Representation of the People (Election Expenses Exclusion) Order 2013

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Representation of the People Act 1983 lists a number of exclusions from election expenses, which this order seeks to amend. The order adds a further exclusion whereby payments made to disabled candidates from the Access to Elected Office for Disabled People Fund are also exempted. This means that recipients of the new fund will not be penalised for accepting grants that are intended to increase their electoral participation. Fund payments will not therefore be considered for the purposes of candidates’ spending limits.

There are more than 11 million people with a limiting long-term illness, impairment or disability in Great Britain, and they are substantially underrepresented in Parliament and other elected bodies. The Government strongly believe that elected bodies should be more representative of the people they serve.

To address this, the Access to Elected Office Strategy was launched in July last year to provide disabled people with training, paid parliamentary internships and grants through the Access to Elected Office for Disabled People Fund. The fund was established because one of the principal reasons disabled people are underrepresented in elected bodies is the fact that they face additional costs when standing for elected office—for instance, extra transport costs or the hire of sign language interpreters. These additional costs create an extra barrier to elected office for disabled people—one that other, non-disabled, candidates do not face. The fund therefore seeks to help disabled candidates to overcome these financial hurdles by covering the cost of their disability-related items or services, whatever they may be.

The fund provides grants to all disabled candidates, whether they are independent or represent political parties, provided that they are standing at UK parliamentary, English local authority, Greater London Authority, English mayoral or police and crime commissioner elections or by-elections. By offering specific disability-related financial assistance, the fund will place disabled candidates on an equal footing with the other candidates.

Unfortunately, under current electoral rules, grant payments awarded by the fund will count towards candidates’ election spending limits. This is not an issue for parliamentary, Greater London Authority or police and crime commissioner elections, where disability-related costs are likely to be treated as personal expenses and are therefore exempt under Section 76(5) of the Representation of the People Act 1983—a provision that I am sure Members of the Committee know off by heart—but for local authority and English mayoral elections, the rules place disabled candidates who are awarded funding from the Government in the extraordinary position of being penalised for accepting it. Of course, in local authority elections, the overall limit for spending is much lower and there is therefore potentially a much higher barrier. This is because any fund spending will reduce the amount that disabled candidates can spend on the usual election expenses, while unfunded candidates will have the entire election expenses limit at their disposal.

The situation is further affected by the fact that there are a number of high-cost needs for which many disabled candidates will seek funding, such as British sign language interpreters who can cost as much as £350 a day. In some circumstances, the fund could entirely consume a disabled candidate’s election expenses limit, which is on average just £1,000 for local authority elections. This order therefore seeks to remove these unintended effects of the fund by excluding grants provided by the Access to Elected Office for Disabled People Fund from candidate spending limits. Using an existing order-making power contained within Schedule 4A to the Representation of the People Act 1983 to amend the Act itself, a new tightly drawn exception to the definition of election expenses is thus being created. This exception will provide that any item or service financed by the fund would not amount to an election expense, and would not therefore count towards a candidate’s spending limit.

A three-part test must be met in order for the exemption the order provides to apply. First, a candidate must have incurred spending specifically in order to remove or mitigate barriers to seeking elected office—barriers which must be associated with his or her disability. Secondly, that spending must also have been incurred through the means of a grant awarded under the fund’s terms and conditions. Lastly, the spending must then be defrayed or reimbursed by the fund. The fund is intended to cover all the additional costs that disabled candidates face as a result of their disability. That can therefore include extra costs that arise from campaigning activity. For example, campaigning leaflets would not normally be considered for funding, but where a blind candidate might require Braille leaflets for proof-reading purposes, the extra cost of producing those leaflets in Braille will be met by the fund.

The order is also drafted with a sunset clause so that it exactly aligns with the short and temporary operating period of the fund. The fund has been set up as a pilot exercise only until June 2014, so its effectiveness can be assessed before the Government take a view on whether to introduce it on a permanent basis. If the resolution is passed, the Representation of the People (Election Expenses Exclusion) Order will be made to ensure that it comes into force by 26 March, the start of the regulated period for the next local authority elections. I hope noble Lords agree that the fund provides essential support to disabled people seeking to participate in elections and democratic processes, and that this order helps very considerably to enable that. I beg to move.

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, as we have heard, the additional costs faced by disabled people in contesting elections—for example, the cost of sign language interpreters—can make running for elected office prohibitively expensive for them. Therefore, the Government’s decision to implement the recommendations of the Speaker’s Conference on parliamentary representation through the setting up of the access to elected office fund is very welcome and much to be commended. This will go a long way to removing the financial barriers and ensuring that aspiring disabled candidates who have higher costs are not penalised, and should improve access to elected office for disabled people. Avoiding spending limits deterring disabled people applying for support from the fund would, as we have heard, require a change in the law to establish an exemption as to how the candidate’s expenses related to disability are treated. Therefore, I support the draft order which seeks to amend current election limit rules which pose problems for the operation of the fund.

It is important that we pass this order before the start of the regulated period for the forthcoming local elections in May this year. Given the breadth of the extra costs which could be faced by prospective disabled candidates, the fund does not provide an exhaustive list of expenses that would be covered and provides only an indication of the most common expenses that are likely to occur and would be eligible for funding. In fact, it would not be possible to provide an exhaustive list.

The Electoral Commission has, however, voiced concerns that the exemption which the order creates to the current limits on candidates’ spending is not sufficiently clearly defined. Following further discussion with the Government and the fund, it proposes the following actions to make the risks associated with this order manageable for the 2013 local elections. First, it proposes that the fund should ensure that all candidates accessing funding are referred to the Electoral Commission for individual advice on how their funding will be treated under the spending rules; and secondly, it proposes that the fund and the Government should set out a clear policy to clarify the operation and scope of the fund to reduce the uncertainty around interpretation of the order.

Scope, which has done a lot of work on the accessibility of elections for disabled people, believes that the exemption needs to be broad enough to allow for any potential expense that occurs because of an individual’s disability. It takes the view that the proposed drafting, which states that in order to benefit from an exemption, the expenditure must be designed to remove or mitigate barriers to seeking elected office, should be sufficiently mindful of this to achieve the desired purpose. In view of the high level of scrutiny that takes place around election expenses, the proposed exemption would need to be applied carefully and transparently to militate against the prospect of a subsequent legal challenge; for example, if another candidate made an allegation of overspending. Such allegations would be extremely detrimental to the future of the fund and would risk undermining the progress being made in improving access to elected office for disabled people. Accordingly, Scope has recognised that mechanisms need to be put in place to ensure transparency about how the exemption is operated in order to maintain trust that the fund is not being misused for political gain. It therefore supports the Electoral Commission’s suggestion of providing advice to disabled people to disclose expenses paid for by the fund on a voluntary basis on their spending return.

With these safeguards, which have been suggested by the Electoral Commission, I think that the risks can be sufficiently managed for the local elections that are to take place in a couple of months’ time. Work will continue after those elections to make sure that the exemption is working satisfactorily, and there is a sunset clause, as the Minister explained. With those safeguards, I support the order and urge the Committee to agree to it.