Elections Bill

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Lords Hansard - Part 2 & Committee stage
Monday 28th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lady Hayman.

In view of the lateness of the hour, the Committee will not welcome my repeating the arguments that have already been made, but the noble Lord, Lord Butler, correctly identifies the qualities which are needed for what we all want: an electoral process that has integrity. Whatever our differences around the Chamber, none of us would want to live in a world where you can, to put it bluntly, buy an election. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, referred to the United States. In its constitution, under the definition of “free speech”, people can spend as much money as they like in furtherance of their own beliefs, which is why billionaires can buy their way into public office. We do not want that system here.

Amendment 212C has not been moved yet, but I want to refer to it because it seeks to make it an offence for anyone who

“makes false statements about the integrity of the electoral process.”

I would call that the Donald J Trump amendment, because I cannot think of a single person in history who has made more false statements about the integrity of any political process than the former President of the United States. However superficially attractive Amendment 212C may be, the better safeguard to protect the integrity of our system is that outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Butler.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I think that I am now the 11th Peer to tell the Minister that the legislation is not strong enough when it comes to protecting our elections from the financial bigwigs. Indeed, there was a report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life last July. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord True, is back with us for the next stage of this Bill, but we have had some discussions with him about how many of those recommendations in last year’s report the Government believe that they have incorporated in this Bill. He has been a little bit coy about that; I might perhaps try to tempt the noble Baroness or the noble Earl to try a little harder on which of the 47 recommendations in last July’s report by the Committee on Standards in Public Life the Government believe that they have incorporated in this Bill, and which ones they are positively rejecting.

However, I want to speak about a preceding report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life in 2011. I thought that maybe if it had a 10-year run-in, there might be a better chance that we would achieve success in this Bill from some of its recommendations. Noble Lords will know that I am a member of CSPL, but I certainly was not in 2011—I was fulfilling a different role then. That report reviewed the case for having any kind of financial limits on elections. The top risk is the risk of capture of a political party by donors, capture of its policy, its practice and its personnel. Regarding policy, some of us have been frustrated for a long time by the inability of successive Governments to get to grips with tax havens around the world. I am sure that it is completely unconnected that a number of donors live in tax havens, but it could be something which the public would be suspicious about, even if we are far too knowing to believe that a party might be influenced by that.

What about the difficulty in bringing offshore banking onshore? Could that have anything to do with where donors are starting from and where they are banking? What about getting a beneficial ownership register of all companies and making Companies House work properly? Again, we find very little progress, which is very much in the interests of people who make big donations to political parties.

So policy can be affected, perhaps by slowing it down or perhaps by driving it slowly into the sand. Some of us think that this Bill is a victim of that, with so many proposals not grasped but avoided. My noble friend Lord Clement-Jones gave some powerful evidence about the way in which there has been a failure, in this Bill, to confront electronic campaigning, as has been recommended to the Government by many bodies and persons.

There is a risk of capture of policy and of practice, and that is in how government acts and what happens. I point to the free market for high-end property purchasing in London, which has suddenly come to a grinding halt, at least as far as some purchasers are concerned. Obviously, it serves the economy of the UK fine to sell hugely overpriced houses and leave them empty, while various dictators in the former Soviet Union sit on their extracted wealth, but it is not all about foreign donors.

I bring to your Lordships another situation where government practice has been distorted by motives that are not necessarily in the best interests of public service. I refer to the company PPE Medpro, reported in the Guardian this morning as having secured a contract for the supply of 25 million sterilised surgical gowns during the pandemic. Those gowns were bought by PPE Medpro for £46 million and sold to the Government for £122 million. In this case, the money is going in the opposite direction to the one we have been talking about for most of this group of amendments. According to the Guardian report, it turns out that those sterilised surgical gowns were, in fact, unsterilised; they were not double-wrapped and they a had false or misleading BSI test number on them. I understand the Department of Health is trying to get its money back, but the mindset that led to that fiasco unfolding is part of the capture, by big donors and big-donor thinking, of a political party.

Then there is personnel—policy, practice and personnel. It is almost embarrassing to say it, but recommendation 19 of the 2011 report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life was that there should be full publication of the criteria for political appointments to the House of Lords. I plead guilty as a political appointment to the House of Lords, as probably should a number of other noble Lords here, but it makes the point that there is an unhealthy connection between money, donations and preferment. It is not simply the House of Lords that is in scope.

Amendment 212DA in my name repeats two of the recommendations from that 2011 CSPL report. In fact, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, quoted from it but, for the purposes of time, left out some words beyond the end of that quote. Recommendation 1 states that there should be a limit of £10,000, which is the figure I have included in this amendment. There should be a democracy of donors, as was spelled out by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett.

Recommendation 6 of that report figures in the second part of my amendment, in that there should be a reduction in national election spending limits of 15%. That was from the CSPL in 2011; the election spending limits had been in place for five years, at that time, and the committee thought they should be reduced by 15%. Fair enough—they have not been increased, but it has now been proposed that they should be increased by over 60%. Far from the 15% reduction that the CSPL thought was sensible 10 years ago, the Government now propose that they are increased by 60%.

I would put in a case for CSPL’s proposals and recommendations and therefore for my amendment. I also strongly support the other amendments that have been put forward. Perhaps the most powerful—not to decry any of the others—is what I have chosen to call the Rooker-Butler amendment, Amendment 212G, which should put the wind up every political party if it comes into force. It proposes that there should be a “risk assessment” for all donations over £7,500. It seems to me that, as a basis for proceeding further, it can hardly be beaten. But I cannot leave out the amendment of my noble friend Lord Wallace and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, that would capture “unincorporated associations” as well—this is recommendation 10 of the Committee on Standards in Public Life’s report of 2011.

I finish by simply saying that the Government may or not be ready to take on the recommendations of the Committee on Standards in Public Life’s report from last year, but, for goodness’ sake, will they please agree to take on those that it made 10 years ago and that have still not been implemented?

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, this group of amendments brings us to the subject of political donations, and I am grateful for the contributions from all sides of the House on this topic. I have listened carefully and noted the strength of feeling that clearly exists around it.

I will start with a word of general reassurance: the integrity of our political system is of the utmost importance to Her Majesty’s Government and, without doubt, all parliamentarians—the noble Lord, Lord Butler, was quite right in what he said on that score. Therefore, it is vital that the rules on political donations are kept continually under review. We must ensure that they continue to provide an effective safeguard to protect that system integrity.

Therefore, it is right that, as a matter of principle and practice, UK electoral law already sets out a stringent regime of controls on political donations to ensure that only those with a legitimate interest in UK elections can make political donations—and that political donations are transparent. This includes registered UK electors, registered overseas electors, UK-registered companies that are carrying out business in the UK, trade unions and other UK-based entities. Donations from individuals not on the UK electoral register, such as foreign donors, are not permitted. There is only a very limited exception to this, whereby, for political parties registered in Northern Ireland, permissible donors also include Irish citizens and organisations, provided that they meet prescribed conditions. This special arrangement reflects the specific context in Northern Ireland.

In order to address the tabled amendments and contributions as fully as I can, I propose to frame my response thematically. I turn first to Amendments 198,199, 204, 212D and 212E, all of which make reference to alleged “foreign donations”. I am afraid that this group of amendments does not find favour with the Government because they seek to remove the rights of overseas electors to make political donations as well as to remove the right to make donations from non-UK nationals who are registered to vote in the UK. Overseas electors are British citizens who have the right to vote; they are important participants in our democracy, as are non-UK nationals on the electoral register. We intend to uphold the long-standing principle that, if you are eligible to vote for a party, you are also eligible to donate to that party. Amendments 198, 199, 204 and 212D would ignore that principle by removing the rights of overseas electors entirely.

I must repudiate the suggestion of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, that this is all about increasing political donations to the Conservative Party. The Bill delivers the Government’s manifesto commitment to remove the arbitrary 15-year limit on the voting rights of British expatriates, broadening their participation in our democracy.

The issues at stake here are matters of principle. Supporters of many parties back votes for life. The Liberal Democrats pledged in their two most recent manifestos to scrap the 15-year rule. In addition, one of the most passionate and high-profile campaigns for votes for life has been led by Harry Shindler, who lives in Italy and is 100 years old, a World War II veteran and the longest serving member of the Labour Party. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, that this measure will not open the floodgates to foreign political donations. Registered overseas electors are eligible to make political donations as important participants in our democracy. It is only right that they should be able to donate in the same way as other UK citizens registered on the electoral roll. I say again: the changes within this Bill will simply scrap the arbitrary 15-year limit on these rights.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, I hope I have already explained how the Government intend to legislate in the future to create greater transparency of companies. As I said at the beginning, all we can do is keep the rules under review. I am suggesting that in this particular area, the balance is about right.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

I understand that the Government have a point of view on this, but it is clearly in contradiction to that of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, the Electoral Commission and others. Can the Minister expand on his reasoning for rejecting their proposals?

[Earl Howe (Con)]

I will answer the noble Lord’s point about the Committee on Standards in Public Life in a moment, if he will allow. First, I turn to Amendment 200, jointly tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, and my noble friend Lord Hodgson, which seeks to introduce new restrictions on donations. The amendment seeks to confer additional powers on the Electoral Commission to identify donations that the commission considers to be a risk to national security or that do not meet a “fit and proper test”, to be determined by the Secretary of State.

This is not the commission’s role or area of expertise, and it would therefore be entirely inappropriate to give it this responsibility to assess risks to national security. The commission is simply not equipped to make some of the judgments proposed by this amendment. The commission has said of this proposal that it

“would be a significant change to our current remit and is not a role we are seeking, as the benefits of this proposal over and above the work of the established security agencies are not clear”.

Put simply, countering foreign interference is the responsibility of the Government, the appropriate law enforcement agencies and the intelligence services, not the Electoral Commission.

The Government already work closely with a range of partners, including the Electoral Commission, to maintain the integrity of democratic processes and take the necessary steps to tackle the risk of foreign interference. The cross-government Defending Democracy programme brings together capabilities and expertise from across departments, security and intelligence agencies and other partners to ensure that democracy remains open, vibrant and secure. In support of this, the Government have set out their intention to bring forward separate legislation to counter state threats. This will give our security services and law enforcement agencies the additional tools they need to tackle the evolving and full range of state threats.

The amendment would also require the Electoral Commission to determine whether a donor meets a “fit and proper” test in respect of the integrity and reputation of the person, based on criteria set out by the Secretary of State. It is our view that the rules are already clear about who is a permissible donor. Beyond this, any further judgments about the appropriateness of receiving a particular legal donation are for the recipient of the donation to judge, and for those recipients to justify their decision through scrutiny enabled by the transparency in our system. It should not be for the Electoral Commission to make these judgments on behalf of others.