Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Lord Morris of Aberavon Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

Both interventions raise the same point. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, that I tried to explain how the £9,750 registration limit comes into play, but I also went on to indicate that the Electoral Commission, in its guidance, will make very clear the operation of the various registration thresholds, including this one with regard to the constituency limit, so campaigners should be in no doubt. In response to that and to my noble friend Lady Williams, I have a lot of sympathy with the point, but the figure of £5,000 is better than a percentage. I do not want to embark on the theology of the percentages because they run through the Bill, but the figure itself will appear in the guidance from the Electoral Commission.

One of the concerns about the administrative burden is that smaller organisations could be caught up. It may be that in one particular constituency there is one constituency issue with which a small campaigning group has become engaged. If we set the limit at £5,000, they may find suddenly that they have to put in place a bureaucracy and administration to deal with that. The higher limit of £9,750 would probably address such concerns, which is what we want to try to ensure. It is often so when you have an individual campaign in an individual constituency. I accept that there is no perfect answer to this. It was a judgment call as to whether we should keep the limit as low as £5,000 or, having listened to those who thought that was too low for individual constituency cases, whether it might be possible to raise the sum. For that reason and to strike that balance, we thought that £9,750 was an appropriate amount. Therefore, I invite my noble friend to withdraw his amendment. I give way to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris.

[Lord Morris of Aberavon (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise for having misread the grouping of my amendment as scheduled. I will now make a brief comment. I understand that the Minister has referred to it already and to what my attitude is.

In our previous debate on Report on the costs to third parties of Welsh-language publications, which I thought to be excluded from the ceiling on third-party expenditure, I welcomed the helpful comments of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, which were in the same vein as those made in Committee by the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble. The failure to be aware of how well used the Welsh language is in campaigning, in documents and in many other ways, has become obvious. It is very different from the time, long ago in the 1960s, when I was a young Transport Minister struggling with officialdom to meet the demand for Welsh forms and licences. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, said, the oversight goes back to the 2000 Act. If this short debate does nothing else, it will remind policymakers and draftsmen that the Welsh Language Act 1993 was passed and that there was a sea change in the use of the language.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, indicated that I went too far in seeking to extend the excluded costs beyond the payment to a translator. I understand that argument, but an organisation could publish a modest amount of literature in English and flood the electorate with Welsh material a hundredfold bigger. My main point remains that, on a narrow interpretation of Amendment 25, an organisation might be inhibited from actually producing Welsh material. In my view, you have to produce paper to be able to translate it, and I argued accordingly. I believe that the Minister was then taking a more restricted view. However, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, said that there was not much between us and that we should try to reach a consensus without creating loopholes whereby much more material was produced. I suggested that, in the short time available, the Government might seek the views of the Electoral Commission.

When I returned to west Wales late on Friday afternoon, I was encouraged to receive a telephone call from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, from Edinburgh, for which I thank him very much. That was indeed a long-distance negotiation. I kept the Welsh Language Commissioner in Cardiff informed. I understand that the Electoral Commission has been consulted following my suggestion and has agreed to the new form of words. The amendment has been drafted by parliamentary counsel, to whom I am grateful.

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[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, it may be helpful if I respond to the points made by the noble and learned Lord. I had already indicated that the Government are willing to accept Amendment 25. The noble and learned Lord, along with the noble Lords, Lord Wigley and Lord Elystan-Morgan, raised this important issue on Report. It is the case that costs should not be limited to the fee of the translator but should include other costs that arise as a consequence of that translation. We believe that Amendment 25 achieves that aim. It certainly enjoys the full support of the Government. All costs incurred as a consequence of the translation of materials to or from Welsh will not count as controlled expenditure. For example, when a three-page leaflet in English is translated into Welsh and becomes a six-page document, the additional costs of printing and paper will not be counted as controlled expenditure.

There was a general consensus when we debated this in the past. Certainly the Government do not wish to see a situation in which a campaigner could increase their effective spending by clever use of materials in different languages. That is not a result that any of us wanted. We believe that Amendment 25 achieves the right balance between excluding costs in connection with translation without creating the loophole. I think that we have struck the right balance, but as the noble and learned Lord said, there will be a review after the 2015 election. If some practical difficulties arise in the course of it, that matter will almost certainly be discussed; it would be appropriate to discuss it in the context of that review. I hope that that gives the noble and learned Lord the necessary reassurance.

[Lord Morris of Aberavon]

I am most grateful to the Minister for his help. I shall not press Amendment 26.

[Lord Tyler]

If I may return to Amendment 9, my noble and learned friend made the very fair comment that this is a judgment call. It is not just my judgment with which he has a problem; it is the judgment of the Electoral Commission. I shall read again what it said, as I do not think my noble and learned friend covered this point. It said previously that if a registration threshold is identical to a limit, there is a problem. It said that,

“this approach would cause significant workability problems, since in practice campaigners will either remain below the registration threshold or will be in breach of a spending limit. We therefore do not support this amendment”.

That is precisely where the Government’s amendments have left us.

As I also said, I am not wedded to the figure of £5,000. If it were necessary, we could go up to £8,000. The key point is that there must be a gap between the registration threshold and the limit. That is not my advice but the advice of the Electoral Commission. That is its judgment call. Therefore, I must invite my noble and learned friend to think carefully before this element of the Bill is considered by our colleagues in the other place tomorrow—as it will be, since there will be government amendments that they will be addressing—as to whether there is not some way that we can deal with this very serious problem. On the basis that I still regard this as an important judgment call—one on which I think my noble friends and I differ, the Electoral Commission being on my side—I am happy for the time being to withdraw this amendment.

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Moved by

[Lord Morris of Aberavon]

25: Schedule 3, page 59, line 1, after first “of” insert “, or in consequence of,”