Recall of MPs Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grocott]

I suppose the point I was making was that there are only two possible things that you can do in relation to someone asking you whether you will sign a petition.

I hope this is not really arguable from the Government, but if you have two sides in a democratic contest and one side has got colossally more money than the other, then you simply cannot have a fair contest. You see a lot of discussions where, much as we spell out our arguments, in private we might acknowledge that the other side has a bit of a case. I frankly admit that a lot of decisions in the Bill have been grey rather than black and white: for example, whether you have eight weeks or two weeks to sign the petition and whether there are 10 petition-signing locations or two or three. These are all gradations and grey areas. However, I cannot see a grey area that enables us to have a different opinion as to whether two sides in a two-sided contest should have anything other than broadly similar amounts of money that they can spend, with a clear limit on how much. That is all that needs to be said. I just hope that anyone who cares about democracy and democratic choice—which includes all noble Lords I can see, scanning round this House—should be able to acknowledge that that is something that the Government really must concede on, because it is a matter of simple justice.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, again, this debate has ranged fairly widely. I am happy to discuss further with the noble Lord, Lord Hughes of Woodside, the level at which abortion law should be dealt with. I remember that some years ago the most obscure protocol to the treaty of Rome was added to a revision negotiation by the Irish Government, which said, “Nothing in this treaty shall countermand Article 39”—I think it was—“of the Irish Constitution”, which meant “Keep off”. About six months later, the Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow asked that this should be devolved. As soon as we are into multi-level government, the question of what level you do things at—at which level you decide that prisoners should have the vote, to take a hypothetical example—begins to be contested among the different levels. We now have several levels, and I am happy to talk about that further.

We discussed some of what we are discussing now, in not dissimilar terms, on the then Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill, in which the Government were very much concerned in particular about the possibility of foreign money coming in through various umbrella groups and intervening in and influencing election campaigns. I recognise that there is a potential problem here, but we think it can be contained.

Here as elsewhere, in drafting the Bill, we employed the regulatory regime for campaign spending and donations drawn from existing electoral law. The proposed campaign rules for recall petitions follow those for referendums. In referendums, you have to report your spending at the £500 limit. In recall campaigns, £500 buys you a very small amount of activity. It does not seem to us that the image which the noble Baroness depicted almost, of a gentleman arriving from Switzerland with plastic bags with cash in them to distribute to various local householders, is a likely one; or, if it were to happen, that it would not appear in the Guardian or the Mail very quickly. We therefore think that £500 is the de minimis amount.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

The noble Lord mentioned a situation in which a Member of Parliament might have been campaigning against certain practices by Hoffman-LaRoche—or indeed by a subsidiary of HSBC. There might be international interest in disposing of that Member of Parliament.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I was merely making the de minimis point. Above £500, you have to report. These amounts are then controlled and the question of what is a permissible donor comes into the existing corpus of electoral law. We are proceeding here in the same way as we have been proceeding in other cases. We have not diverged from the principles of regulation that have been proved to work and which are compatible, in our opinion, with the nature of campaigning. The de minimis is £500, and for accredited campaigners, those who are intending to spend over £500, only payments of over £500 are considered donations. These must be verified to confirm that they come from a permissible source and are reported as part of the recall petition return. The £500 limit for registration and reporting logically relates to the £500 limit below which payments do not have to be regarded as donations.

There has been some concern expressed that recall petitions will not be local events. We understand that we all prefer these to be local events. A recall petition is a question about who should be the representative of local issues at Westminster and therefore we wish local residents to have as much influence as possible. Our hesitation over designating one lead campaigner on both sides is partly because in those circumstances the likelihood of a national organisation being the first to come in to the arena and claim to be the accredited campaigner is part of the argument that we would resist. Incidentally, we do not assume, as I think that those who have spoken do, that there will be a huge imbalance on one side, with the poor MP left with only one sort of supporter gathered in his own campaign, and on the other side all the armies of Gideon arrayed around in different orders. An MP who has a justified case is likely to have a range of supporters on his or her side.

[Lord Grocott]

The Minister may or may not be right about the proportion on either side. The principle is surely that there should not be a massive disparity and that the legislation should provide for that. That is the point.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am merely talking about the difficulty of having one accredited lead campaigner on either side. That takes us too far into the referendum campaign. The question of how one gets towards agreeing one accredited campaigner will need, I suspect, a good deal more than eight weeks to sort out.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

If it were accepted that there could be more than one accredited campaigner on each side, would there be any objection on the Minister’s part to aggregating the expenditure of the campaign’s pro and con, for and against the Member of Parliament, so that the totality of the funding available to the range of accredited campaigners was limited to £10,000 or whatever the appropriate limit would be?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I will have to take that one away and think about it. The Government have not considered this so far and it is therefore not within my current brief.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

I hope—I think—that I understand him as saying that it is something he will be prepared to look at so that we could consider it again at Third Reading.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I cannot give that assurance at the moment. Between now and Third Reading we have some time, as he well knows. Of course we continue to consider all matters, but at the moment I am not persuaded.

We do not see the question on Amendment 23 as entirely justified. The argument for an accredited campaigner in a referendum, as was said before, is that they are then rewarded with a substantial government grant to support the campaign. That will not take place in this area.

Perhaps I may finally stress that permissible donations for accredited campaigns will also follow the same rules as others. They will be reported and controlled. If I may refer to Amendment 24, which we will discuss next, I see value in ensuring that the Electoral Commission in particular has access to the information necessary to assess the appropriateness of the spending and donation rules. We will be debating this in the next amendment. The question of how far in we pull the Electoral Commission is one to which the Government are live and sympathetic.

[Lord Grocott]

Before he sits down, I really need to have it from the Government’s mouth that the Minister’s fairly lengthy response is basically saying that the Government are relaxed about the possibility of one side in a two-horse race having vastly more expenditure than the other, and that they are not prepared to make any rules to prevent that happening. I just want to hear it from the Minister because this is a very serious point. If that is the Government’s position, it is his responsibility to the House to say it.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I understand that. It is a one-horse race, of course. The other does not have a horse at all, so to speak. The Government are not prepared to designate a single lead campaigner on either side. We are not persuaded that an overall limit is practical or measurable, but that is one of the things we will come to in Amendment 24. There are several issues in this, as I well understand, including the question of foreign non-permissible donations, which we will come to in Amendment 24.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, it is interesting that it was the Minister himself who mentioned the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill. Not everyone was here for that, but once charities go into a single campaign they have to take responsibility for the expenditure of others; they have to nominate a lead, and the expenditure of a small charity goes against the upper limit on what a big charity can spend. The Government were very happy to do that but somehow this is different.

This is really a nonsense. It is not about the MP having lots of people on their side. If it was a Labour person who had been kept out of the House for 10 days, the Conservatives, the Lib Dems, UKIP and the Greens would all be voting for a by-election. Each could spend £10,000 and the Minister is clearly content with that.

I am even more unhappy about the Minister’s complete acceptance that foreign money up to £500 can come in, not controlled in the way that we control donations —very sensibly and rightly—to the political process from those who have no skin in the game as far as our elections are concerned. We will have non-doms, tax evaders, anyone—all giving up to £500, and the Government are quite content with that. It is for that reason that I ask the Government to go through the Lobbies and vote for the continuation of this Bill, which will allow foreign money up to £500 to be given. I beg to test the opinion of the House so that people outside can see that that is what the Government are content with.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 24, which is in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, would ensure that all returns by campaigners are subject to being checked by the Electoral Commission. Our amendment deletes the phrase “on request” from paragraph 8 of Schedule 5 and thereby requires a petition officer to deliver a copy of all the recall petition returns they have received.

This is a small but significant amendment and will require the Electoral Commission to take a greater role in the process than it currently seems prepared to do. I understand why it appears reluctant to do more. We hope that recall will never have to be used but if it is, it will be infrequent. Therefore, we do not believe there will be an overburdening of the Electoral Commission with vast amounts of additional work. As a former member of the Electoral Commission, I am confident that it has both the staff and financial resources to undertake this work, which will be required extremely infrequently. As I said in Committee, the Commission has recently looked at the returns and produced valuable advice, and I see no reason why it could do not it in this process as well.

At present there is no obligation on anybody to check the returns of campaigners. This is surely a ridiculous situation to be in. The petition officer has to record the receipt of returns but is not responsible for scrutiny of the financial dealings of campaigners. The returns of campaigners need to be checked to ensure confidence in the process for many of the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, mentioned in the previous discussion. I do not think many noble Lords will disagree with that and the Electoral Commission should be the organisation to do it, as it has the financial and staffing capacity and the expertise to do the work. I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Government are keen to encourage participation in recall petitions, but in allowing this freedom of participation it is vital that the rules governing campaigning are appropriate and are complied with. In what will, we hope—as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, suggested—be the very rare event of a recall petition being initiated, spending and donation returns will be subject to high levels of scrutiny. This is made possible by the transparency that the Bill affords. Recall petition returns are to be made publicly available for a period of two years. Any member of the public can review these and report any evidence of wrongdoing to the police, who will investigate the matter. If it is thought that there is substance to the allegations, the police can refer the matter to the CPS, which may launch a prosecution.

A person could also lodge a petition with the electoral court if they thought that the alleged breach of electoral law had affected the outcome of the petition. As the Bill stands, the Electoral Commission is also able to produce a report on a recall petition. This report would look at the administration of the campaign, how the rules on spending and donations actually worked and whether the limits set in the Bill are appropriate. The decision to produce this report lies with the Electoral Commission. The Government consider that providing the Electoral Commission with this reporting power is vital to ensuring confidence in the process and outcome of a recall petition.

To support this, the commission has been given the power to request recall petition returns from the petition officer. This amendment, which would require petition officers automatically to forward recall petition returns to the Electoral Commission, could further add confidence in the approach to regulation taken for recall petitions. So the Government recognise the merits behind this amendment and will consider this issue further before Third Reading. At this point, and with that assurance, I hope that the noble Lord will be willing to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I thank the noble Lord for that. I am very pleased with the response of noble Lords and, on that basis, I am very happy to withdraw the amendment. I look forward to having a discussion between now and Third Reading.