New Clause 2 - Assistance for designated organisations
Regional Assemblies (Preparations) Bill
10:04 am
Mr Christopher Leslie (Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office; Shipley, Labour)
The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton made some questionable points about new clause 2. The hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge explained that it would limit the amount of assistance to each designated organisation in a yes or no campaign to a proportion, which would depend on the population of the region concerned, of £600,000.
The Government do not think that a separate statutory limit is needed for grants to designated yes or no campaigns for regional referendums because the
Commission's proposed expenditure on grants would be scrutinised by Parliament. The hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge says that he does not want unspecific legislation on the matter, but Parliament is capable of scrutinising the expenditure of the Electoral Commission. The Speaker's Committee is tasked with that particular job by the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, schedule 1(14)(3) of which charges the Speaker's Committee with satisfying itself that the Commission's estimated level of expenditure for each financial year is consistent with the economical, efficient and effective discharge of its functions. We can rely on the commission to make the right judgment on the amount of grant that might go to a designated yes or no campaign.
While grants may vary from region to region, they should not only be proportional to population, which is a point that we explained in a slightly different context when we were discussing amendments to clause 11. The Committee accepted the argument that although relative population levels could be a factor in setting such limits, only having regard to them would be too narrow a focus. As the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton mentioned, there may well be other factors to which the commission might properly have regard, such as a region's rural and urban populations, the different types of media available to designated yes or no campaigns and economies or diseconomies of scale. One of the main issues is the fixed costs associated with campaigns.