Political Parties and Elections Bill
10:21 am
Mr. Straw: All these things are possible, but the other side of this is that if we were to do what I know you would wish in relation to expenditure incurred before the date of Royal Assent, we would be open to equal opposite complaints of acting unfairly—that is the difficulty—and, certainly so far as expenditure was incurred before Royal Assent, of acting retrospectively. I have already, if I may say so, dealt with that.
There is an inherent difficulty in seeking to change the electoral regime during a Parliament, because it is bound to be the case—we are trying to find a way through this—that political parties, whatever the loopholes, will have worked within the current legal regime perfectly lawfully and they will have grounds for complaint if they say, “Well, hang on. We were working within this. You may disapprove of it; it may be a loophole, but we were working lawfully and then it suddenly changed.” There has to be a process of getting from A to B, which is what I am trying to do.