Elections Bill

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

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

[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.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

Just out of interest, with the application for registration as a political party, was there an awareness of the other application as a third party? Did that not get questioned, and could not the existing rules have addressed the issue? Were the two registrations just allowed to take place?

[Lord True (Con)]

I would have to be advised on that matter. I understand where the noble Lord is coming from, because I agree that it is hard to believe that a group would want to proceed in that way. I shall share with the Committee what information is available on this.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the scars are still on my back from having taken the transparency of lobbying Bill, now an Act, through this House. I remind the Minister that we paused it when we ran into waves of criticism from all sides and arguments that we had not entirely got our own arguments in line. It was not quite as messy as this Bill, but we did at least manage to sort out something which did not displease everyone too much.

I have read the very useful report by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, which I compliment him on. It does its best to strike the balance between a number of very difficult and different priorities. All of us who have been involved in politics know that there are many civil society organisations. Some are easily politically neutral—as the Church is, most of the time—while others are inherently a bit on the right. Those of us who are old enough to have fought campaigns that the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children was active in will remember how vigorous, to say the least, it could be in its campaigns and how biased it was. Development NGOs and poverty NGOs, being in favour of greater public sector spending and greater equality, tend naturally to be more on the left. The balance between advocacy and electoral campaigning, as the noble Lord has said, is a difficult one, which we must all strike. In debating this issue with some of the organisations concerned, there were those who felt that they were entitled to campaign entirely as they liked because they were morally right and therefore should not in any sense be controlled in an election campaign.

I agree strongly with the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, that 120 days is much better than 365 days. We no longer know when the election will be. It is one of the many bits of incoherence of this Government that putting through the abolition of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act in the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill has not sorted out entirely the knock-on effects of that for this Bill. If I recall correctly, in his report, the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, said that looking back on how various NGOs and civil society groups have spent on their advocacy and campaigning, the spending does come very much in the last few weeks and months before the election, rather than being spread evenly over the previous year.

Therefore, I strongly support Amendment 39 and hope that the Minister will accept that this is a reasonable adjustment in the Bill which the Government could accept, and which makes life simpler for those civil society groups which we all want to see engaging in campaigns and public debate. This tidying up would be a help to all concerned.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, for introducing these amendments at this stage. I know that we will have further debates but, like him, I think it is really important to set this in context. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Lister for doing so. She has an incredible record of promoting civil society and action groups focused on particular issues. I know from my own experience that civil society activity is really important; one of the most important groups I have participated in is one that my party, the Conservative Party and other political parties were a bit uncomfortable dealing with—LGBT rights. It took a civil society, cross-party campaign to change things and influence manifestos.

I said at Second Reading that a thriving democracy is not limited to Parliaments and parliamentarians. Countries that fail to protect their citizens force civil society to stand up for them and defend human rights. That is really important. The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, and my noble friend, who was more explicit, talked about that chilling effect. That is what we must look at. Perhaps it is even an unintended consequence. However, it is a simple fact that we do not know the date of the general election; it is in the gift of the Prime Minister to set, and sometimes it can be a long campaign and sometimes it can be short. We do not want those civil society organisations campaigning throughout a five-year period, raising issues such as child poverty, to stand back because they fear that they might be caught in this regulated period.

I agree with my noble friend that the simplest solution is to say that the regulated period should start when a general election officially starts, but I will compromise with the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, on four months. Importantly, in some of his later amendments we will come to issues such as defining what might reasonably be regarded as campaigning, which he rightly raised. I agree about a code of practice being brought before Parliament.

Even if the Minister cannot accept these amendments today—I have no doubt that he cannot—I hope he will take away that this will have an impact on civil society that will impact negatively on our democratic activity. I hope the Government will listen to both the noble Lord and my noble friend Lady Lister.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I fear I cannot be as accommodating with these amendments as with some earlier ones on which I invited further discussion. However, I say to my noble friend Lord Hodgson that there are parts later in the Bill where I hope we may be able to have fruitful conversations. However, those are for a future day.

I accept that there is a balance to be struck in these matters, but starting, illogically, with my noble friend’s Amendment 39—I suppose that is the upside-down, Whitehall way of looking at things—on reducing the length of the regulated period, I am sure many would agree that any campaigning up to 12 months before a parliamentary general election could have a significant influence on its outcome. This is not a new principle, nor has it come in since the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. The principle of 12-month regulatory periods has been in place for over 20 years, in which period civil society groups, including the group the noble Lord, Lord Collins, referred to—I nearly called him my noble friend—have been able to be very effective and move mountains within the electoral system.