Clause 8
Political Parties and Elections Bill
10:15 am
Jonathan Djanogly (Shadow Minister, Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform; Huntingdon, Conservative)
Clause 8 creates a new responsibility for donors to political parties to clarify the source of their donations. Amendment No. 151 would insert a new sub-paragraph after proposed new section 54A(5) of PPERA, as set out in clause 8(2). The main purpose of the sub-paragraph is to provide a defence for those who have made an innocent mistake and have fallen foul of the regulation in PPERA only as a consequence of an administrative oversight or an honest mistake. We want to make it clear with this amendment that the commission is empowered to excuse those who have made an innocent mistake.
The drafting of section 54A(5), as proposed in clause 8(2), is not sufficiently prescriptive. The sub-section as drafted—
“knowingly or recklessly makes a false declaration”
—does not specify that innocence will be a defence. By articulating a protection for innocent mistakes, we would force the commission to have regard to the mental decision element of the crime, rather than simply allowing it to hand out criminal sanctions based solely on the action of giving a false declaration.
Section 167 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 contains that idea. It states that where a person has been charged with an offence under its provisions, they may apply to the High Court, an election court or other court as appropriate, for relief from liability on the grounds that
“the act or omission arose from inadvertence or from accidental miscalculation or from some other reasonable cause of a like nature, and in any case did not arise from any want of good faith”
The Minister might suggest that sub-section (5) is sufficient to protect those who make an innocent declaration because they would not fall into the definition of having
“knowingly or recklessly made a false declaration”,
but I would point him to the volumes of criminal case law that deal with the difficulty of those two concepts. If the protection was included in the Representation of the People Act 1983, I cannot see the basis on which it should not be included in the Bill. While we have the chance, we should aim for clarity, not only for donors and the commission, but to prevent the need for interpretation of our intentions by the judiciary at some later date when a sanction is challenged in a court of law.
Amendment No. 6, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Battersea, would remove the summary conviction and indictment penalty tariffs in relation to an offence under section 54(5)—making a false declaration about the source of a donation. In its place would be inserted a standard £1,000 fine. I do not support the imposition of one-size-fits-all penalties and I am concerned that the amendment, while well intentioned in that it would reduce the maximum penalty, would be an arbitrary and in some cases, a disproportionate penalty.
Much was made in the lead-up to the Bill of the role of better regulatory regimes and the use of flexible tariffs. My concern with the amendment is that we would take a step back from that flexibility. A range of sanctions will always require a top-end option. It may not be used often, or at all, but its existence acts as a deterrent. I am afraid that the amendment could remove that option and undermine the seriousness of the offence. I have more sympathy with the view that it should be an indictable crime. We will consider that element further.