Committee (5th Day)

Part of Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill – in the House of Lords at 5:30 pm on 15 December 2010.

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Photo of Lord Falconer of Thoroton Lord Falconer of Thoroton Shadow Spokesperson (Justice) 5:30, 15 December 2010

My Lords, it is important to identify what we are trying to achieve here. I think everybody in this House would agree that the right expenditure limits are those which create a level playing field. Both sides should be subject to the same limits. The difficulty about the rules that apply from PPERA is that that does not appear to be the case on the facts of this particular referendum. Perhaps I may identify two specific circumstances as to why that is. The way that PPERA deals with the limits is by setting three separate limits, which are cumulative. The first limit allows the designated lead organisation on each side-the leading campaign organisation for "yes" and the leading campaign organisation for "no"-to have a limit of £5 million. That plainly demonstrates equality there. The second limit allows each political party that got between 20 per cent and 30 per cent of the vote in the previous election to have a cumulative limit of £5 million. That is added to the £5 million for the designated lead organisation. In the current arrangements, we have two political parties that express no view on whether they support the change to AV and one political party that supports the change to AV. The effect on the facts of this case is that there is the designated lead organisation limit of £5 million, and in addition there is £5 million that the Liberal Democrats get to spend on the campaign. Therefore, there appears to be an uneven playing field right from the start.

Separately and in addition to that point is the point made by practically everybody around the Chamber that, if you are an authorised participant-either an individual or a corporation-you can donate up to £500,000. Therefore, there is very little difficulty for somebody who supports one of the campaigns-whether they are companies, individuals with families, or a group of people who have a particularly concerted view-to give, in effect, an unlimited amount of money to one or other of the campaigns.

Our proposition is that, first, you should reduce the amount of the limit for political parties, because otherwise you reach an unfair result. That is precisely the point that the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, made in 2000. It is obviously correct in relation to this because it obviously leads to a limit of £10 million for the "yes" campaign and a limit of only £5 million for the "no" campaign.

Regarding the rich individual, no answer of any sort was given by the noble Lord. I would have been prepared to accept some answer in relation to, first, the party-political point and, secondly, the point about rich individuals. However, not one answer came. The noble Lord merely said, "We are confident that the rules are okay". This is the same Minister who, in the debate on the previous group of amendments, agreed to go away and think about changing the rules, which he said were not adequate to deal with the position. He is shaking his head. He is right: he did not agree to that but he agreed that he would discuss it, which rather implied that he accepted that there might be something wrong.

Perhaps I may quote what the Electoral Commission says about the two amendments that we are putting forward:

"These are significant changes to the provisions for spending limits at UK-wide referendums set out in the Parliamentary Parties, Elections and Referendums Act. Parliament may wish to consider whether the change might affect the ability of campaigners to put their arguments effectively to voters and the potential implications of changing one aspect of the PPERA rules on campaign spending without further consideration of the overall regulatory structure".

Therefore, the commission is saying, "Don't change anything because that might lead to the whole thing falling apart in some way".

The noble Lord, Lord McNally, says, "If we have made a mistake in relation to these rules, we'll learn from this". I think that when we are scrutinising this Bill, our obligation as a House is to consider the merits of the changes that have been proposed. We should not treat the referendum-on a matter which Mr Nicholas Clegg has described as the most important electoral change since 1832-as an experiment but we should have the courage of our convictions and change the system if we think it is wrong. Surely the one thing that we have learnt from America is that money does buy elections, and all the rules that we introduced were intended to stop that happening. However, these rules do not contain fair limits that apply to both sides.

The noble Lord was so good on the first group of amendments and so bad on this one-in that he gave absolutely no explanation and did not really deal at all with the arguments-that I have no option but to test the opinion of the Committee.