Political Parties, Elections and Referendums (Civil Sanctions) Order 2010

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Martin of Springburn]

My Lords, I rise not to oppose but to ask questions on this matter. My experience of the Electoral Commission—although this may have changed—was that people were not allowed to become commissioners if they had been agents or senior officials of parties in the previous 10 years. This meant that we were denied the expertise of retired party agents from the main political parties, and even minority parties. When the commissioners were meeting, it therefore meant that when any ideas came up and those around the table were, perhaps, executives or previous executives of local authorities, they never had the background to know what happened at grass-roots level when political parties were seeking the support of the electorate. They did not have experience of putting leaflets through doors, going into housing estates or, sometimes, even of speaking to electors. I would hope that this matter has been resolved. It would be excellent if the Electoral Commission was able to get commissioners who were previously national or assistant national agents of political parties.

Sometimes in political parties, volunteers are required to take office. Sometimes, on a cold winter night, it is not so much a volunteer but a conscript who becomes the party treasurer or some other officeholder. If a political organisation got into difficulty, it would be very sad if an officeholder, having taken office in good faith while expecting the support of others, made a mistake through inexperience and was charged in any way as being a wrongdoer. Can the Minister help me on that?

It should be borne in mind that the Electoral Commission is in many ways an inexperienced organisation because, as noble Lords might remember, there was a shambles in the Scottish parliamentary elections because of electronic voting. Since the Electoral Commission participated in that new voting system, there was a requirement to bring in an adviser from Canada to investigate the matter, because there would have been a conflict of interest in the commission being involved in it.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I can take my text now from the noble Lord, Lord Martin of Springburn, because I have been an active member at every sort of division of party activity for over 50 years. I want to take this opportunity to ask the House to think a bit about the volunteers who make our democracy happen. These are the people who, through all the circumstances that the noble Lord referred to, make it possible for democracy to be effective in this country. These people seldom end up on green or red Benches. They are rarely quoted in the newspapers or on television, but they are the essential manpower and womanpower for running our democracy.

During the passage of the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009, to which my noble friend has referred, all three major parties made this point. As the Minister responsible, Mr Michael Wills—as he then was—said,

“we must also address legitimate concerns about the burden of reporting relatively small donations in the context of the public's interest in bigger political donations ... we must never forget that political activity in this country is largely carried out by volunteers—selfless people who give their time and effort to political parties across the House. Without them, none of us could function effectively in representing our constituents”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/3/09; col. 590.]

Mr Jonathan Djanogly, the then Conservative spokesman, agreed. He said:

“I stress that we should be encouraging engagement at the grass-roots level of politics ... I am sure that all hon. Members will be aware that the voluntary levels of party structures and local fundraising are normally entirely divorced from the more complex upper echelons of party funding”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/3/09; col. 605.]

My honourable friends in that House and my noble friends and I in this House made similar points throughout the discussions on that Bill, as the noble Lord who was then in charge of the Bill will confirm.

Schedule 2 to this order, as my noble friend has pointed out, sets out 69 offences that already exist under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act. These are 69 ways in which local parties or associations and their officers—volunteers, in the main—can fall foul of the law. In principle, creating the possibility that these offences can, at least in the first instance, be removed from the sphere of criminality by bringing in civil sanctions instead is welcome, and I acknowledge precisely that point, which was made by my noble friend.

The Explanatory Notes make clear, however, that the criminal offences will remain. It is not a question of all those criminal offences being removed; it is simply that they will not necessarily be there at first instance. People will continue to be prosecuted in the criminal courts where there is evidence that they have acted knowingly or recklessly. Almost by definition, therefore, the new civil sanctions will apply to people who have made any of the 69 mistakes. Five more transgressions are also added to the list. These are the sort of non-offences that will not be susceptible to criminal prosecution but will be open to the civil sanctions that my noble friend has described.

I am sure that no one in your Lordships’ House doubts the importance of probity, accuracy and good record-keeping if we are to have a transparent system of political donations and campaign expenditure. However, we have to make sure, as the noble Lord has just said, that we do not set up an impossible task for those volunteers at local level—for example, the party chair who approaches an activist and says, “I’d really like you to stand to be the honorary treasurer of the St Albans Liberal Democrats. It’s not much work, you don’t have to worry; you won’t have any legal responsibilities and you’d really be very good at it”. I suspect that many of us in our time have asked people to do precisely that sort of job. Those putative officeholders whom we might try to cajole in future might look at the order that we are discussing today and think twice.

I hope that my noble friend can provide reassurances on two points. First, what de minimis provision is planned so that volunteers and their local parties are not penalised for small, innocent mistakes? My noble friend may say that of course the Electoral Commission will acknowledge when there is a genuine mistake and it will give advice, guidance and so on—I have worked with the Electoral Commission and I have great respect for its activities—but it is one thing to say that; it is not so easy to do it.

Secondly, is this order simply a small, interim step on the way to the full-scale reform of all the corruptive influence of the present situation that we face regarding party funding? Our worry on these Benches should not be about whether a treasurer in the Much-Puddle-Under-Ditchwater constituency Labour Party, the Nether Wallop Conservative association, or even the St Albans Liberal Democrats has notified or failed to notify the Electoral Commission of his or her change of address. That is the sort of issue that is addressed by this order, but it is not the big issue that we should be addressing. Instead, surely, the target should be the offshore bankrolling of political parties and the inexorable arms race in campaign spending. So I ask my noble friend when the Government will return to the much more urgent issue of the potentially corruptive influence of so-called big money in our political system. I am sure that my noble friend will recall that the coalition agreement stated:

“We will … pursue a detailed agreement on limiting donations and reforming party funding in order to remove big money from politics”.

A useful report has come out this week, Funding Political Parties in Great Britain: A Pathway to Reform by Democratic Audit, which explains the issues that we should be addressing with regard to the problems in our democratic system. Noble Lords will recall that the cross-party discussions under Sir Hayden Phillips came close to agreement on capping donations, a lower cap on national expenditure in elections, a cap on all party expenditure during each Parliament and—an important suggestion—the opportunity for political donations to be given the same tax concessions as charitable donations. That last could be introduced without any explicit increase in the already substantial state funding of our political parties and democratic system, of which the Labour Party is now the main beneficiary.