Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I very much hope that the comments made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, will be taken seriously by my noble and learned friend, as I am sure they will be. However, I will direct some very brief comments to Amendment 34, which was moved with commendable brevity by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth.

We live in a very different age from people who were active in politics even 20 or 30 years ago. I do not know whether the mass membership political party is a thing of the past or not, but it is certainly not a thing of the present. We live in an age in which single-issue groups and associations predominate and have a collective membership far in excess of the Conservative Party, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrat party put together. One can illustrate that with one statistic: the National Trust now has over 4 million paid-up members. In this new age, we have to be very conscious of the fact that we should pass no legislation in this House that in any way inhibits the expression of legitimate opinion. The Bill endangers that expression of legitimate opinion.

If ever there was a Bill that cried out for pre-legislative scrutiny, it is this one, but it has not had it. In saying that, I level no criticism at my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness, who has been exemplary in the manner in which he personally has sought to meet and discuss with people who have legitimate concerns and interests. Therefore, I exonerate him from all blame, but I still say to him that this is a Bill that is far from perfect. It is a Bill that should never have been presented in this form to either House of Parliament.

Another thing that makes the present age different from very recent ones is the dynamics of the fixed-term Parliament. Until a future Parliament has the good sense to repeal that Act—which I hope will not be too long distant—the fact is that we know when the next election will be and the election after that and so on. So we have a year of purdah as far as interests groups, charities and others are concerned. The simple aim of Amendment 34 is to try to alleviate some of the problems that that creates.

I very much hope that when my noble friend responds to this brief debate—and I hope that it will be a brief debate because we have a long day before us and many important issues to discuss—he will acknowledge the powerful arguments put forward by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, which are supported by many of us. If the Minister cannot give the assurances that we seek, I hope that he will at least give the assurance that he will reflect on this matter, have further discussions and come back at Third Reading, because we need to make this very, very imperfect—no, this very, very bad—Bill a little more palatable than it is currently.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, I have two amendments in this group. In preparing my notes, I had intended to say precisely what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, said just a few minutes ago. It is the responsibility of this House to try to make sure that anything that leaves us is as good as it can be and as perfect as we can achieve. Today, therefore, we are all together in seeking modest amendments in most cases, but important ones that make the Bill more workable, more acceptable and more democratic.

Before I come to the two specific amendments on which my name leads, I should very much like to support the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, in his Amendment 34. It is important for the sake of civic society that we enable people to get fully involved in the dialogue with Parliament about the legislation that goes through the two Houses. I hope that, in one way or another, my noble friend will be able to make that absolutely clear. It must surely be right that, when legislation is going through both Houses of Parliament, our fellow citizens are in a position to campaign without let or hindrance to improve that legislation. I very much hope that we will have reassurance on that point.

Amendment 40, which stands in my name and in the names of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, my noble friend Lord Cormack and the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, is quite simply about bringing the concept of supporter up to date. I echo here a point made by my noble friend Lord Cormack a few minutes ago. When I was first involved in politics, those of us who wanted to engage in the political process, in the main, joined a political party. I did so as a student and I suspect that many others in your Lordships’ House did the same. Some then drifted off into other occupations. I stayed with politics, to my obvious detriment in terms of income compared with the lawyers in your Lordships’ House. From that period to now there have been dramatic changes in society. Many then did join parties; others might have joined campaigning groups. Some of those groups are still with us and still have a mass membership. In those days, it was very much the culture of the age, particularly among young people, but people today support campaigns à la carte. They do not get involved in just one campaign and stick with it to the exclusion of all others. They are involved for a time but their priorities change, just as in the consumer world people expect now to pick and choose. You go to one supermarket for one purpose and to another for another, to one airline for an outward flight and another to come home again. You do not necessarily feel that you have to join up to one hospital even—you choose. It is part of the culture of our age.

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[Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)]

My Lords, first, I should like to say how good it is to see the other Lord Wallace—my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire—back in his place on the Front Bench having, I hope, had restorative attention.

In Committee, there was a long debate on this amendment, which has a simple purpose: to remove charities altogether from both the Bill and PPERA 2000. I am bound to say that in the intervening period there has been a great deal of discussion, meetings and lobbying. It is fair to say that the dear old charity sector —which must be one of the slowest of any sector in our society to get the hang of things, while being a most invaluable element in our society—is now showing its support, late in the day, for the proposal that charities are taken right out of the Bill. It is a pity that this movement did not show itself a good deal earlier.

I must also explain that in Committee there were three different supporting names on this amendment: my noble friends Lady Williams, Lord Tyler and Lord Greaves. They—how shall I put it?—stood back at this stage of the Bill to enable Peers from other parts of the House to put their names to an amendment which is felt strongly about. It is a great resource and support to have the names of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, and the noble Lords, Lord Best and Lord Low of Dalston, on the amendment. They are, respectively, an ex-Lord Chancellor, an ex-chief executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and an ex-chief executive of the Royal National Institute of the Blind.

We have put this amendment forward today and continue to feel really strongly about it because we are convinced that to draw charities into this net is counterproductive, legally illogical, because they are the subject of a completely separate and rigorous branch of law in a way that no other NGOs are, and wasteful of scarce and valuable volunteer time and philanthropic resources if we persist in so doing. I shall address only a few points. I am very mindful of the time and my colleagues will deal with different points relating to the amendment and its consequences.

The one word that keeps coming back to me in relation to all this is “practical”—or, in this case, “impractical”. It seems a thoroughly impractical proposal to lump charities in with NGOs, which can range right across the board from being relatively public-spirited—as, for example, most of the supporters of the Harris commission certainly are—to completely self-interested NGOs, some of them acting as fronts for commercial organisations and others with political aspirations. The one thing you know for certain and beyond peradventure about a charity is that it exists exclusively for the public benefit. Private benefit and charity are wholly incompatible dimensions.

This branch of our law is not some Johnny-come-lately or some rather weak branch of law, if I may put it that way; it is about as fiercely and strongly embedded in our culture as any aspect of law. What is more, the Charity Commission, which has been doing its job for more than 150 years, is a committed body with vast experience, though admittedly with inadequate resources, which is there to try to police this extraordinary sector. Extraordinary it is because it actually needs wonderfully little policing. The amount of fraud and—how shall I put it?—manipulation in the charity sector is a tribute to the best in British society and culture.

The duty on us as legislators, when touching on this sector in particular, is to act with extreme caution because one can so easily damage that which one hopes to assist. Above all, we need to avoid confusion in the legislation that we shower on the British public. There is one way of avoiding confusion in the issue of the regulation of NGOs: to avoid shackling charities of all organisations with duplicatory regulation and thus the responsibility for two sets of regulations and indeed regulators. Of all the groups in our society that surely do not need that, above all others by far are charities. Although of course the Bill is vital and it is good that amendments have been introduced—we thank the Government for being so receptive—it is important that we retain our civic vitality, which, let us be honest, is languishing somewhat. However, in the process, we must not damage that which we seek to uphold.

The confusion surrounding charities in relation to the Bill is quite extraordinary. I can illustrate that by referring the House to the letter written last night by the Charity Commission to a number of us now in the Chamber. It deals in particular with this amendment because the Charity Commission considers it of such importance. I confess that many of us have been trying for some considerable while to get the Charity Commission to come out of its shell and be clear about what it thinks of the arguments advanced on each side of this debate. At least now we have a letter, written by the public affairs manager of the Charity Commission at 6.30 pm last night. Pretty early this morning, as one might guess, I was on the telephone to seek clarification.

The letter has four paragraphs. Can one ask Peers to put up their hands if they have had this letter? It is probably unprecedented, but I have seen one, anyhow. I suspect that a minority of those here have seen this letter and that it will be helpful to quote from it. It is important given that the Charity Commission is the kingpin in this field. The first point that it makes in relation to this amendment is under the heading “Charity law and electoral law—the current situation”. It states:

“Charities must never support political parties or candidates for election”.

That is the basic premise. It continues:

“A charity can engage in campaigning to influence public policy but only in the context of supporting the delivery of its charitable purposes. We recognise that there are some circumstances where a charity’s activities can adhere to charity law but may still require them to register with the Electoral Commission during an election period”.

I have to be honest. I was slightly crestfallen when I saw that because my proposition hitherto has been that charity law and election law in this bit of the landscape are so similar as to be no different from each other. I argued this with the senior member of the commission who is fielding calls in relation to this letter and after a while, she said, “Well, perhaps we did not put this as we intended”. It then became apparent that when the Charity Commission made this statement it was talking about the law as it stands now, not the law as it will be after the Bill is enacted.

[Lord Tyler]

I am grateful to my noble friend because I shared his confusion about that missive last night. I too quite separately raised a question with the same person at the Charity Commission and was sent back this very explicit statement:

“We are by no means suggesting that CC9 is not fit for purpose. Instead we believe that CC9 provides clear and concise guidance on what is and is not acceptable for charities when campaigning. This is an issue that we regulate firmly and take action where necessary”.

In other words, far from saying as seemed to be the first impression that I had from the previous letter that the Charity Commission was not up to this job, it thinks it is up to the job and does not think it is necessary to change the situation so that another commission is so actively involved, as the Bill would suggest.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I am grateful for that. My noble friend is lucky in having had a letter. When I finished the conversation, the Charity Commission said to me that it would send a new communication forthwith to everybody who received the first one to make clear that this statement did not relate to the law as it will be after the passing of this Bill. That is just one small example of—

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There are two further government amendments in this group, Amendments 63 and 64, which relate to Amendment 39. These are minor amendments, which make consequential amendments to the third-party reporting rules. I shall respond to the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Tyler after he has spoken. In the mean time, I beg to move.

[Lord Tyler]

As my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace has said, I and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, and my noble friend Lord Cormack have a subsidiary but quite important additional amendment, Amendment 39A. I am sure that all four of us welcome the recognition that my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace has given to the fact that the 2000 Act—this is not about this Bill; it is about the 2000 Act—has caused real problems for any organisations that were encouraged to work together in what were then called coalitions. Since then, the term “coalition” has gained a different connotation, so perhaps we should talk just about “working together”. The way in which this matter was handled in 2000 has caused real concerns. I know from reading Hansard that this confusion was caused at the last minute by a government amendment during the Committee stage of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Bill, as it then was, in this House.

It is curious that, over the years since 2000, very few of us seem to have heard of the problems that were caused by those provisions. Neither the Electoral Commission nor the Charity Commission ever came forward and said that these matters needed review and either repeal or revision. However, we now know, because a large number of organisations have been in touch with many Members of your Lordships’ House saying that this is a real practical problem—hence the Government’s amendment, which is excellent so far as it goes. However, as I shall seek to explain in a moment, there is one additional problem which I hope my noble and learned friend will be able to say he can look at again, since, as he just said, there will be some additional clarification at Third Reading.

As my noble and learned friend has said, the new provisions should be a major help to smaller players in those joint campaigns, ensuring that others can account for their spending, but the approach in Amendment 39 does not go quite far enough. The fundamental problem with the so-called coalition arrangements in the 2000 Act is as follows. If, let us say, Friends of Earth intends to spend £300,000 on a campaign about climate change and does so in coalition with, for example, Oxfam, which contributes £25,000, under PPERA both are deemed to have spent, or to plan to spend, £325,000. Clearly, that is absurd, because that would mean that Oxfam, which had contributed only £25,000 to that campaign, might well then be precluded from doing anything else on other issues, which it is clear was not intended by the 2000 Act and which, I hope, is not something that we would intend to do today.

To prevent people working together and therefore having to multiply the spending limits under the 2000 Act by a factor equal to the number of organisations involved seems to be most peculiar. Removing the rules altogether would create another new loophole. I keep saying to colleagues in the third sector, “We’ve got to be very careful that we don’t increase flexibility for what we think is a good cause only to create a loophole for much less meritorious campaigning activity”. However, what is unfair about the rules is not that some spending on common campaigns is counted together to prevent an overall breach of the limits but the fact that spending by one organisation on one campaign can then restrict the campaigning of another organisation on a totally different campaign. In my example, Oxfam would be deemed to have spent £325,000 not just for the purposes of that climate change campaign but for all purposes. It would then be very close to the limit, which would then mean that it would have to worry about whether any of its other spending on, let us say, development targets could,

“reasonably be regarded as intended to promote or procure electoral success”,

of a party or candidate.

If that organisation’s trustees believe that the future spending could be so regarded, they would be left with a very small amount of headroom in the national spending limit even though they had contributed a relatively small amount of money to the tune of £25,000. Therefore, £25,000 spent on climate change would mean very little room left for spending on other development targets. I am sure your Lordships will see that that would not be just and right and does not meet the objectives either of the existing law or of this Bill.

Our Amendment 39A would build on the progress made by the amendment moved by my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace in setting out the principle that there should be an overall cap on spending by any one joint campaign or by any one individual organisation. However, new subsection (6B) proposed by my amendment states that,

“expenditure by a third party within the limits set out in Schedule 10 in pursuance of any matter unrelated to an arrangement and which could not reasonably be regarded as intended to achieve a purpose common to an arrangement”,

should not be so restricted by the coalition rules in PPERA 2000.

The amendment would provide for some affected organisations a silver lining in the passage of this Bill. In short, it would remove a very unjust element of the existing law which has caused quite unintended problems for many non-party campaigners. Their arrangements would be improved immeasurably. The amendment would also improve significantly what the Government have so far managed to come up with. I hope that my noble friends will recognise that the problems with the 2000 Act are considerable. This was one very specific problem that was caused to a large number of organisations. I hope therefore that before Third Reading, when, as my noble and learned friend has already indicated, there has to be some further clarification and therefore amendment of the set of amendments that he is putting before the House today, he could look also at this additional problem, which otherwise will go unresolved and continue to cause considerable difficulty for all sorts of organisations.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

I, too, thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, for the government amendment, which is a positive response to the suggestion put forward in our commission’s report, as he acknowledged. I have added my name to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. I shall not repeat the reasons that he has already put forward, but it is an important amendment for charities and campaigning groups generally because they do a huge amount of campaigning not just with one coalition but with a whole series of coalitions. For instance, aid agencies may be engaged in a coalition on overseas aid and, at the same time, be engaged in a coalition on climate change. That is the way in which they work.

I want to make a point that has not been made so far in any of these debates. It concerns the fundamental purpose of this part of the legislation and whether it will achieve what the Government hope. The purpose of the legislation at this point is to stop front organisations drawing on large sums of money to distort campaigning, but I suggest that the legislation as we have it now will not have that effect. Let us take a hypothetical example. Six very strong anti-Europeans have dinner together. They have access to large amounts of money from various sources. They go away to different parts of the country and they decide to start six different campaigning organisations under different names. But, in fact, everybody knows that their purpose is to get Britain out of Europe. Would they be caught by this legislation? No. I have read carefully the briefing note presented by the Electoral Commission, which says that you are not working together—that is, you are not engaged in co-ordinated campaigning—if you have informal discussions with other campaigners but do not discuss your plans with them in any detail—all this party will have done is have dinner together; if you speak at an event organised by another campaigner but do not participate in other ways—they could even speak at each other’s events; and if you do not consult other campaigners about what you should say in your campaign or how you should organise it. However, it goes on to say that you can sign a joint letter together. I hope that the noble and learned Lord will take seriously the fact that the legislation as it now stands will not have the desired effect of stopping big money coming in and using front organisations. We firmly support the intent but we do not think that the Bill will achieve it.

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[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I strongly support the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, on this amendment. Indeed, we had very co-operative discussions about how best to tackle this problem. I am grateful to him and, indeed, to others who effectively endorsed an amendment we tabled in Committee on this crucial issue.

Given that there was much quotation of the Electoral Commission’s advice earlier, it is important that it has very explicitly said that Amendment 45 offers some advantages over the current position in the Bill. With this amendment, at least, we have that endorsement.

As I said in Committee, the Electoral Commission actually thinks that counting staff costs for political parties’ election expenses would be an appropriate way to proceed. Of course, that is not in front of us today; it may be for another day and another Bill. For the purposes of this Bill, the NGOs have been dealing with a considerable problem: namely, that the Bill includes not only staff costs on direct campaigning but what are called “background costs”.

As my noble friend will no doubt point out, staff costs for non-parties are already regulated for the production and distribution of election material. Our amendment suggests that this should continue but that costs should also be accounted for if they are incurred in direct relation to canvassing voters. In that context it seems that it would not be very difficult to identify the particular costs; equally, however, we do not want to increase the difficulties that could be caused by burdensome regulation on background costs that are not in any way so easy to account for. For example, the costs in relation to organising meeting rooms, travelling to a venue or setting up a press conference might be a matter of a few minutes of somebody’s time—and therefore, for many small organisations, a considerable absurdity.

Bluntly, I do not think that anyone cares if a policy officer, whose job for the rest of the year is something completely different, spends a little time booking a room for an election rally, or incurs costs travelling to it. These matters cannot be said to be likely to greatly affect the outcome of an election in that particular area, or nationally. However, if the regulations go through without us thinking about the implications, they could unnecessarily tie up campaigners in accounting for their time—and, worse still, could deter some from campaigning at all.

As was said so forcibly earlier, there are many organisations in this country—and thank God for them—that rely entirely on time being given voluntarily to this sort of activity. Would it be necessary to try to cost that time, or would it be difficult, in any case, whether they were employed or volunteers? Many a charity and many a non-charity would find that totally inconsistent with the Government’s intention of avoiding unnecessary spending on unnecessary bureaucracy.

This amendment, along with some of the others, helps the Government to do what they say they want to do. I hope, therefore, that my noble and learned friend will be able to find some way of making a sensible compromise on the whole issue of staffing costs.

The Government have moved sensibly in so many ways to try to meet the concerns and anxieties about the so-called chilling effect that many of us have understood to be the case with organisations with which we are involved. Many noble Lords are active members of charities and non-charities that do such important work in civil society today. Surely, the last thing that we want to happen is for the time, energy, enterprise, inventive activity and, indeed, the cost of those organisations to be unnecessarily distorted by new bureaucracy of the sort that could occur. Therefore, I very much hope that the Government will see that this is a sensible compromise on the whole issue of staffing costs.

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, I have attended a number of meetings which the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, has convened and I, for one, am extremely grateful to him for the leadership that he has given and the amount of time he has devoted to the Bill over the past few months. Last week, following those meetings, I met with the chief executive officers of two important charities. I do not intend to name them because I did not say that I would, but when I asked them, “If we could get only one amendment through the House next week, where would your priority be?”, they said that it would be on staffing costs.

Any regulations imposed as a result of the Bill should be clear, simple and, above all, fair. The problem with this is that we would be faced with regulations that would be far from clear or simple, and which would most certainly not be fair. Because I do not want to take the time of the House when we have already had a clear and brief exposition from the noble and right reverend Lord, all I will say is: let us this evening make sure, as far as we can, that that clarity, simplicity and fairness is in the Bill.

I, too, am grateful to my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness and to the other Lord Wallace, my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire, who we are all delighted to see back—but I urge them to go this one further step. They have done a great deal to try to make a bad Bill better; they can take another step this evening.

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[Lord Tyler]

I have a separate amendment in this group. We all welcome the way in which my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire and my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness have responded to the request for an increase in the registration thresholds. This was a key recommendation of the commission headed by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and it certainly deserved to be listened to.

In this last-minute change to the Government’s position, however, there is one new outstanding problem. The interaction between the national thresholds for registration and the constituency limits in the Bill simply do not hold together. As we will discuss in the next group, I believe very strongly that the constituency limits are a very important part of this Bill. Indeed, I am sure Members on all sides of your Lordships’ House are aware that if we did send back to the other place a Bill that did not deal with this point, many people there would think that we were not doing our duty.

For the constituency limits to be effective, those who spend at a constituency level will surely need to make an expenses return about what they are spending. The rules in the 2000 Act and in the Bill rightly also ask where the money is coming from. There is, however, a problem. As the Bill will stand in the light of these new government amendments, someone could be spending £9,750 in a constituency, or indeed could spend £19,500 across two English constituencies, yet would not have to register. The registration limit is now raised to £20,000, and therefore that spending and its sources would be totally opaque. It would not be transparent even though £9,750 could have a significant impact on the constituency result.

In my own amendments on thresholds in Committee, I suggested that this problem could be dealt with by stipulating that the threshold should be at a particular level which would take that into account. The Government have chosen £20,000, and that is fine, except that all the spending could be concentrated in one target marginal constituency. A group could spend a significant sum—I am suggesting £5,000 in my amendment—all in one place. Surely in those circumstances it should have to register.

The Government’s answer has been that somebody who spends more than £9,750 in one constituency will be committing an offence under their proposals. If that someone does not have to register, because he is below the new registration threshold, how can anyone know that he is committing that offence? I cannot think—and I know a little bit about these things—of any other part of electoral law in which someone who is subject to a spending limit is yet not required to produce any paperwork on what he is spending. Introducing that concept now would make for a completely absurd anomaly.

[Lord Cormack]

Will the noble Lord not agree with me that there would be more logic in having a figure that was close to that which an individual candidate is entitled to spend? No individual candidate is entitled to spend as much as £20,000 in any constituency in the United Kingdom.

[Lord Tyler]

My noble friend is right. He and I have relatively recent experience of these things. The normal figure is around £12,000 during the election period. As I will come to in a moment, that could be swamped under these proposals, and therefore this is an absurd anomaly. I understand why the Government have arrived at their position. Their formula sounds simple, but it may be so simple as to be unequal to the task in hand. Equally, the move in Amendment 53 to do away with different limits for constituency spending seven months before an election, and constituency spending seven days before, seems to me to lose what is an important and not particularly complex distinction in the name of simplicity—and I am not sure the Government have got this right.

I ask the Minister to consider carefully the horror story that could emerge. Imagine: a campaigning group could come into a constituency and spend £19,999.99 in the last seven days of the campaign with the aim of affecting the outcome in that constituency, and it would not need to register. A second group, unrelated to the first, could, during those seven days, do the same. It would not register. A third group, unrelated to the other two—not a coalition, not working together— could do the same. In the last few days of a campaign in a marginal constituency, just under £60,000 could be spent, completely swamping the amount permitted for a candidate and a party, which is around £12,000, in one constituency. The candidates are, as I say, limited in those final four to six weeks.

Because this spending would not be registered, it might not be revealed until after polling day. Think of the mess that that would cause to our electoral law. Because such groups, though technically in breach of the law, would not need to register, no one would be any the wiser about what they had been up to. My noble and learned friend has said that he is looking at this section with a view to some clarification, and I think he will have to agree that there is a major loophole looming in front of us. I therefore request that he look carefully at Amendment 46ZA. He may find a better solution but a solution must be found, otherwise political parties and those who will be looking at this legislation when it goes back to the other place will not have seen this particular problem, because until now the registration threshold has not been so high. It is only under the present Government’s changes in this House that it has been raised to this height.

I hope that my noble and learned friend will be able to give some reassurance to those of us on all sides of the House who are concerned about such spending that the Government are not prepared to accept this loophole.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

My Lords, Amendment 46A in my name concerns the spending cap for England. First I would like, on behalf of the commission, to warmly welcome the raising of the registration thresholds by the Government. I think that has done more than anything else to reassure the smaller charities; we give the Government a very warm thank you. We also warmly welcome the raising of the spending cap for Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. The spending cap for England, unlike that for Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, has been reduced by 60%. That reduction has taken place with an increase in the number of activities to be regulated and without taking inflation into account.

It is true that not many campaigning groups and very few, if any, charities would spend a high figure coming anywhere near that. The one I have checked that does spend quite a lot of money is Hope not Hate, which campaigns against racism all over the country. It is not a charity but a campaigning group. In 2010 it spent £319,231. That is very nearly the limit for England as we have it under the Bill, which is £319,800.

There was no evidence of abuse with the previous spending caps for England, and no rationale has been given for this reduction by 60%. Even if the Government are not willing to revert to the PPERA limits for England, I ask the Minister whether he sees any scope for some kind of compromise between the drastic reduction which has been brought about by the Bill and the spending limits there were for PPERA.

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[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. I express particular appreciation of the welcome that has been given to the very significant increase in the registration thresholds that the Government have brought forward and to the uplift in the spending limit in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. To follow on from my noble friend Lady Williams, it is certainly useful to remind ourselves, as she also did very eloquently in Committee, of the core purpose of the Bill, which is to ensure that our electoral and democratic system is not hijacked by people who can spend large amounts of money without proper accountability, and that there is proper transparency. It is important that we keep those important points in our minds when we consider the different measures.

Perhaps that is consistent with the point made by my noble friend Lord Tyler, which I addressed in my opening remarks, on not wanting a particular constituency to be overwhelmed. He proposed a threshold of £5,000 and said that he did not wish to find a situation where an organisation could come rattling into a constituency with one week to go, spend £19,999, get away with it and not be accountable for that. It is important that the Representation of the People Act might have a certain impact on that kind of expenditure, if it offended that Act; under the Bill that expenditure is increased from £500 to £700. I ask my noble friend to reflect on that, although I know that he does not overlook it as he knows full well about it.

But, more importantly, there is not that kind of loophole. My noble friend seems to have overlooked—and I did try to draw his attention to it in my opening remarks —that it will be an offence under the Bill to spend more that £9,750 in a constituency, even where the RPA does not apply. One of the consequences of a situation where we are amending another piece of legislation is that it is not always self-evident. Amendment 46 says:

“In subsection (3), for paragraph (a) (but not the “and” after it) substitute … (ii) any controlled expenditure is incurred in a particular parliamentary constituency by or on behalf of a third party in excess of the limit mentioned in subsection (5ZA)”.

I think that the purpose of that is in fact to make a registration requirement if the constituency limit of £9,750 is reached, or at least that is what I am reliably advised and I know that it is certainly the intent that there should be a registration of the maximum for each constituency to make more effective the criminal sanction that will follow if a party or third party spends in excess of £9,750. His example of spending £19,000 could not actually happen under the Bill, in line with the proposed amendment.

[Lord Tyler]

Whether it is £9,000 or £19,000, my general point is that I have been unable to find anything in electoral law where there is a spending limit but no paperwork for anybody to provide that shows that they are keeping within that spending limit. It seems to me that there is a potential anomaly. I am just asking my noble and learned friend to be absolutely certain before, as has been said, we send back to the other House a potential anomaly in these circumstances.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I do not think that there is an anomaly. One of the reasons for putting in the registration requirement was to try to address the kind of anomaly that my noble friend mentions. We share the same objective and if he thinks that there is a loophole there then I will certainly make sure that we look at that, because these provisions have been worked up over recent days. I think that it is okay, but it is probably quite good counsel that we should check to make sure that that is in fact the case.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, made his case for having similar registration thresholds in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as in England, and I can see some force in what he is saying. He says that he has not been able to divine why there has been a difference, which has been in place since the very outset. Since PPERA, a distinction has been made: it was £10,000 for England and £5,000 for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I will not allow myself the cheap debating point that that was what the noble and learned Lord proposed in Committee, but I think that his purpose behind that was to make sure that the Government considered the threshold properly.

It is interesting too—I will finish this point and then let the noble and learned Lord come in—that what is actually proposed by the Government is also the architecture proposed by the commission chaired by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth. The commission report proposes £20,000 for England and £10,000 for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

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Moved by

[Lord Tyler]

52: Clause 28, page 16, line 22, leave out from “if” to end of line 23 and insert “the expenditure relates to—
(a) sending election material falling within paragraph 1 of Schedule 8A which is addressed to electors (whether addressed to them by name or intended for delivery to households within any particular area or areas);(b) unsolicited telephone calls falling within paragraph 2 of Schedule 8A, made to such persons or households, which may reasonably be regarded as intended to ascertain or influence their voting intention.( ) For the purposes of this paragraph, “election material” is defined as in section 143A.”

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, this amendment, which I am moving on behalf of a number of noble Lords in different parts of the House, deals with some small changes to a previous amendment that we looked at in Committee on constituency limits, but they are changes that I know will be very welcome to a number of organisations which have been in touch with several Members of your Lordships’ House. It received considerable support across the Chamber in Committee and has two compelling advantages to recommend it.

First, it retains the Government’s intention to have a constituency limit. That is surely central to the Bill. As I have said consistently, I strongly support that and I know that a large number of other Members of your Lordships’ House also think it is important to retain that. However, even if we were to take it out, as some have suggested, I would certainly expect that Members of the other place would need no whipping at all to put it back in, for the reasons that were advanced so eloquently by my noble friend Lord Cormack a few minutes ago. Surely even Labour MPs would want it to be put back in.

The second advantage to the amendment is that it very closely and carefully defines what the constituency limits should apply to. As many charities and NGOs, big and small, have pointed out to me and to other Members of your Lordships’ House, they are not used to dealing with constituency boundaries; they have quite a different sort of geography from those of us who are involved in politics. Therefore, trying to assess the relative effect of, say, a rally in different constituencies would be quite problematic. It would be problematic for the political parties too, and for that reason we, as politicians, are not asked to account for it.

I shall give a practical example. I once chaired a rally for the five constituencies, as they then were, in Cornwall, and it took place in one particular constituency. It just so happened that we won all five seats but that did not have anything to do with my chairmanship at that rally. However, how would the costs of that rally be allocated to each constituency? You could allocate the costs to one constituency but what about the other four? That clearly is not what this Bill is all about. It really is not possible to measure the effect of a rally, or indeed a billboard or a press conference, on the result in an individual constituency.

I have one other example. I lost a lot of hair—or, rather, most of it went grey—in two elections arranging the national tour of the battle bus for the then joint leaders. Your Lordships may remember that at one stage we had two leaders in the alliance—the two Davids—although they did not always see eye to eye. That caused me a great deal of aggro. However, how I would ever have accounted for five minutes in this constituency, 10 minutes in that constituency and an hour in that constituency if I were running a campaign on behalf of a non-political organisation is quite beyond me.

Amendment 52, on which I am very grateful for the support of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, would limit the scope of the constituency regulations to just activities where people communicate with specific voters. The one advantage of this amendment is that it ties down very specifically the activities that target specific people at a specific address in a specific constituency—letters or leaflets sent or delivered to voters, or telephone calls directed specifically to them—and which try to influence or ascertain their voting intention. Other activity would still have to be accounted for but only on a national basis. Therefore, if it is the national tour of a battle bus, arranging rallies or whatever, that has to be accounted for nationally but under the more generous national limits.

What has been made clear to us by many organisations which think that they may be involved in the activities covered by the Bill is that, if they are asked to account only for those activities that specifically target specific individuals, that will make their lives a great deal easier. It will retain the central purpose of the Bill, which is to stop big-money campaigns dwarfing the limits that candidates have to adhere to—my noble friend was very eloquent on this point a few minutes ago, as was my noble friend Lady Williams—and it will mean that the additional costs of activity directed at specific candidates can be identified neatly, clearly and succinctly.

The Electoral Commission has very clearly endorsed this amendment and expressed clear support for it because it makes simpler the guidance that it will have to give and the subsequent monitoring that it will have to undertake. I beg to move.

[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

I support the amendment for the reasons that the noble Lord has set out. Constituency limits have been of very great concern to charities and campaigning organisations. I am fully aware of the kind of concerns raised by the noble Baroness, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, indicated, this issue has also been a very great concern for the Electoral Commission because it does not see how it can regulate and enforce this area. The noble Lord’s amendment will make it far easier for charities to be regulated by the law and for the Electoral Commission to regulate it.

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[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, we have just had a discussion on constituency limits, and it was also covered extensively in Committee. The House has agreed to a government amendment to remove the post-Dissolution limit to make the provision less complex, yet there remains some concern about it. From what was said in a previous debate, I think that my noble friends Lord Cormack and Lord Tyler believe that there should be some limit on constituency spending. My noble friend Lord Tyler argued for a lower limit but now wants lots of expenditure to be incurred without any limit at all. That is a concern that we have.

It is important to put this in context. Constituency spending limits do not replace the existing controls under the Representation of the People Act 1983. Those long-standing rules stipulate that third parties campaigning for or against a particular candidate may spend only up to £500 in doing so. Other than raising that amount to £700, and requiring records to be kept of such expenditure, this Bill does not affect those provisions.

In contrast to the RPA rules, Clause 28 introduces a new limit on how much a third party that is promoting the electoral success of parties, or candidates who support particular positions, can spend in individual constituencies. As has already been explained, the limit is £9,750. The reason for this amount—which might, on the surface, appear somewhat odd—is that it is equivalent to 0.05% of the maximum campaign expenditure limit applied to political parties. This limit will apply for the duration of the regulated period for a UK parliamentary election.

As has already been rehearsed, the need for constituency limits is profound. It is not right that candidates and parties should effectively be bowled out of the field purely because well funded campaigners are able to outspend them. Elections are the principal domain of political parties and candidates, and those who are not campaigning for their own electoral success should still be able to participate: that is the essence of our democracy. However, in these circumstances, we believe that the voices of such campaigners do not diminish the voices of the political parties and candidates and that constituency limits will ensure that.

The Bill makes clear that a third party’s expenditure would be wholly attributed to a constituency only if that expenditure had “no significant effect” in any other constituency. That means expenditure in a local area could, of course, be attributed to several constituencies if the effect was felt in them all. Expenditure with a wider regional, or even national, reach would be attributed proportionately to all the relevant constituencies.

My noble friend Lord Tyler has proposed an amendment to dampen the effect of these constituency limits. The amendment proposes that only certain costs —in other words, only expenditure related to certain activities—should count towards constituency limits. Specifically, the amendment says that only costs associated with election materials should be counted. That would mean the costs related to leaflets, mailshots and adverts, all of which must also have been either specifically addressed to or delivered to households in a constituency, and unsolicited telephone calls to such households.

I recognise the issue which my noble friend is trying to address, but I believe there are drawbacks. For instance, significant activities such as rallies and events would not be regulated at a constituency level if his amendment passed. I gave some of my colleagues an example of Scottish Liberal Democrat pre-election rallies in Edinburgh East. Anyone who knows Scotland will know that Liberal Democrats would not be spending money in that constituency; no doubt Edinburgh East Liberal Democrats will now write to me and say, “Do not let us down”. That was a national campaign, but an event in my own former constituency could not, by any stretch of the imagination, relate to any other—not even Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross.

In addition, material otherwise distributed or displayed would also not count towards the constituency limit. A third party could therefore freely distribute leaflets by hand in a town centre, or, indeed, in shopping areas in different parts of a constituency, in the knowledge that, because they are not being delivered to voters’ homes, the associated costs need not be accounted for in that constituency’s limit.

We are concerned that these are key gaps which would allow a third party to target an area by holding large partisan events, or flood an area by handing out election material in the street or in shopping precincts. Allowing only certain activities to count towards constituency limits would undermine the entire principle of constituency limits, on which my noble friend spoke so eloquently earlier. For that reason, I urge my noble friend to think again and to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I am rather disappointed by that. Throughout today’s debate and, indeed, on previous occasions, many noble Lords—particularly my noble friends on the government Front Bench—have quoted the advice of the Electoral Commission. I apologise to the House for detaining it for a minute, but this is what the Electoral Commission says about this amendment:

“In principle, we support Amendment 52, tabled by Lord Tyler and others. It narrows the scope of the constituency limits so that they only cover spending in respect of election material sent to voters and households in a constituency, and unsolicited phone contact with such voters”.

Then, in heavy type, it continues:

“We see benefits in defining the scope of activity covered by the constituency controls more narrowly than in Part 2 of the Bill generally”.

The Electoral Commission feels there is a need to deal with this question and has identified it as one of the problems with campaigning organisations. Even if the amendment in our names does not meet the particular point and is not the right way to go about it, there is clearly a need to do something. Will the Minister undertake, in these last few days before Third Reading, to go back to the Electoral Commission and discuss this issue with it again? On that basis, I am prepared to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 52 withdrawn.

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[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, I welcome this group of amendments. I said at Second Reading that the Government and, indeed, the House, have a very difficult task in getting exactly the right balance between improving transparency and accountability on one hand and the inevitable potential for more bureaucracy. These amendments are a real improvement on where we were and I commend my noble and learned friend for them. The irony is, however, that we have the complexity of the number of amendments—I have not counted them—that have been necessary to remove complexity. It is a bit alarming, but I particularly welcome the amendment concerning the nil return, which is Amendment 98 if I have got it right.

It is particularly helpful because there really was rather an absurd situation when the organisations with which Members on all sides of your Lordships’ House have been in contact thought that they might be caught up in some elaborate new accountancy exercise when they did not anticipate that they would be engaged in the kind of activities that are caught by the Bill. This is a good balance and we are achieving the right threshold for transparency and accountability, but I just forewarn my noble and learned friend that it will take some time for the organisations that we have all been in contact with to understand the full significance of this battery of complex amendments.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

My Lords, I add my thanks to those of my noble friend Lord Tyler, particularly for Amendments 81 and 89, which concern nil returns. It was extraordinarily difficult to justify to people why nil returns should be made. I am also very grateful to my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench for his reassurance about the interaction with the coalition working returns that we discussed earlier.

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[Lord Harries of Pentregarth]

It is a great relief to be able to welcome an amendment without any qualification at all; but it might be worth reminding ourselves why a review is so essential. First, with the existing PPERA, most charities were not even aware that they were regulated; it is only recently that they have come up against it. Therefore, there are fundamental problems with PPERA that have only just been revealed, and probably we have not yet had proper time to put them right.

Secondly, we have had a very short time to think about and amend the Bill before us. As we know, there was no pre-legislative scrutiny and no six-month period for consultation—which we recommended. We have had only a very short five-week period. The commission that I chair has always made it clear that the recommendations we put forward were only for the 2015 election, because we could not see the answer to a number of issues. In particular, the issue of coalition working keeps coming up and we have not yet found a satisfactory answer to that. Therefore, it is extremely good that the review body is going to be set up and that it will be in time to watch what happens with the election. It is going to have to report within a year, which of course meets the concern raised earlier by the noble Baroness about a sunset clause. It will now have to report within a year.

I have only one question: why have the Government decided that the review should be done by one person, rather than by a committee of Parliament?

[Lord Tyler]

I very much welcome the initiative that my noble friends have taken on this. It is vastly preferable to a sunset clause, precisely because it will start at the right moment. The timing is going to be critical, as the noble and right reverend Lord and my noble and learned friend said, because it will see right through the process of the next election and beyond. For that reason it is preferable to a sunset clause.

I, too, wonder whether the precise definition of a “person” is appropriate to this, but we will have to judge it on its results. Because my noble and learned friend has put into his amendment that a copy of the report will be laid before Parliament, the process thereon is extremely interesting. If major changes are required in this legislation, we will need to know quite quickly in order that we do not run into another period of rapid digestion, as we have on the Bill.

I particularly want to underline the point made by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, just now. We should have this review of the 2000 Act. I take some responsibility, because I sit on a little, totally informal cross-party advisory group for the Electoral Commission. We were never forewarned of all the problems with the 2000 Act that have now come to light—not least, the coalition issue to which the noble Lord has just referred. It has been 13 years; the Electoral Commission never forewarned us of the difficulties it was encountering in giving appropriate advice to organisations that wished to campaign in this field. The Minister has taken elaborate and proper precautions to make sure that the situation never arises again, and I congratulate the Government on that.

[Lord Cormack]

Briefly, I add my congratulations and thanks. Those who criticise—and I have been very critical of aspects of the Bill—should always praise when the right thing is done. I am exceptionally grateful to my noble friend and his ministerial colleagues for putting this amendment into the Bill. It is a very satisfactory outcome and I agree entirely with what the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and my noble friend Lord Tyler said.

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[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment because it is a very modest and necessary step to take towards taxpayer funding of political parties. None of us should be pleased, content or comfortable with the fact that political parties in this country are financed by the trade unions and, to a very large extent on all sides of the House, by extremely rich men who are seen to exert influence. I am not saying that they do exert more influence than anybody else who runs industries or anything, but they are seen to exert influence over policy. This does us no good at all and we should grasp this nettle and do something about it.

I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has arranged that these measures would come into place after the general election. I would like to see a lot more done after the general election. I would like to see matched funding up to a certain limit, but now is not the time to talk about that. The fact remains that we are already paying opposition parties millions of pounds a year. We are paying the Opposition in your Lordships’ House Cranborne money of hundreds of thousands of pounds. I challenge anybody in this House to say that anybody has mentioned on a doorstep either Short money or Cranborne money. They do not know that it is happening. In terms of public expenditure, they are insignificant sums of money.

We should be grasping this nettle early on in a Parliament. I hope that whoever wins the election will do so at the beginning of the next Parliament and get the entire funding of our political parties in this country into a sleaze-free zone, where it should always have been. If we go on as we are, we will have endless problems. We will always be accused of having an unhealthy influence on the political system. This does nothing for politics in this country. I therefore support the amendment with enthusiasm.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, my name is also on the amendment. I will make a slightly different point from those of other noble Lords who have spoken to it.

Public service in a parliamentary democracy is an honourable activity. I look around the House, and I could say exactly the same thing about the other place, and see a great majority of people who give of their time, talents and careers, and sacrifice their family life, to public service. That is something that we should recognise as being an extremely important part of our civic life.

Yet it is absolutely true, as noble Lords have already said, that it is somehow thought that to be active in politics is less reputable than, for example, supporting a charitable or voluntary organisation; many of us do that as well. That is exaggerated, underlined and repeated every time one of us contributes something to our local church or favourite charity and gets respect from the tax system for so doing, in exactly the way that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has described. If politics is an honourable activity, why are we not allowing our fellow citizens to recognise that and, in their own way, be more active participants through the gift aid system?

It is not just because of the way in which politics has been supported in recent years by bigger and bigger cheques from smaller and smaller numbers of people, but also because millions of people feel disenchanted by and disconnected from the business of politics, that we have reached such a low reputation in the public mind. It is far more important to engage and incentivise millions of people than to engage and incentivise millions of pounds. In those circumstances, it is perhaps worth reminding your Lordships’ House, in addition to the points already made by my noble friend Lord Hamilton, that the taxpayer already makes a huge contribution to the business of politics. For example, the Royal Mail free delivery of election addresses for every single party and contestant in the European parliamentary election in May will cost the taxpayer something between £30 million and £40 million. The sums that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, is referring to are a drop in the ocean compared to that. Yet it is far more likely to engage the individual citizen in the business of politics than the necessity for every single elector to receive a separate delivery from each of the parties.

It is perfectly true that there are already a number of proposals for a wider reform of the funding of political parties. Indeed, last year, I, along with colleagues from two of the other parties, produced a draft Bill that would have incorporated the latest proposals of the Committee on Standards in Public Life on this wider issue. We will not move in that direction between now and the general election but, in this modest way, we could put down a marker that we believe that the actual, practical financial support of our fellow citizens for the business of politics is just as honourable as their support for a charity or a church. It would be a very welcome development.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

I feel deeply privileged to belong to such a broad church as is suggested by this amendment. I little thought that I would have the privilege of standing in the same rank as the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, and the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, but I am utterly sincere in the support that I give to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. When he very respectably sought to accost me some days ago to support this matter, I had misconceived the situation. I thought he was seeking to place political parties on a charitable basis, which of course would have been utterly improper. The definition of charity, however impractical it may be in the modern period, is well laid down in the statute of Elizabeth I and in the authority of Re Pemsel, which I still remember from my student days.

That is not at all what the amendment is about. It is a question of what fuel there should be available in a democracy to any political movement. That fuel, I suggest, is the united will of millions of people, of government, opposition or a third force, or a fourth, for that matter. That fuel is the desire and hopes of millions of individual people, possibly for tens of thousands of different reasons, but it is the amalgam of that united force that gives politics significance.

If you interfere with that system from above by the injection of vast amounts of money, you corrupt that system. It was Oliver Goldsmith, in the 18th century, who had these words:

“Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,

Where wealth accumulates, and men decay”.

In this case, wealth will diminish completely the significance of democratic politics. Now, we will say, “That is highly idealistic and immensely impractical”. It may well be, but we are deeply grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, who is a brave, iconoclastic, reforming character and to whom the House owes a great debt.

In America, in the two elections that President Obama has won, it may very well be that there were tactical and highly materialistic reasons why he chose to rely on millions of people rather than on the support of a few wealthy, almighty subjects. Be that as it may, it gave those campaigns impetus and significance. That is exactly what this amendment proposes. It may very well be that the amounts that are mentioned could be debated high and low. That does not matter at all. The significance is that we wish to see politics as an amalgam of millions of people with desires supported, we hope, by the substantial subvention of most of those people.

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[Lord Cormack]

Of course—I was going to say “my noble friend”, but he is my friend—the noble Lord may well be right. However, I remember the famous words of Jack Straw, when a lot of people in the other place voted for an all-elected second Chamber on the advice of the Labour leader of the campaign for an appointed second Chamber, although he then acknowledged that he had made a tactical mistake. Jack Straw kept saying, “A vote is a vote, and that’s all that counts”. That is what will be said tonight. The noble Lord should reflect very seriously on that.

We also have to consider whether the Bill is the right one in which to insert such an amendment.

[Lord Tyler]

I am very grateful to my noble friend and I know that he shares with me the same objectives. I think that he is advancing the old, old argument of unripe time, which we hear in this House so often. If you wait for the ripe time, it is usually when it has gone bad again, when it has gone beyond ripeness. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, by saying that the actual introduction would not take place until beyond the next general election, is simply insisting that we should put down a marker of the direction in which we wish to go. If we are not permitted to do that, what are we allowed to do in this House?

[Lord Cormack]

Of course we are permitted to do that, but at the same time it is not unreasonable to talk about the practicalities. The fact of the matter is that if we have a vote tonight, this amendment will be very heavily defeated. It will not advance the cause. Whereas if we do not have a vote tonight, the statement of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, which I believe not to be hyperbole but to be accurate—that there are many, many members of your Lordships’ House who are sympathetic to this point of view—will stand on the record. What will stand on the record if we have a vote is that because of a very, very small number of people, for a variety of reasons—one of them being that this may not be the right vehicle for such an amendment—the figures will not be encouraging to our cause.

I end by pleading with noble colleagues in all parts of the House that we seek in our respective parties to begin a campaign to advance this and that we talk to our colleagues in the other place as well. That is crucially important, as they are the people who get elected. Tonight is not the moment to be heavily defeated when we know, and the noble Lord in particular knows, that there is such widespread sympathy for the principle that he has very reasonably advanced.

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[Lord Cormack]

I am glad to add my name to the amendment. I was delighted to hear what my noble friend Lord Horam had to say, but I see no harm in putting this provision into the Bill. I hope that when my noble and learned friend the Minister replies, it will not just be with honeyed words but with a promise of a taste of honey.

[Lord Tyler]

My Lords, this will be my shortest contribution through the whole length of this Bill, as I hope the night shift will appreciate. I want to make just one point: I am not sure whether the solution suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, is right; I am absolutely convinced that there is a problem. I instance that by saying that, as somebody who has been involved in this area for years, I have never had advice or guidance on the problems that we have heard about so often in recent weeks from anybody in the Charity Commission. The first time that I ever heard from the Charity Commission was at 6.30 last night. There is a clear need for comprehensive, careful and co-ordinated advice from the two organisations. It has not been there in the past. They have not fulfilled their responsibilities to Parliament, to which they are responsible, over many years, and it is about time that they did. Throughout today’s discussion, it has been apparent that this lack of co-ordinated information from the two organisations has been one of the major problems that many organisations have had to face, as well as parliamentarians.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, made that point about the Charity Commission, because no matter how good the commitment, we want to see this co-ordinated guidance. Having this requirement in the Bill would mean that it was not just a promise but an actuality.

In addition to making sure that it happens, the provision would be a signal to the charities, given that they will be caught by new restrictions under the Bill that they have not dealt with before, that the House has taken seriously the need for them to be absolutely clear and for there to be co-ordinated guidance on that. There is no downside to having it in the Bill, so I hope that the noble and learned Lord has one yes that he can pull out of his bag at this stage.