Tony
Lloyd: The hon. Gentleman might be coming to this. I have
considerable sympathy with his proposal for a permanent cap over the
life of a Parliament, but that is not on offer at the moment. Is he
going to insist on the best at the price of the
good?
David
Howarth: The hon. Gentleman says that that proposal is not
on offer, but technically it is, if we get enough time to discuss new
clause 9. However, what we are going to do at this point? Not a lot,
given the state of play on the arguments about consensus and not doing
anything unless we all agree, which means that one party can veto any
proposal. My
other point involves the difference between candidate spending and
party spending. Campaigns now are not just about candidates. Candidate
regulation involves proper 19th-century regulation of the extraordinary
amounts that were spent by candidates in elections in the second half
of that century. However, politics is not like that anymore. Candidate
spending still occurs, and it ought to be regulated. If hon. Members
want to see some candidate spending, they should go down to Richmond
Park and see Mr. Goldsmith’s spending. Nevertheless,
candidate spending is not the leading problem nationally. The leading
problem nationally is party spending, directed at a particular
constituency. That is how parties attempt to buy elections, and it
needs to be regulated as well. It seems that the only way to do that is
by separate, clear regulation of local party spending across the entire
life of a Parliament.
Mr.
Turner: Does the hon. Gentleman not understand that this
is far more about national decisions on where money is spent than about
the individual? What did we spend money on before the new system was
introduced? The only difference is that my name is on the literature.
Before, it had pictures of Conservatives, doing nice Conservative
things, as well as lots of other people. Subsequently, my name is on
it. What is the
difference?
David
Howarth: The hon. Gentleman makes an important point.
Triggering or fixed-month solutions that deal with candidate spending
will result only in his name being taken back off the leaflets. Party
spending will continue. I am not saying as a consequence that there
should be no control on candidate spending—we must have that as
well—but the solution to the problem is a local party spending
cap. I
want to make one final point. One thing that we have not and perhaps
ought to have discussed is how the spending of third-party
people—not Liberal Democrats, but people who are not technically
involved with a party—comes into play. The present problem is
that spending by such people, who support parties’ campaigns but
do not partake of official party spending, is regulated only in the
national cap and as part of election
expenses. 3.45
pm We
must be careful not to leave a gap there as well. Perhaps that is also
the way that we need to go in order to regulate the spending of
individuals who intend to become candidates later. We need to count
them as regulated third parties and expand the definitions in the
relevant part of PPERA, which would catch instances such as
Mr. Goldsmith’s campaigns in west
London.
Dr.
Whitehead: At the moment, we have a platonic form of a
possible all-encompassing solution to party funding, both national
party funding and local party funding, including how national and local
party funding might interact over the course of an entire electoral
cycle. Indeed, in that platonic form I would agree with the hon. Member
for Cambridge that a whole-term regulation of local spending is
probably the right way forward.
Also,
whole-term regulation of local spending incorporates the idea that
national spending may be applied for local purposes and therefore ought
to be regulated as if it were local spending. Indeed, if one had
overall regulation with a choice between a cap on local spending and a
cap on national spending, that idea would automatically be
implemented.
Mrs.
Laing: Does the hon. Gentleman not perceive an unfairness
if local spending by a candidate over the whole period that he is
talking about is restricted while spending by the sitting Member of
Parliament is not only unrestricted but backed by the taxpayer to the
amount of £10,000 a year?
Dr.
Whitehead: The spending by Members of Parliament is not
unrestricted and it would not be unrestricted in the system that I have
suggested might be encompassed by a whole-term spending restriction.
Indeed, the idea of a whole-term spending restriction was set out in
the Constitutional Affairs Committee report on party funding a little
while ago.
As I am sure
the hon. Lady is aware, spending on items such as newsletters is
carefully regulated by this House, particularly by the efforts of the
Standards and Privileges Committee to define carefully what is regarded
as promotion of a person and what is regarded as a report of
parliamentary activities. Under those circumstances and under the
circumstances that I am about to describe, if a Member of Parliament
used the resources of the House to go beyond telling the electorate
what they have been doing as an MP, which is quite reasonable, that
expenditure could well come under the heading of local election
expenditure to promote that person’s candidature. A penalty
would then be levied on that person automatically for going beyond what
is reasonable in terms of parliamentary expenditure.
At the
moment, there are a number of debates about whether that expenditure is
within the right terms. A number of hon. Members have either been
required to repay what they have spent on putting out their newsletters
or, in certain instances, have had to apologise to the House for what
they have put in them.
An additional
sanction could well be that, in circumstances where there is a clear
date-based trigger point, expenditure after that date will not relate
to whether or not a person is a candidate, or an avowed candidate. As
the hon. Member for Isle of Wight has said, there were practices in
previous years where people were hiding behind metaphorical bushes, as
it were, prior to the point that they declared themselves a candidate.
In a sense, with a clear date-based trigger point, which is what we
potentially have on offer in the real world and not in the platonic
world of a whole-term cap, the real issue would not be whether a person
had declared themselves as a candidate but what they had done to
promote that candidature, in terms of expenditure, within that period.
It would be the same for everybody
and it would be the same within each constituency on a rubric that we
already have, in terms of how much money can be
spent. Mrs.
Laing: I want the hon. Gentleman to clarify a point on
which I am genuinely not certain. Does he believe that a candidate
should not be able to spend any money before the trigger point in his
amendment? The Member of Parliament would spend both taxpayers’
money and private money. To use taxpayers’ money, they would
have to explain what they have done as a Member of Parliament without
any party political advantage. None the less, it still gets the name of
that person known in the locality as a Member of Parliament while, at
the same time, the candidate would not be able to declare himself or
herself as a candidate and would not be able to spend any
money.
Dr.
Whitehead: I fear that the hon. Lady has misunderstood the
mechanism of the trigger point. There is a difference between a trigger
mechanism and what is proposed in the amendments. The amendments work
back, as it were, from a solid point in the river—or a post in
the river—and that is the point at which one has to have a
general election. After Dissolution, there is a period of restricted
local expenditure, as is the case at present under PPERA. Before that,
there is a pre-election period. Once that point has been reached,
everybody—whether or not they have been a candidate previous to
that—knows what the rules are on local expenditure. If they have
been a candidate before that point, they can spend what they like. That
is not regulated until that point has been reached. A sitting Member of
Parliament is bound by exactly the same regulations except that they
can put out a newsletter or similar, which is regulated by the House
authorities, talking about what they have been doing in Parliament. If,
after the period of pre-election regulation, that person goes beyond
that, their expenditure could conceivably be counted as their candidate
expenditure.
I suggest
that that method overcomes the problem that was inherent—as the
hon. Member for Cambridge said—in the Electoral
Commission’s suggestion of the four-month period when one had to
guess when the general election might be. In that case, one might get
into problems of retrospection. In the present circumstances, if this
were to become law before the next election, there would also be no
issue of retrospection because a date would not have been reached by
the time this went into law. Therefore, there is no question of
anybody’s expenditure to date being caught within such an
arrangement. I
was encouraged by what the hon. Lady said in her initial comments on
the amendment, but she then did an Indiana Jones-like bound and said,
“Therefore, we cannot accept it.” I thought that, in
substance, her comments were rather supportive of the ideas in the
amendment, and those potentially on offer in the real world of what we
do now to regulate issues—we all know that there are problems,
in our current electoral arrangements. That is the spirit in which the
amendment is offered. Whether the issues work in the round depends, I
hope, on the ability of parties to reach a consensus on how to operate
such matters. The amendments provide a framework that reflects the
consensus of a fair and level playing field for all concerned, clear
points before and after which expenditure is regulated and a method for
ensuring that the maximum that can be spent relates
to a route that already exists and by which we can judge what happens
constituency by constituency at local
level. Mr.
Tyrie: I agree with everybody who has said that we have
not had enough time to consider this area of triggering, which is the
most important issue in the Bill. It is extremely important that we do
everything we can to give it salience on Report, and the attention that
it deserves. I fear, with the shutter coming down at 4
o’clock, that the Minister will not get long to respond to my
remarks on the
amendments. My
guess is that the clause—not the amendment—is so
controversial and mistaken that the whole Bill will be delayed. I would
be surprised if the great hurry, which has afflicted every aspect of
the Bill’s consideration, continues—three cheers, or at
least two cheers, for that. I may be wrong, and we may see the Bill on
the Floor of the House before Christmas, but I have my doubts. It is
not unreasonable to describe the main proposal in the clause as
blatantly partisan. That is why I would certainly favour going down the
road of the amendment, which, as a Back Bencher, I can say has
considerable merit—although I am sure that, as I always or
sometimes do, I shall vote slavishly should we find ourselves in a
Division. This
issue seems to be the meat of the Bill and why we have it. We have had
newspaper reports saying that there must be a move against Ashcroftism,
as it is described, and that this is the essential measure to tackle
it. We have had all sorts of reports of that type, which I shall not go
through one by one. This was not a good way to proceed. We should have
had a chance to consult on the sort of idea embodied by the amendment,
but we had no consultation at all on the triggering issue. When I asked
the Secretary of State in the evidence session whether there had been
any consultation, he said that there was and there was not. It would
have been more helpful and, frankly, more accurate to say that there
was
not. As
I mentioned, I was involved in the talks. All that happened—not
in, but outside, the talks—was that Sir Hayden asked the parties
individually whether they had any views and wanted to open up the
issue. He spoke to the three parties, and they all said that they did
not particularly like the current arrangements—they had
suggestions for improving them, but they did not want the issue to form
part of the talks. Sir Hayden made that point clear publicly. I do not
see how anyone can reasonably call that
consultation. The
amendment proposed is much better than going back to the old rules,
which would risk retrospection for the forthcoming election. We have
had overwhelming evidence—available for many years, not just in
what we have heard—not just from academics but from others that
the old rules would be a disaster. Lord Bingham made such remarks in a
case, and the Committee on Standards in Public Life has given
unequivocal advice that we should not go down the road of the old
rules. I shall not read it out, because I do not have time, but it is
absolutely
clear. We
have just had an interesting debate about whether the solution, from
where we are, is to go to a fixed period, as proposed in the amendment,
or to whole-Parliament limits, which is what the hon. Member for
Southampton, Test was advocating as the alternative.
He used a different phrase, but that is what he is suggesting at local
level. The problem with whole-Parliament limits is that it is difficult
to disaggregate them administratively at local level. Sir Hayden looked
at that issue in the context of expenditure limits. He came to that
conclusion—it may even have been something he published, but it
is certainly in some of the unpublished papers, which we would very
much like to see in the public domain, but which the Government are
obstructing and blocking the public from
seeing. In
the remaining seconds, I would like to make a point about
incumbency— It
being Four o’clock, The Chairman
proceeded, pursuant to Standing Order No. 83D and the Order of the
Committee [4 November], to put forthwith the Question already proposed
from the
Chair. Amendment
negatived.
Motion
made, and Question put, That clauses 10, 11, 14 and 15 stand part
of the
Bill. The
Committee divided: Ayes 10, Noes
7.
Division
No.
9] Question
accordingly agreed to.
Clauses
10, 11, 14 and 15 ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
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