unionist party in political history was made during the referendum campaign and we still do not know whether the donor was permissible. The Government’s refusal to backdate the change in the rules to make donations in Northern Ireland transparent means that we do not know, and possibly never will know, the source of that money. She will be aware that that is of great concern to many parliamentarians and the Electoral Commission, as well as to investigative journalists and the people of Northern Ireland. They have been trying to get to the truth of whether that money, which bought hundreds of thousands of pounds of advertising in the rest of the UK—it was not spent in Northern Ireland, and some of it was spent on Cambridge Analytica—in effect helped to buy the referendum.

[Layla Moran]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his helpful intervention. In fact, I asked the question in Northern Ireland questions today. We can leave aside what is going on with the referendum, the investigation into Vote Leave and all the rest of it, but also we cannot. The public are keenly aware, now more than ever, that there is a potential problem with political donations and interference from abroad. This new clause would allow a mechanism to say to the public, “We understand your concerns and we promise to take them into account.”

I credit the Minister. I think she does a fantastic job, and I have said that to her. She said that during the course of her normal working life she will talk to the Electoral Commission as issues arise and all the rest of it, and I absolutely agree, but I think we need to send a strong signal to the public that we are taking the issue seriously. The new clause is an opportunity to do that, as a direct consequence of how electors will be allowed to enter registers in this country. I urge everyone to support the new clause, partly because it is the right thing to do, partly because the Electoral Commission has specifically asked for it and partly because it would send a strong signal to the public that we take foreign donations seriously and that this Government will ensure that if there are any shenanigans, they will be caught comprehensively—not as we go—and dealt with.

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The commission wants a clearer stating of the 2000 Act, so that parties must forfeit all money received from donors who are not registered to vote, even if they are eligible but unregistered because of an administrative oversight. All that the new clause does, therefore, is bring the proposed legislation up to date. We considered consequential amendments to schedule 1 last week, and the Opposition did not seek to amend those consequential amendments because they were simply that, but this is surely a consequential amendment too. Expanding the franchise and responding to the changes that have been made also require changes that have been brought about by experience and practice.

[Mr Bradshaw]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that this fits into a worrying pattern from the Government? The Electoral Commission made several specific requests, including in connection with making the new rules in Northern Ireland retrospective, which the Government refused to honour. In the Minister’s statement to the House after the Electoral Commission found evidence of illegality by the leave campaign, she said that she would look to ensure that it had all the powers it needs. Once again, however, the Government are not willing to follow its advice and its clear request. Many of us feel that its powers are feeble and weak anyway, so for heaven’s sake, let us give it the powers for the things that it wants to do.

[The Chair]

Order. I ask leave of the Committee to suspend the sitting for five minutes for personal reasons.

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[Chloe Smith]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who reminds us that when we seek to regulate we aim to have a combination of legislation—primary and secondary—backed up by guidance from regulators. It is absolutely right that we need that blend, which has already been referred to here and in other debates in Committee. It is also right that we keep looking at enforcement in practice as a matter of course. That is the end of the point that I want to make, which has been augmented by my hon. Friend.

[Mr Bradshaw]

My point relates to the earlier intervention. I cannot speak for the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon, but I suspect she might be less inclined to press the new clause were she to hear some assurance from the Minister that, rather than just keeping these things under review, the Government will commit legislative time—it is not as if we have a very heavy legislative programme at the moment—to implement the very specific requests that the Electoral Commission made following its investigations into law-breaking by the Leave campaign. She knows exactly what those recommendations and requests are. All we need is a commitment from the Government that they will use this vast expanse of legislative time with nothing else going on here to actually do it, rather than simply saying, “We will keep all these things under review.”

[Chloe Smith]

The right hon. Gentleman’s sarcasm may have run away with him a little there. As he knows, we are not rich in legislative time at the moment. That is due to one of the issues that I know is extremely close to his heart, and sits behind his question, which is Brexit and the legislative changes needed. I take the broader point that there is a broader set of considerations here, and I was just going to come to those.

[Christian Matheson]

I genuinely do not think my right hon. Friend was being sarcastic. He is both well informed and also very passionate about—

[Mr Bradshaw]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Christian Matheson]

No, I cannot, because the Minister is giving way to me. May I ask the Minister to reconsider that one point? My right hon. Friend made a fair point and she might have misheard amidst the hubbub of the Committee.