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Mr. William Ross: I support the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve), which is widely supported by Opposition Members. I suspect that if Labour Members thought about it, they would also support it.
Frankly, we always have difficulty getting people to take on the onerous task of being secretary. One will always get a chairman, or a vice-chairman--he figures that he will not have to do much--but one needs an enthusiast or a fanatic to take on the job of secretary. In the case of a treasurer, one needs someone who is extremely careful with money and who enjoys the trust of the whole party. In a small party, it is difficult to find people to do such jobs in a voluntary capacity.
Organisations the size of the major parties--the Liberal Democrats, the Labour party, the Conservative party--can employ full-time officials. I suspect that the treasurer in the larger parties is merely a figurehead, who can be replaced at short notice with another figurehead. That is not the case with a smaller party, where the person does the work. Frankly, my party and the other parties in Northern Ireland consider the time limit proposed by the Opposition to be modest. We would prefer a longer period.
I agree with those who have said that they see no dangers in the extension. I see great merit in it, and I beg the Government to think seriously about the difficulties in which they are placing the small parties with their proposals. Will the Government please accept the Opposition amendment on this occasion?
Mr. John Redwood (Wokingham): I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to catch your eye at this late hour, when we have made so little progress on this substantial rewrite of the Bill.
Mr. Tom Levitt (High Peak): Get on with it!
Mr. Redwood: I have been speaking for all of two sentences. The hon. Gentleman should be a little more patient. What I am about to say is of considerable importance to the way in which the Government conduct their business, draft sloppy and rotten legislation, and do not give us proper time to consider substantial rewrites.
The amendments in the group run to many pages and represent a comprehensive rewriting of the clauses to which they refer. The Bill was made up of 181 pages. There are now 127 pages of amendments, which is a disgraceful ratio.
We have just reached clause 22--due to the detailed rewrite of the preceding clauses--and we find that 73 lines of amendment have been tabled to straighten out the original 43-line clause, which went through its due processes in both Houses. We are being asked to approve 73 lines of amendments that completely change the mechanism by which this part of the legislation will be implemented.
The main substance of the amendments to clause 22 that we are invited to approve is to allow in a new person--a party's campaign officer--to take on the responsibilities that were originally to go to the treasurer.
Amendment No. 39 would insert a new clause after clause 22. The new clause uses stumbling phraseology to define a campaign officer, to explain that he may have 12 deputies because he may find the task too onerous and to point out that responsibilities are split between the campaign officer and treasurer, depending on the different parts of the legislation for which compliance is being requested or sought. This is an enormously bureaucratic and complicated set of procedures and the more titles and registration requirements the Bill introduces, the more difficult judgments will have to be made when deciding when a party can comply, will comply or has complied. Mistakes, controversy and disagreement will therefore be more likely.
11.45 pm
The Minister must realise that these issues will be hard fought. They go to the heart of our party political process. He is inviting us to agree to amendments that make the detail even more complicated, greatly increasing the scope for genuine dispute. What should be a relatively straightforward regulatory matter will be caught up in a deeply political process. It is not a good idea deeply to politicise regulation, and the complexity proposed for clause 22 makes that much more likely.
I should have liked to have time to talk about the split of responsibilities between local and national political organisations and about the element of discretion by considering units, as they are called, as well as the national hierarchy. It is more normal to ask for national responsibility in such matters, but there will not be time to examine the issue because my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) has draw attention to an issue that he thinks is even more important and on which
he would like a ministerial reply. [Interruption.] I am glad that Labour Members think that this is a suitable occasion for snoring, but they must understand that their elections and constituency organisations could be tied up in the very disputes to which I am drawing attention and about which they appear to have no knowledge whatever. They now seem to think that our parliamentary democratic system--[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The right hon. Gentleman must be heard in silence.
Mr. Redwood: It is very rare for me to be heard in silence. I would think that something had gone wrong if Labour Members listened to me in silence. The more they barrack, the more worried they are. The looks on their faces reveals it all. They know that it is another piece of botched legislation and that it is an appallingly badly drafted clause. The Minister is nonchalantly recommending a comprehensive rewrite of the clause and of most of the rest of the Bill without having a clue as to how it will work and without having any answers to the disputes that will doubtless arise when we try to implement such nonsense.
I have skipped many important amendments to reach amendment No. 64, which would add a new clause to the Bill after clause 27. My hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield pointed out that the timing allowed would be tight for a national treasurer let alone a unit treasurer. I understand the Minister's point that we shall be allowed double the short period of time for the unit than we are for the national situation, but many other features of the registration process in the new clause worry me considerably.
Even though there is so little time, I will give the Minister time to reply. I hope that he will explain why registered officers of a party have to register themselves not only as registered officers and register the address of the party headquarters--that is entirely reasonable--but have to register their own address. A political party knows where its registered officers live and would know how to find them if it needed to. However, is it a good idea to put their addresses into the public domain? At times in Britain, security is a worrying issue and that might become a problem not just for elected representatives, but for volunteers in a voluntary party system.
My hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield made a good point when he said that it was not always easy, particularly in small minority parties--not the Conservative party or even possibly the Labour party--to find people to carry out such jobs. Subsection (2)(a) to (f) of the new clause contains the requirements for registration, and they will make some people think again. People have to make a great voluntary effort to exercise the eternal vigilance that party organisation and democratic debate require. We know, however, that the audience out there is walking away from the Government and the kind of politics for which they stand. They cannot get their own supporters to vote in elections.
Is it right to make it so much more bureaucratic, cumbersome and difficult to organise in parties and to go through the party political process, as the Government seem to wish to do? They are making a rather out-of-date political point relating to events long ago, instead of understanding that the modern problem is the lack of
engagement by many people in the democratic party political process. Given the way in which the Government are going, they will make it even more difficult to get those missing voters back and to turn them into Labour party activists.With great regret, I sit down before I have made three or four more points that need making, because we need the benefit of the Minister's reply on these crucial weaknesses in amendment No. 64, which inserts a new clause after clause 27. I hope that he will also explain why we have faced such a huge rewrite of the Bill. The Government's incompetence in the original draft was obviously overwhelming. Does he regret not giving us more time this evening to consider what is, in effect, a completely new Bill?
Mr. Tipping: I listened with great interest, as I always do, to the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood). Madam Deputy Speaker asked the House to listen to him in silence. Some right hon. Members listened to him in somnolence. I know that the right hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Mr. Hogg) has played an active part in our debates this week. I hope that, after his exertions, he becomes a late convert to programming. I trust that his exertions will not get the better of him, and that he will be enthused by the comments of the right hon. Member for Wokingham.
The right hon. Member for Wokingham complained about the split between the responsibilities of treasurer and compliance officer. He described it as bureaucratic and unhelpful. I remind him that that is similar to an amendment from his hon. Friends which we accepted on Report. He asked us to be a listening Government. We are a listening Government, and we heard what his hon. Friends said on Report. In the light of their complaints about the onerous duties that would be imposed on the party treasurer, we accepted their view that it might be better to split the post between the treasurer and a compliance officer.
The right hon. Gentleman complains that that has made the terms of the Bill wider and more difficult. I hope that his hon. Friends on the Opposition Front Bench will welcome the steps that we have taken to ensure that the voice of his party is heard in the Bill.
The same applies to the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell), who during the deliberations on the Bill pursued the need to make arrangements so that parties with a federal structure could have a fair deal. Earlier in the debate this evening, he complained about the looks of astonishment and the difficulties that Ministers and officials perceived in solving the problem.
I am pleased that we have been able to resolve the problem. I gently chide the hon. Gentleman and remind him that there have been a number of meetings with him and employees of his party to try to find a solution. It ain't been easy, and I am delighted that we succeeded. I am sorry to say that that has complicated the Bill, but I firmly believe that it is right for us to ensure that the provisions meet the needs of the third major party in the United Kingdom.
I do not think that we should be criticised for doing that. We should be commended for it. We listened to his hon. Friends and made adjustments to suit them. We listened to the representations from the Conservatives and made adjustments to suit them. Both parties complained
that the Bill would not work, but we have taken steps to ensure that it will. I suspect that it may be necessary to divide the House, and I am disappointed about that because discussions throughout the Bill's passage have generally been constructive and helpful.The hon. Members for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) and for Hazel Grove talked about the branch treasurer, the constituency treasurer and the treasurer of the accounting unit. The amendment applies to the national treasurer. If there is a need for a new treasurer for a new, smaller accounting unit, the Bill provides 28 days for such a person to be appointed.
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