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Elections (Candidates' Expenses)
5.44 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Tom Sackville): I beg to move,
- That the draft Representation of the People (Variation of Limits of Candidates' Election Expenses) Order 1997, which was laid before this House on 11th February, be approved.
- That the draft Local Elections (Variations of Limits of Candidates' Election Expenses) (Northern Ireland) Order 1997, which was laid before this House on 12th February, be approved.
Mr. Doug Henderson (Newcastle upon Tyne, North): I am not sure whether the Minister was complaining that he could not rack any more, or whether he had done too much racking and could not find anything; but the House will have heard what he said.
It does not surprise me that the Government wish to nod the order through promptly. I do not intend to speak for long, but it must be said that the public expect some transparency in the way in which we deal with election funding. The order is important, because it regulates the amount of funding that any candidate who contests the next general election, or elections in Northern Ireland, can spend. It is important for that to be dealt with on the Floor of the House, where a little more attention is paid to the matter than might be the case in Committee--although not much more, I suspect, looking around the Chamber.
Mr. Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield):
The Minister could find very little to say, because he could not or would not address the fact that room for manoeuvre is very restricted. If we were able, as we are not, to talk about the £40 million war chest that the Tories have obtained from devious sources, and are going to use--
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. The hon. Gentleman is right: he is totally out of order.
Mr. Henderson:
I am rather glad that I took that intervention, and learned the mood of the House. I might otherwise have been tempted to move a little further than the precise terms of the order.
The Opposition support the order. We recognise the need to uprate the amount of money that candidates can spend in line with inflation. Nevertheless, Mr. Deputy
Speaker, I beg your indulgence so that I may comment on some of the inadequacies of the order. It deals only with expenditure at local level in electioneering.
Nowadays--in contrast to the days, 50 years ago or more, when Parliament first drew up orders such as this--the expenditure incurred by a local candidate pales into insignificance compared with the amount incurred by parties nationally in a general election campaign. It seems to me a little crazy that we can examine only the expenditure that a candidate can incur at a local level, and cannot consider how much is incurred by his political party at national level.
Hon. Members will make their own judgment on how any political party can best get its general election message over. Some may believe that it is still more effective to tramp around the streets, knock on doors or charm the locals in a club, but others--I include myself in this category--think otherwise. We recognise the importance of those factors, but by-elections are different, in that only a small margin of votes may be at stake, with a large effort concentrated on them. In a general election, that kind of campaigning, which is relatively cheap, is not so effective, and does not influence public opinion in the same way as the bashing of political parties on billboards, direct mailing--which is very expensive--or saturation propaganda in newspaper advertisements.
If we believe that that second group of factors has become more and more important in persuading people in our political system, it strikes me as logical that regulations governing the amount that any political party can spend in an election should also focus on the ability of parties to raise funds for campaigning purposes.
I am told by Library staff that a candidate can spend an average of £8,000. There were 651 candidates at the last general election, which means that the total was £65.2 million. That pales into insignificance compared with the war chest of £40 million which this morning's newspapers tell us the Conservative party will have at its disposal in the election. The House needs to conduct a review of the way that political parties and elections are funded. It is not enough to regulate what is happening locally, although that is important. It is crucial to look beyond that, at how public opinion is influenced and how political parties raise funds to influence public opinion.
The British people would not want rich people similar to Ross Perot in America, Berlusconi in Italy--[Interruption.]--or Sir James Goldsmith, as the Government Whip mutters--because it is not right that those who are phenomenally rich should be able to build up a political party and move into the political spectrum with virtually no support among the people. The vast majority of people will not agree with that, and that is why they will fully support a review of the regulations.
It is not possible at this time, eight weeks before a general election, to undertake a major review of the matter, but the next Parliament should look not only at how political parties are regulated and how much expenditure they can incur locally, but at national provisions as well. That is the way to ensure long-term democracy, and the British people will expect serious politicians to support it.
Mr. Archy Kirkwood (Roxburgh and Berwickshire):
The order is nonsense. I agree with much of what the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson) said. Everybody understands that election thresholds should be valorised each year. The last variation order was presented on 13 March 1994, and this one simply catches up with the increase in the retail prices index over that time. If everybody accepts that inflation should be reflected in the base limit for expenses for candidates, why not recognise that in the RPI and amend the 1983 legislation so that, as a new electoral register is produced each February, the RPI will automatically calculate a new threshold limit for expenses?
Mr. Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield):
I was tempted to oppose the order after studying it in detail. We are debating an important subject. What could be more important to democrats than the representation of the people? One of the finest aspects of our electoral system is the tight control of expenditure by candidates. Members of other legislatures, such as that in the United States, look with a mixture of astonishment and admiration at our system, and at the tight control of how much each candidate can spend in an election.
You are a well-travelled Member, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and you will know that, under the United States' system, there is no limit on what a candidate can spend. One of the great dangers of the US system and those of many other countries is that a very wealthy person can almost purchase votes because of the intensity of his campaign. That is especially the case if the ability to spend is linked to the ability to buy television and radio time. Hon. Members can count their blessings not only that is there a strict limit on individual expenditure but that, nationally, there is a strict attitude to political broadcasts on radio and television. Long may that continue and prosper.
The one issue in the order that impinges directly on representation of the people is that each candidate is restricted to expenditure of £8,000. But a party with enough money to take all the billboards in my constituency and all the advertising space in my local paper makes nonsense of that by undermining the legislation. By taking space on billboards alone, that party can double the allowable expenditure for each candidate. That faces me, and I have perhaps one of the best, well-oiled electoral machines in the country. Huddersfield Labour party has no equal in the land for membership and commitment, and it uses every modern technique to maintain Labour's majority. I have no concerns on that score.
My constituency is surrounded by marginal seats, but the Conservative party will spend so much in my constituency, to which many people come from outlying constituencies for shopping and entertainment, that it will dwarf my £8,000. In the election campaign, possibly £50,000 will be spent on poster sites alone and another £100,000 will be spent on advertising. Given that reality, the order is nonsense.
In a full debate on the nature of our democracy and on the impact of the representation of the people legislation, we would examine in detail not only the principles but the fact that the system is unfair to parties with fewer resources than others. That comes down to the grass-roots issue of one candidate having an unequal chance against other candidates. I fear that that will go on, because we have allowed a great difference.
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