Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, this legislation is intended to help promote and restore confidence in the political system. Yet the absence of transparency, clarity and regularity in campaign financing in the politics of this country is one of the principal causes of cynicism and disaffection from politics. It therefore seems contradictory and strange that apparently so little thought has gone into the provisions of the Bill regarding campaign financing. It is singularly important that the provisions be clear and universally acceptable. I look forward to the Minister explaining what he believes the justification can be for the vagueness and looseness of the current arrangements, the manner in which they will permit outside intervention from people whose intervention we would have thought was not legitimate, and how he proposes in the light of those considerations to strengthen and improve the legislation.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for her amendment. Concern has rightly been expressed by noble Lords and in the other place over the impact of “big money” on the recall process.

Amendment 60, however, focuses on the opposite end of the scale—namely, the lower limit above which campaigners will have to become accredited. The noble Baroness’s amendment will lower this from £500, as currently proposed, to £50. She rightly asked about the justification for £500. It is based on the previous spending limit for third-party campaigning for or against a candidate at the election. Indeed, the current limit is £700. This will, we believe, therefore permit local groups to carry out a certain amount of campaigning, such as printing and distributing leaflets. That is the reason for that number.

However, all campaigners will be subject to rules on the content of their literature, including imprints, as well as the rules on acting in concert, notional petition expenses and pre-election expenses. Once a campaigner becomes accredited, a significant number of additional registration and reporting rules kick in. We believe that these will deliver transparency over what is being spent and who is providing the financial backing.

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I am sorry that this has been a long response to the Minister’s response to me, but there are some serious issues here around where the money comes from and the checks being made on it. I would be grateful if the Minister could ensure before Report that there is absolute clarity about small, non-accredited campaigns not having to abide by any election law other than that of putting “PandP” on their material. Also, would the Government consider whether the figure of £500 is right, thus enabling so much activity to be carried out unregulated?

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I am inspired with confidence when I listen to my noble friend expounding the Bill. Perhaps she can correct me if I am wrong, but am I right in thinking that in effect there can be any number of these non-accredited groups operating in parallel, but there is provision that where expenses are incurred by persons acting in concert, the total value of those expenses is to be regarded as having been incurred by each of the persons in question? It seems to me that the protections, if there are any, are very flimsy indeed. As my noble friend Lord Foulkes suggested, we have the very dangerous possibility of a great proliferation of many organisations campaigning to unseat a Member of Parliament with no control over their number, no control over their aggregate of expenditure, and with the freedom for them to solicit and receive expenditure from anywhere in the world. Is that not deeply unsatisfactory?

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

It is interesting to note that when we were dealing with the transparency of lobbying Bill, which has been mentioned, we could see that as soon as charities work together they all have to take account of each other’s expenditure. But as long as these groups do different things, with one of them responsible for the literature and another one doing something completely different, there can be any number of them. As I say, there can be any number of non-accredited campaigns and any number of accredited campaigns. Ten of them could all spend £500 and another 10 could all spend less than £500. The cumulative amounts could be very large. However, that is for the Government to answer rather than me. For the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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Although I understand the belt-and-braces intent behind the noble Baroness’s amendment, I hope I can assure her that it is not necessary and that her second amendment would cramp the style of the recall petition further than is desirable, practical or necessary. I hope that that answers her constructive concerns and that, on that basis, she will not press her amendments.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

The noble Lord emphasised that the Government are anxious to limit the influence of big money and outside money, and he quite rightly made the point that neither big money nor outside money can trigger the recall process. However, he gave no explanation as to how the provisions of the Bill would in practice limit the power of either big money or outside money to influence such local campaigns. It would be helpful, because it is very important, if he could explain what the safeguards are; and if he cannot, if he could undertake to go away and invent some.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the distinction between local and national money, as all of us currently preparing to fight a range of local campaigns at the next general election know, has become increasingly blurred over the years. As we know well, NGOs and civil society organisations have local branches of national organisations, so of course there is not a rigid distinction between local money and national money. We understand that one cannot entirely build a wall around a particular constituency in terms of funding. However, the limits proposed are intended to limit the amount of money that can be spent, and thus to limit the role of outside funds.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

But there are no limits to the number of organisations that are able to mount such campaigns. The Minister is rejecting the amendment that my noble friend has proposed, but he does not seem to have any other safeguards.

[Lord Grocott]

I put the question in a slightly different way. If the Minister is confirming what I think that he has been saying, it is really alarming. I was most interested in the earlier parts of the Bill. Whereas we all know that in a local election campaign for a particular Member in a particular constituency, there are controls over what each candidate can spend which have been there since about the 1870s, I think that that—not the figure, but the principle—is understandable, because a number of different choices are available: Labour, et cetera. In the case of whether there is or is not to be a recall, there are only two possible positions: you are for it or against it. You may be for it or against it for a variety of different reasons, but the decision to be made is binary, there are two choices.

It seems to me so fundamental as to be hardly worth stating that there must be a balance between the expenditure on the two sides of that simple argument. Is the Government’s position that there is no need to worry about that and that, on a range of different issues, one side in what I repeat is a binary decision can spend vastly greater sums of money than the other? Are the Government comfortable with that?