My Lords, I thank the Minister for bringing this statutory instrument before us. We have shown in this short debate that it was worthy of greater consideration than the 16 minutes which it attracted in a committee in the House of Commons. There are many important issues here and I congratulate her on single-handedly defending the Government’s position in the face of all the opposition parties this evening, which suggests that the arguments are not quite so straightforward as she might suggest.

The principal argument which the Minister made, that this instrument had to be brought forward now with such huge increases in election expenses, was not about election expenses at all. The argument here and in the other place was on the urgency of clarifying election law about security arrangements for candidates and their teams. As an experienced election agent, I would never have allowed security considerations to be part of the election expense return which I was making.

If this was necessary, it could of course be done simply on its own and with all-party agreement, but there is not all-party agreement on such huge increases and on them being made at the last minute. No satisfactory explanation is given as to why they are so large or have been made so suddenly before polling day. On all these issues where the Government are clearly changing the rules in their favour, they are abandoning the principles of the level playing field. A level playing field requires not just the same maximum limit for everyone but equal resources on each side. An army with 100 tanks against an army with one tank is not an even competition, so we do not have a level playing field of the kind which the law provided for in the 1880s and the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act tried to provide for in 2000.

I do not feel the need to test the opinion of the House again, when I feel that its opinion on all these issues was well tested when the noble Lord, Lord Khan, did so a few weeks ago. I note that 90% of the Cross- Bench Peers voted in support of his Motion and against the Government, so as we know the opinion of the House on this issue, I will not test it further. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment to the Motion withdrawn.

Motion agreed.