Committee (5th Day)

Part of Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill – in the House of Lords at 4:45 pm on 15 December 2010.

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Photo of Lord Falconer of Thoroton Lord Falconer of Thoroton Shadow Spokesperson (Justice) 4:45, 15 December 2010

My Lords, I wish this was as simple as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, said. The difficulties in this area spring from the inappropriateness of parts of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 and its rules on expenditure as applied to this particular circumstance. I referred in the first set of amendments to the effect of those rules, which would make editorial material in newspapers part of the expenditure and show how inappropriate they are.

This next set of amendments shows another inappropriateness. I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, is in his place, because the amendments that I propose in this group were prefaced in remarks made by the noble Lord in the debates on the PPERA-if I may call it that-in 2000, where he emphasised the inappropriateness of imposing limits on political party expenditures in referendums when the campaigns on referendums cut across political parties. I fear that these amendments are needed because of the inappropriateness of the rules to which the noble Lord referred.

Limits on spending by permitted participants in the planned referendum on this voting system will be guided by those rules. Clause 6 of the Bill under discussion today makes it clear that the rules will apply with some modifications. Clause 6, and the inclusion of Schedule 9 to this Bill as a supplementary Schedule 15A to the PPERA, explain these modifications and centre largely on providing detailed rules to control the funding of, and spending by, permitted participants who are not registered parties: in other words, individuals, organisations, companies, trade unions and so on.

Amendment 39AC paves the way for Amendment 126 and is presented to the House as a further modification of the PPERA 2000 rules. As debates on the PPERA back in 2000 exposed, the referendum campaign expenditure limits, which were put into law, are potentially misguided. The PPERA states that in the case of registered parties, spending will be limited according to the share of the vote received by an individual political party at the last general election. Schedule 14 of the PPERA, which our Amendment 126 seeks to replace, dictates that if a party received between 20 and 30 per cent of the vote, it can spend up to £5 million. Between 10 to 20 per cent of the vote, the limit is £4 million. The scale goes down to £500,000 for any party that polls below 5 per cent of the vote; £500,000 is a large amount for a single permitted participant to be able to spend, even if that participant is a party of many members.

As the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, said in the debate on the PPERA on 3 April 2000:

"The key mistake the Government have made is to define the caps by reference to political parties".

He explained that by saying:

"One reason that we have referendums ... is to settle issues which cut across party lines. While parties are essential to general elections in order to simplify choice on many different issues, referendums are single issue campaigns".-[Hansard, 3/4/2000; col. 1133.]

The noble Lord is, as ever, wise. It is right that the designated yes and no campaigns are permitted to spend equal amounts of money in the referendum campaign. By being designated as the lead campaigners, they are the mouthpiece on each side of the yes/no campaign. However, political parties should not be able to spend this much. They should not dominate the campaign. If a political party has a particular view, as one political party has here, in practice it will spend all its money-which will be £5 million, if it is 20 to 30 per cent-in favour of the particular voting system that it supports. That allows much more money to be spent on one side of the campaign, because a political party supports it.

We therefore propose Amendment 126, which Amendment 39AC paves the way for. In Amendment 126, which is almost the last in the group and is on page 28 in the up-to-date Marshalled List, we reduce the amount that a registered political party can spend on the referendum from £5 million to a maximum of £500,000. Some people may think that that amount is too large, but it deals with the very point that the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, raised, which is a good point: namely, that we should look at these campaigns on the basis not of political parties but of whether there is going to be a level playing field. If we allow a political party to spend as much as £5 million, we give a huge advantage if any one of the political parties supports one or other of the particular voting systems.

Finally, there is a separate point in our schedule. The PPERA permits all other permitted participants designated by the Electoral Commission-those that are not designated as the lead yes or no campaign or political parties-to spend £500,000. Frugal times or not, that is a large amount of money. We are concerned that the rules as contained in the PPERA, which are due to apply by way of Clause 6 of the Bill to the planned referendum on the electoral system, would therefore allow a huge range of permitted participants to seek to get the limit of £500,000 and thereby allow one side or the other in effect to get around the limits.

Our amendment makes essentially two points: not to refer to limits by reference to political parties, because that fails to understand the point of the referendum; and not to have a system that has such a high limit-namely, £500,000-for permitted participants, as that allows for abuse. That is why we propose Amendment 39AC, which would pave the way for our proposed new Schedule14A, which would be inserted into the PPERA. That would ensure a level playing field. I am afraid that this problem is another indication of the unsuitability of the PPERA rules as they apply to referendums. I beg to move.