Clause 10
Political Parties and Elections Bill
3:45 pm
Andrew Tyrie (Chichester, Conservative)
I agree with everybody who has said that we have not had enough time to consider this area of triggering, which is the most important issue in the Bill. It is extremely important that we do everything we can to give it salience on Report, and the attention that it deserves. I fear, with the shutter coming down at 4 o’clock, that the Minister will not get long to respond to my remarks on the amendments.
My guess is that the clause—not the amendment—is so controversial and mistaken that the whole Bill will be delayed. I would be surprised if the great hurry, which has afflicted every aspect of the Bill’s consideration, continues—three cheers, or at least two cheers, for that. I may be wrong, and we may see the Bill on the Floor of the House before Christmas, but I have my doubts. It is not unreasonable to describe the main proposal in the clause as blatantly partisan. That is why I would certainly favour going down the road of the amendment, which, as a Back Bencher, I can say has considerable merit—although I am sure that, as I always or sometimes do, I shall vote slavishly should we find ourselves in a Division.
This issue seems to be the meat of the Bill and why we have it. We have had newspaper reports saying that there must be a move against Ashcroftism, as it is described, and that this is the essential measure to tackle it. We have had all sorts of reports of that type, which I shall not go through one by one. This was not a good way to proceed. We should have had a chance to consult on the sort of idea embodied by the amendment, but we had no consultation at all on the triggering issue. When I asked the Secretary of State in the evidence session whether there had been any consultation, he said that there was and there was not. It would have been more helpful and, frankly, more accurate to say that there was not.
As I mentioned, I was involved in the talks. All that happened—not in, but outside, the talks—was that Sir Hayden asked the parties individually whether they had any views and wanted to open up the issue. He spoke to the three parties, and they all said that they did not particularly like the current arrangements—they had suggestions for improving them, but they did not want the issue to form part of the talks. Sir Hayden made that point clear publicly. I do not see how anyone can reasonably call that consultation.
The amendment proposed is much better than going back to the old rules, which would risk retrospection for the forthcoming election. We have had overwhelming evidence—available for many years, not just in what we have heard—not just from academics but from others that the old rules would be a disaster. Lord Bingham made such remarks in a case, and the Committee on Standards in Public Life has given unequivocal advice that we should not go down the road of the old rules. I shall not read it out, because I do not have time, but it is absolutely clear.
We have just had an interesting debate about whether the solution, from where we are, is to go to a fixed period, as proposed in the amendment, or to whole-Parliament limits, which is what the hon. Member for Southampton, Test was advocating as the alternative. He used a different phrase, but that is what he is suggesting at local level. The problem with whole-Parliament limits is that it is difficult to disaggregate them administratively at local level. Sir Hayden looked at that issue in the context of expenditure limits. He came to that conclusion—it may even have been something he published, but it is certainly in some of the unpublished papers, which we would very much like to see in the public domain, but which the Government are obstructing and blocking the public from seeing.
In the remaining seconds, I would like to make a point about incumbency—