Clause 3
Political Parties and Elections Bill
10:15 am
Jonathan Djanogly (Shadow Minister, Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform; Huntingdon, Conservative)
Clause 3 deals with the new civil sanctions regime, and so we move to a new aspect of the Bill. Amendment No. 77 and its consequential amendment, amendment No. 85, are probing. They would delete paragraph 5(5) of schedule 3, which defines what is considered a discretionary requirement for the commission.
The aim of the amendments is to strike out the definition of what can be considered a discretionary requirement that may be imposed by the commission under part 2 of schedule 2 so that a further review can be undertaken of what discretionary requirements it is appropriate for the commission to impose.
I shall raise our concerns about the wholesale adoption of the Macrory review proposals in the Bill during our discussion on clause 3 stand part, but I have to say at this early stage that we are not convinced that the Government have got this right, in the same way that we remain to be convinced in respect of schedule 1. We believe that there is a need to review what is meant by “discretionary requirement”.
The definition in paragraph 5(5) is very broad. Phrases such as “such amount”, “such steps” and
“within such period as they may specify”
are vague and offer no guidance to the commission or safeguards to those who are subject to such requirements.
It is inadvisable to have a penalty regime without parameters or guidance: not only could it be less workable in practice, but it offers the potential for abuse of power by the commission. There would be a real problem if we ended up with a public perception that the party finance and electoral system regulator was worse than the system it was there to regulate. We support in principle the idea of flexible sanctions, but not at the cost of proportionality or reason.