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Mrs. Laing: The Minister has explained the position very well. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 47 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 48 to 51 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 52
Time for delivery of unaudited accounts to Electoral Commission
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr. Bellingham: May I ask the Minister to explain the logic behind the substitution in the clause? Why is the time to be four months, rather than three?
David Cairns: My hon. and learned Friend prompts me to say that it is a month longer, which is the literal response to the question.
Clause 52 extends the time for political parties that are not required to have their accounts audited to submit them to the Electoral Commission. Parties with accounts of less than £250,000, of which there are 287, compared to 15 with income and expenditure above that amount, are not required to have their accounts audited, but they are required to submit their accounts to the Electoral Commission within three months of the end of the financial year. As the hon. Gentleman
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noted, the clause increases that time period to four months, which we believe is more proportionate, given that the parties have fewer resources. It is an attempt to ease the regulatory burdens on smaller parties. There is no more to it than that.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 52 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 53 to 55 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 56
Register of donations to include details of nature of donation
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr. Heath: I rise on this clause as a matter of convenience to ask whether the Ministers have given any further thought to the point that I raised on Second Reading. I asked about the parallel provisions under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 and the Representation of the People Act 1983 for the recording of donations to Members of Parliament and the House authorities' requirements. I suggested that it might be sufficient for the Electoral Commission to have the right of audit of our internal systems in order to satisfy itself that donations, in cash or in kind, were properly recorded, rather than requiring Members to make parallel registrations of donations in two different places with slightly different criteria, which causes problems for Members. That view is shared by the Electoral Commission. It is rather complex in legislative terms, but it would be welcomed by hon. Members and by those who regulate our activities.
David Cairns: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me this opportunity to say that I gave an undertaking in my winding-up speech on Second Reading that we would give serious consideration to his point.
It is not only members of the Committee who share the concern that the dual reporting of the matters in question with slightly different tweaks is not really necessary, and that reporting to one body, monitored by the other—whichever it happens to be—would be better.
I understand that the Standards and Privileges Committee is examining the issue, and we shall need to take a long, hard look at its findings, and move towards a more rational approach. I am happy once again to give the undertaking that I gave in the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 56 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 57 to 59 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 60
Referendum and election material
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr. Bellingham: Quite a lot of disputes, some uncertainty and at times vexatious complaints can
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arise over imprints. If a candidate decides to use material from a previous election in which they stood—posters would be the obvious example—but the agent has changed and the previous agent does not give permission for the imprint to be used, is there any way of overriding that lack of permission?
The relevance of the matter is that when you and I, Mr. Conway, began our political careers, many years ago—we were both elected to this place for the first time in 1983, although of course since then we have both been in and out—posters were normally paper. Now Correx posters are all the rage; they are a great deal more expensive and election rules allow them to be re-used. However, I should like clarification of the point about the imprint. As we move to a different type of electioneering, using different types of materials and facilities, the point will grow more relevant. I do not know whether I am making my inquiry under the correct clause, but I should be grateful for guidance.
Mr. Heath: I am grateful to the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk for raising those points. An opportunity has been missed in the clause to clear up several confusions about the use of imprints, and a clearer and slightly more radical wording would be better. There is a fog of confusion about what does or does not need an imprint. I am sometimes given the advice that several parts of a single piece of paper need imprints, in case someone tears or cuts them off, leaving a piece of paper with no imprint. That seems like nonsense to me. If one publishes a document, what someone does with it later is their business. If it has an imprint on it, it should comply with the law.
Another issue is whether, in local authority elections in which a leaflet promotes several candidates—all the county council candidates in an area, for example—the name of each one is required in the imprint. It appears that at the moment that would be required. In Somerset I think that the council has 57 or 58 members, so if the names of that many candidates had to appear in the imprint to make its distribution promoting their candidacies legal, the result would be a rather long imprint, which would not improve clarity or reliability in the electoral process. It therefore seems sensible to reconsider the whole question of what is required for imprints.
Two more notes have been given to me. I do not entirely understand them, but I hope that the Under-Secretary does. One is that the 2001 legislation that suspended the introduction of new imprint rules is not repealed, so the clause will not come into effect. Is that correct? Will he also make it clear that the requirements of the Newspapers, Printers, and Reading Rooms Repeal Act 1869 does not apply to election material? I hope that he can make that absolutely clear, and I look forward to his reply with interest.
David Cairns: Not as much as I do. I shall reflect on my answer after I have given it.
Clause 60 makes three changes to the requirements for imprints on election and referendum material. In the case of closed list elections—that is, European parliamentary
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elections, GLA elections, Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly elections—although obviously not in elections in first-past-the-post constituencies, the imprint requirement on election material makes it permissible to list solely the names of political parties, rather than the names of all the candidates on the party list, as the person on behalf of whom the material is published, as is the current requirement. It is a sensible and practical measure.
The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome asked a sensible and practical question about whether or not all 59 council candidates needed to be listed. The clause relates solely to party lists and not to individual requirements, so I do not have an immediate answer his question because it is not directly relevant, but I shall try to be helpful and find out.
As the hon. Gentleman mentioned when he referred to one of his notes—the one that I understood—the Election Publications Act 2001 suspended the three-part requirement under the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 for election material of printer, promoter and person on behalf of whom the material is being published and who is not the promoter. The requirement was suspended when it was found that political parties still had large stocks of material with the old-style imprint of printer and publisher.
It is quite clear that sufficient time has now passed so that the 2000 Act three-part requirement should be solely in force, which is what the clause does, and we will in due course consult the parties on the appropriate implementation date.
Finally, although I shall return to this point before my last, ''And finally, Cyril,'' I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's point about using posters with the name of someone who is not the agent. That probably crosses some line. I appreciate his concern if he has a large stockpile of posters from a previous election that he did not manage to put up. Perhaps my Scottish thrift and that of the hon. Member for Epping Forest is seeping into him and he does not want to waste them.
The role of agent is clearly defined in law and carries with it many legal obligations and duties. I am not immediately attracted to the idea of being able to put up posters that have the wrong agent's name on them. Nor do I believe that the person who is not the agent would be attracted to the idea. We all know that agents are legally responsible for large numbers of things that happen during elections.
Mr. Devine: Will the Under-Secretary clarify whether putting a sticker with the name of the new agent on it across the board would suffice?
David Cairns: It depends. Stickers can fall off and be blown away. Should we deface posters so that they cannot be read? Frankly, it would be better simply to get new posters.
2.45 pm
I take my hon. Friend's point, but I am still minded to stick to my original thinking on this matter. We should not put up literature that describes as the agent the name of someone who is not the agent, because the
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agent has very serious legal duties and responsibilities. We all know that agents can be imprisoned for such breaches, so I am not drawn to that particular example.
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