Written evidence to be reported to the House
Political Parties and Elections Bill
12:00 pm
Peter Wardle: May I clarify that? There are two areas where there have been concerns. The first relates to our current monitoring and inspection powers. For example, a time when we use, or could use, those current powers is when we go into the political parties that receive policy development grants, on roughly an annual basis, to audit their documents and records, because we have a duty to assure Parliament that that money has been spent in accordance with the terms of the grant. That is inspection and audit; we do it already and we think that the current powers are adequate for that.
The first major concern that we have heard is about the extension of the power to enter to inspect documents—in that context, two regulated donees—and we are open to arguments about that. We feel that the current powers are adequate to do the job we need to do regarding inspection. One can see why, for completeness, the powers have been extended, but we are not convinced that we need those powers. If Parliament were to have concerns about that particular aspect, we would be relaxed provided that the current powers are preserved so that we can continue our inspection and monitoring role.
The second area of major concern is the one that Lisa has just explained, which is the mechanism for securing compliance with a reasonable request from us when we are undertaking an investigation. The mechanism in the Bill is essentially that if somebody refuses to answer our questions, we apply to a magistrate to go with a constable and see if we can find the answers for ourselves. That is one approach, but there are others. Lisa mentioned the approach in the United States, which would be to ask the courts to order someone to answer the question, provided that the courts were satisfied that the request was reasonable. Either of those would be fine from our point of view.