To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress has been made in ensuring that small businesses are not penalised by the late payment of bills.

The Government take the problem of late payment very seriously and have taken a number of steps to support small businesses. We have strengthened the UK’s legislative framework on late payment; we have put pressure on large companies to commit to good payment practices, resulting in the majority of FTSE 100 companies signing up to the prompt payment code; and we have helped small businesses help themselves by improving their access to working capital.

My Lords, given that the Forum of Private Business says that action is now long overdue on this issue, and given that 94% of the firms in the British Chambers of Commerce are habitually paid late, when will this quixotic Government, forever tilting at the wrong windmills of public policy, implement the late payment on commercial debt legislation so that government departments pay on time and big businesses do not use small businesses and suppliers as shadow banks? Will the Minister institute a kitemark for those good firms that do pay on time and that are currently unprotected by this idle Government?

My Lords, we need no lessons from the former Government opposite on how this matter is handled. The fact is that tackling late payment requires a change in business culture and that the Government alone cannot solve the problem without interfering in the freedom of businesses to contract with each other. However, the noble Lord makes an important point about a kitemark and, in effect, an accreditation system. The Prime Minister decided to consult on this issue and on 7 December we published a discussion paper on building a responsible payment culture in the UK. We are working with business organisations to ensure that we get views from a wide range of businesses, and we will decide what further legislative or non-legislative action to take based on responses to this paper.

My Lords, I welcome the Government’s consultation, but I am sure that the Minister is aware that huge quantities of money are held up through retentions and that many small businesses never get complete payments at the end of their contract. As I understand it—I would be grateful if he could confirm this, and, if it is the case, do something about it—neither of these issues is part of the consultation that the Government have put forward. I hope he can assure me that they will be included.

I cannot reassure my noble friend on that particular point, but I can reassure her that the discussion paper, Building a Responsible Payment Culture—from my department, BIS—seeks views on changing the business culture by increasing accountability and transparency, on encouraging small businesses to make better use of the statutory rights that they already have, on whether there is a case to enhance those rights and on how we can empower small businesses to help themselves reduce the risk of late payment.

My Lords, first, I congratulate my noble friend on asking this important Question, although I hope he would agree that it is not only small firms that suffer from the late payment problem. All firms tend to find that the problem arises. Does the Minister agree that there are two aspects to this Question? One is an ethical aspect: namely, businesses simply should not, as a matter of course, use late payment as their method of financing themselves temporarily. Do the Government agree that this is a serious ethical problem and that businesses ought to start to behave better? The second aspect is an economic one. Does the Minister agree that, rather like the parable of the fleas, if a big firm does not pay the next firm down, it in turn will not pay the next firm down and it will go on ad infinitum until eventually someone will go broke? When they go broke, lots of firms will go broke and the system will become destabilised. Does the Minister agree that the last thing this country needs is any new form of destabilisation?

The noble Lord makes a couple of important points. It is an ethical issue. The previous Government brought in the prompt payment code, which is voluntary. My honourable friend in the other place—the Minister of State, Michael Fallon —contacted a number of FTSE 100 companies and managed to increase the number signing up to the code from 30 to 72. The noble Lord is completely correct on the economic issue. That is why we have made some good progress in ensuring that supply chains are properly managed.

Is the Minister aware that only 30% of the UK’s small and medium-sized businesses are able to transact online? Therefore, does he agree that building their digital skills and encouraging them to use them is a fundamental part of addressing this problem?

I know that the noble Baroness has a long and very successful history in this field. Of course, I very much support what she says and, with her, I encourage businesses to do just that.

Can my noble friend give a copper-bottomed guarantee that no government department goes beyond the pay days to pay its debts? If he cannot, can he make it very clear to his lords and masters that that is what is demanded of them and that in future we will need that guarantee?

The Government aim to lead by example. Since 2010, all central government departments have been committed to paying at least 80% of their invoices within five days. I am pleased to say that my own department, BIS, pays 97.3% of its invoices within five days. My noble friend makes a good point. We want small businesses working on public sector projects to benefit from prompt payment.

Can the Minister say what instructions or suggestions the Government have given to the state-owned banks to show understanding when small firms find themselves in difficulties through late payment?

That is a very specific question. I will certainly write to the noble Lord on the specific aspects of that.

Is the Minister aware that, due to the inefficiency of the Stortext system used by the Treasury Solicitor’s Department to pay its accounts with firms such as costs lawyers, some of these small firms have outstanding accounts going back to May? This compares unfavourably with HMRC, which pays its accounts with minimum delay.

My noble friend makes a good point, of which the House will certainly now be aware—as am I.

My Lords, in January the Minister of State said that he would name and shame FTSE 100 firms that failed to sign up to the prompt payment code. However, companies that pay their small suppliers in 90 or 120 days could still be signatories to the code. In fact, at least one FTSE 100 company extended its payment terms and then signed up to the code. The Government know that 2,000 firms went bust last year due to late payments. Is it not time that they implemented minimum standards for all signatories to the prompt payment code? That is not really a lesson, but a strong recommendation for practical action.

There are two points there. First, on the example to which the noble Lord alluded, my honourable friend the Minister of State in the other place followed up quickly on that particular issue. That major company spoke to its suppliers, which were content that there was no particular issue. As far as we are aware, none of the suppliers has complained to the Institute of Credit Management, which they are entitled to do, so it is not possible to judge the merits of that particular case. However, the noble Lord makes a good point.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to establish training facilities in relation to the extra jobs anticipated to be created by the HS2 project.

My Lords, we expect the construction of HS2 to generate up to 50,000 jobs, which represents a huge opportunity for the UK workforce. HS2 Ltd is developing skills and procurement strategies that will identify the skills required to deliver HS2 and set out the approach to promoting skills and training throughout the procurement process. The Government will, in responding to the task force of the noble Lord, Lord Deighton, set out what we will do to support and build on this work.

I thank the Minister for her encouraging reply. With the likely approval of this new railway link and the need for 19,000 construction and engineering employees, what action will the Government take to ensure that our youngsters throughout the United Kingdom are adequately trained in sufficient time to take advantage of these opportunities? Secondly, can the Minister tell me whether the Government would consider setting up scholarships related to HS2 so that youngsters throughout the United Kingdom will be able to apply for and, we hope, find employment in this new construction?

I thank my noble friend. He is exactly right that the demand for skills would be significant, not only with HS2 but with all the other infrastructure projects that are being launched thanks to the actions of this Government. My noble friend will take some comfort from the fact that the National Skills Academy for Railway Engineering, which was established in 2010 with wide railway industry support, is helping to tackle the current and future skills needs within the industry. It is working closely with HS2 to identify skills gaps and promote railway engineering skills. We obviously have the Tunnelling and Underground Construction Academy, which has played an important role in the Crossrail project; one would assume that it would do so with the super-sewer for London and then HS2. The skills academy is one of the participants, along with BIS and the DfT, with some support also provided by Siemens, in looking at training entry-level employees as well as skilling up others to respond to new technology developments in the industry with initiatives such as the Siemens Rolling Stock Academy.

My Lords, when the Prime Minister recently visited China, he announced that the Chinese would help us build HS2. Can we expect several thousand Chinese people to flood into this country, and will they be welcomed in the same way that Romanians and Bulgarians apparently will be?

My Lords, the discussion was primarily about finance, rather than the range of engineering skills and jobs on which I have just reported. I can assure the noble Lord that the programme that HS2, along with various engineering companies, is taking out is targeted at schools in Britain rather than those overseas. For example, HS2 sent a contingent of 30 people to the skills show in Birmingham to which youngsters came from all over the country. I am confident that a large number of these skills can be achieved in the UK, creating a base for our youngsters to participate not only in HS2 but in a wide range of engineering projects. However, we will always consider financing from overseas.

My Lords, my noble friend’s enthusiasm is almost infectious but I have not caught it yet. Can she assure the House that no report on the implications and costs of HS2 will be withheld, either in whole or in part, by the Government?

My Lords, I can confidently say, looking at the size of the body of documents that was disclosed with the hybrid Bill, that the Government have been putting out more data than most people have ever seen around a project of this size and interest. It is crucial that we are open and transparent and, although there will be times when we have internal discussions, the transparency has been quite exceptional in this case.

My Lords, will the Minister look at the very successful National Grid Transco young offender programme, which has trained more than 1,000 young offenders to become workers in the utilities, and see whether it can be applied in this instance? Will she also consider whether young people leaving care, who are overrepresented in the NEET category, can be drawn into this?

My Lords, we are looking at this infrastructure project in an exciting way. Rather than treating it within a transport silo, we are looking much more at the regeneration possibilities. The idea raised by the noble Earl has real potential and I will definitely take it back.

My Lords, in the spirit of Christmas, I have two presents: two easy questions for the Minister at this stage. Will the HS2 jobs and skills strategy, to which she referred, be published and, if so, when? Will she also clarify a little more how we will protect the skills developed through Crossrail—to which she also referred—and ensure that they will be available for HS2?

My Lords, there is never an easy question from the noble Lord, Lord Davies, but I do appreciate it. As he knows, the noble Lord, Lord Deighton, is going round the country with a series of consultations looking at the economic growth issues, of which skills are a very important part. Work is happening through many strands: HS2 itself, the work of the noble Lord, Lord Deighton—whose report is expected in the spring—and other more general work with the industry. I will see whether there is a way to pull these strands together into a more comprehensive piece that would give the noble Lord the picture he is seeking.

I have now completely forgotten the second issue. Would the noble Lord mind telling me?

I was concerned about Crossrail.

Crossrail has done two crucial things on skills. It has played an important role in the tunnelling academy and we want that to carry over. It has also been excellent at engaging with British companies in the supply chain. By number, rather than value, 97% of contracts have gone to British-based contractors. We hope to see that repeated by using the same techniques of outreach.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their current approach to reducing the number of children born with neural tube defects; and whether they will consider fortifying white bread flour with folic acid as an additional measure.

My Lords, we encourage women to plan pregnancies, and advise those seeking to become pregnant to take folic acid supplements before conception and for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and to increase their intake of folate-rich foods. We are considering our nutrition advisers’ full recommendation to fortify flour with folic acid and will take into account new data on the folate status of the population in reaching our decision.

My Lords, given that folic supplementation needs to be taken before most women know that they are pregnant, is the Minister concerned that less than 6% of 20 year-olds actually take folic supplements? The follow-up research published earlier this year is now available—on top of the scientific advice that the Government received in 2007 from independent committees and the Food Standards Agency—and shows that putting folic acid in flour causes no side effects for males. Is it not therefore time to change policy and put folic acid in white bread flour, which the BMA says is the most cost-effective way of avoiding the misery of hundreds of affected pregnancies, and to join 50 other countries that are doing the same?

My Lords, mandatory fortification of food is, by any standards, a big step; it is not a decision to be taken lightly. The issue that we have been facing is that the survey data used by the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition is more than 10 years old. The latest data available on the folate status of the population will be available early next year, and we feel that it is prudent to use that information to assess the risks and benefits of fortifying flour with folic acid before we make our decision.

My Lords, international academic research since 2005 has shown that including folic acid in bread and cereal products is important and that it reduces neural tube defects by between a quarter and a half, so it undoubtedly helps raise the levels of folic acid in women before and during pregnancy. However, it is not at the level that would remove all possibility of NTDs. Research says that folic acid supplements are recommended, too. What will the Government do to alert women who are thinking about having a baby to take supplements before becoming pregnant?

My Lords, we recognise that some women do not always access maternity services early or attend regularly for antenatal care, and that poorer outcomes are therefore reported in some cases for mother and baby. Maternity services need to be proactive in engaging all women. To help reduce variation and improve services, NICE has published a comprehensive suite of evidence-based clinical guidelines and quality standards for maternity services. We are also promoting the taking of folic acid supplements through a number of channels including Healthy Start, NHS Choices, Start4Life, and the Information Service for Parents.

My Lords, what do the Government think are the contraindications for fortifications of flour with folic acid, knowing that the evidence shows that it would cause a reduction of about 300 in the number of babies born with neural tube defects?

My Lords, I recognise the opinion that is shared among many members of the medical community on this. However, the advice we received from SACN, our expert adviser, clearly showed that there are risks and benefits associated with this proposal. It is not an open-and-shut case. Among the things that we have had to consider are the practical implications of implementing SACN’s advice, which is no small matter.

My Lords, does the noble Earl not recognise that in fact the scientific committee he referred to has looked at the issue that he raised and has upheld its previous recommendation that the Government should go ahead? Some 50 countries have already done that; the scientific advice is clear; why on earth are the Government not getting on with it?

My Lords, as I said, SACN’s recommendations highlighted both the risks and the benefits of this proposal—and I certainly acknowledge that there would be benefits. However, there are also implications. For example, SACN recommended that mandatory fortification should proceed only if accompanied by:

“Action to restrict voluntary fortification of foods with folic acid; measures for careful monitoring of emerging evidence on any adverse effects of long-term exposure to intakes of folic acid … and guidance on supplement use for particular population groups”.

We have to take those recommendations into account before taking any long-term decision.

My Lords, is the Minister aware of a recent publication that suggests that folic acid deficiency in men, too, may lead to birth defects in their offspring? Is this not another good reason for fortifying flour?

My Lords, I am sure that that evidence will be taken into account when we take the decision, as we hope to do next year.

My Lords, the Minister said that this was not a decision to be taken lightly, and that is absolutely right, but we now have the experience of 50 other countries. We have had scientific evidence on this issue for many years. The fortification of white bread flour is a targeted measure that could significantly reduce the number of pregnancies, not just births, that involve neural tube defects, and thus prevent a great deal of unnecessary and painful suffering. Will the Minister undertake to look at this matter again as a matter of urgency?

My Lords, we are looking at this as a matter of urgency. I recognise what the noble Baroness says about the experience of other countries, but we must make policy in relation to the population of our own country, and that involves weighing up both the potential benefits and the potential downsides of any policy.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the impact of events in North Korea on security and human rights.

My Lords, North Korea continues to have one of the worst human rights records in the world. The recent execution of Chang Song-thaek provides further evidence of its disregard for even the most basic human rights. We are closely monitoring the situation, and we are consulting allies in order to understand the implications of recent events.

My Lords, is the Minister aware that even before last week’s execution of Chang Song-thaek, the Times reported that there had been 80 public executions in seven cities on one day alone, the victims tied to stakes, hooded and killed by machine-gun fire? The United Nations estimates that there are some 300,000 people in the gulag network in North Korea—a network which, according to Amnesty International, is being expanded. Will the Minister read the report An Unmet Need, launched this morning at Westminster, which calls for the extension of BBC World Service broadcasts to North Korea as a way of breaking the information blockade, of exercising soft power—as we have done so successfully in places such as Burma—of promoting democratic values and of challenging a regime that relies on Stalinist purges, show trials, the obliteration of opposition and a cruel reign of terror?

I will of course read that report, and will ensure that it is brought to the attention of the Minister with responsibility for North Korea. I understand the noble Lord’s position in relation to the BBC; indeed, he has asked questions on this subject in the past. I also understand that the BBC has recently conducted a feasibility study of, for example, radio broadcasting in North Korea, but has concluded that because of the North Korean Government’s ability to jam broadcasts, the reach that would result from such broadcasting would not provide sufficient value for money. The noble Lord will know that the BBC has full editorial, operational and managerial independence on such issues, and we understand that it is not currently persuaded that a Korean language service would be an effective use of its funds. However, I will look at the report.

My Lords, the whole House is of course united in its condemnation of recent shocking events. The Opposition are at one with Her Majesty’s Government in their concern about the impact of this unpredictable regime on regional stability. Given China’s important role, both now and in the future, did the Prime Minister discuss North Korea with his Chinese hosts during his recent visit? In any event, is it the Government’s intention to have some discussion now, as a matter of some urgency?

The noble Lord may well be aware that Chang Song-thaek was closely involved with China. At the time of the execution, China issued a statement but said that it was an internal matter for North Korea to deal with. The noble Lord is right that this is an incredibly unpredictable regime. We engage with human rights in North Korea in so far as we can, but he will also be aware that North Korea has refused to engage in any form of meaningful dialogue on human rights.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, has regularly and rightly brought our attention to this matter in terms of the internal implications within North Korea. However, I think that the situation is now coming to the point where the whole Korean peninsula is at risk and there are wider elements. Did the Prime Minister in his engagement with the Chinese raise this wider question of whether the problems within North Korea are now in danger of spilling into the wider peninsula and perhaps even beyond?

My noble friend will be aware that there are six-party talks which deal with the issue of the wider peninsula, which involve China, South Korea, Japan, Russia, the US and North Korea. We are not a party to those talks but we feel that that is the best forum to take some of these discussions forward.

My Lords, what specific measures are Her Majesty’s Government taking to pursue a twin-track approach with the DPRK regarding accountability for crimes against humanity, which we have been hearing about this morning, alongside robust, critical, constructive engagement, in an attempt to open up that most closed nation and alleviate the suffering of the peoples of North Korea who have suffered at the hands of that regime, which acts with impunity, for so long?

We are taking exactly that approach. The noble Baroness will be aware of the UN commission of inquiry, which we co-sponsored, which began in March this year and I think is due to report to the Human Rights Council session in March 2014. Human rights, including the issue of prison camps, will be dealt with as part of that report. We also engage with North Korea bilaterally. As I said earlier, North Korea does not engage in any form of meaningful dialogue on human rights, but it must be remembered that we are only one of 24 countries that have an embassy in North Korea. We have had a diplomatic relationship with it for the past 30 years, which provides us with some opportunity to engage with it.

My Lords, for clarification, did the Prime Minister raise the issue of North Korea at all in the course of his lengthy conversations with senior members of the regime in the People’s Republic of China during his recent visit?

I do not have details of that in my brief, but if I have any further information I will certainly write to the noble Lord.

As we approach the end of Questions, I take this opportunity to wish all noble Lords a very merry Christmas and a peaceful new year.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of reports about the impact of winter weather on rapid increases in food prices in the region, what steps they are taking to ensure that aid reaches the refugee camps in Syria.

My Lords, I beg leave to ask a Question of which I have given private notice.

My Lords, according to the World Food Programme, food prices fluctuate. There has been a steady increase in prices since October, but there is no evidence that this is due to the onset of winter. We are providing £500 million of humanitarian support for the Syrian crisis—£276 million for those in Syria and £224 million to support refugees and host communities in the region, including £60 million to help with the onset of winter.

I appreciate the Minister’s reply, but are the Government aware that the International Rescue Committee, led by David Miliband, has found severe shortages of food and basic medical items in eight regions of Syria, and a complete lack of blankets and warm clothing for refugees as winter sets in? Is the Minister aware that the Miliband report says:

“Syria is truly on the road to hell”,

and the world’s leaders must,

“pull out the stops and do something about it”,

at least to staunch the dying by ensuring greater access to life-saving assistance? If the Paris conference next month fails to restore peace, will the Government press their partners on the UN Security Council to stiffen their declared support for humanitarian access to the war zones by passing a resolution that ensures the needs of humanity are a priority instead of pleading there is no easy option as a reason for inaction?

We agree with the position that the noble Baroness has just outlined. It is an absolutely dire situation. There is a catastrophe in Syria and also, in terms of the effects, outside. As the noble Baroness knows, getting access is extremely difficult. We have been pressing extremely hard on this issue as well as making a financial contribution. She will be aware that the UNSC made a presidential statement on access on 2 October. If implemented, that would deliver a huge amount, but putting it into effect is the difficulty that she rightly identifies. We will continue to work extremely hard to try to achieve that.

My Lords, as we are to have a debate in January, I stress the point that now is the time for all sides fully to implement the presidential statement on humanitarian access. We cannot wait. Can the Minister update the House on the funding of the Save the Children and Oxfam aid programmes for Syria?

I cannot give the noble Lord specific answers on Save the Children and Oxfam, but he will know that both of those organisations are major recipients of aid. In answering a previous Question I was asked about Hand in Hand. It is receiving aid from DfID via Save the Children. I can provide detailed answers on that in due course. We are working with a number of international organisations to try to get aid into every part of Syria. As I emphasised before, access is exceptionally difficult.

My Lords, the Minister is, I am sure, aware that I asked a Question on 2 December calling for resumed contact with the Government of Syria. I received a rather guarded reply from her colleague. Can the Minister update us on where we stand on direct consular and diplomatic contact in Damascus?

I am aware that the noble Lord thinks that this is extremely important. It is important to engage with everybody in this conflict, both within Syria and in the countries around, and those countries which appear to have an interest in its continuing instability. It is extremely important that the United Kingdom is involved in widespread engagement.

My Lords, given the wise decision not to intervene militarily in Syria, will the Minister accept that there is therefore an even stronger obligation on us to attend to the desperate needs of these refugees? If we are not dealing directly with Assad or the Syrian regime, and in view of the importance of Iran in the region and the tentative but significant steps that have been taken on engagement with Iran on other issues, can the Minister tell the House to what extent we have engaged with the Iranian regime as regards what should be, objectively and neutrally, the priority for all of us, which is dealing with the humanitarian refugee crisis?

It is in nobody’s interest to have instability increasing in this region, which is exactly what is happening at the moment. That is why it was incredibly good news when relations were improved with Iran. As I did before, I pay tribute to our colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, for the work she did on that. Iran is indeed an interested party in the area.

My Lords, on behalf of the United Nations, the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, made an appeal for direct access for humanitarian need. The Foreign Minister of Syria publically stated a few days ago that the Government of Syria would now facilitate this. Can my noble friend indicate whether the statement by the Foreign Minister of Syria is evidenced in actual fact or is this yet again a statement from the Syrian Government that has no real strength and basis in fact?

DfID is managing to get into all 14 governorates of Syria. However, there are 2.5 million people in hard-to-reach areas and 250,000 in besieged areas, which bears out the point that my noble friend makes. We call on the Syrian Government—we have not had an adequate response as yet—to remove some of the bureaucratic constraints that they have put in place which hinder humanitarian relief operations.

My Lords, the Miliband report very specifically pinpointed the issue of the shortage of vaccinations. Can the noble Baroness tell us a little more about what is being done, as the lack of vaccinations endangers public health in general and is particularly dangerous, of course, to young children?

The noble Baroness is absolutely right. That is a major concern of ours, but it hinges so much on access. She will be well aware, for example, of the cases of polio in an area where it had been eliminated. As we try to seek the elimination of polio worldwide, to see it going backwards in this region is extremely concerning. It is a problem of access. We are working to try to ensure that all medical supplies, including for the vaccination of children, get through.

My Lords, I presume that the most difficult people to reach are those who are being targeted by the various forces active in Syria. Can my noble friend tell us in particular whether aid is able to reach and support the Christian communities in Syria, which are under very great pressure?

They are indeed under great pressure and a number of them are in hard-to-reach areas. Those who are blocking humanitarian access come from all sides in this conflict and we urge all parties to the conflict to remove those barriers to humanitarian operations.

My Lords, we have all seen thousands of refugees crossing the Lebanese border. What are this Government doing to assist the Lebanese Government in bringing their shelters for refugees up to international standards? Have we considered sending British troops, who are very well versed—as we knew in Macedonia—in meeting these appalling conditions and building structures that will be durable?

We are contributing £89 million to Lebanon, and that will contribute shelter, food, medical consultations, water and sanitation. Lebanon has recently come out of a long, protracted civil war and we are very concerned about its stability. In terms of troops, the noble Lord will be well aware from his work with Christian Aid and other organisations how essential it is to make sure that any apparent military intervention is separated from humanitarian intervention, and I think there would be risks in what he proposes.

That the Report from the Select Committee on the Conduct of Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate (9th Report, HL Paper 95) be agreed to.

My Lords, in speaking to this Motion, I shall speak also to the three following Motions in my name on the Order Paper.

The facts in the cases of Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate and Lord Laird are set out at length in the reports printed as House of Lords Papers 95 and 96. The two Lords were subject to what might be described as a sting operation by the Sunday Times newspaper. Lord Laird was, in addition, a subject of an undercover operation by the BBC television programme “Panorama”. In the course of conversations with undercover journalists posing as intermediaries for legitimate businesses or as communications consultants, the two Lords said things that the House’s Commissioner for Standards found to indicate a clear willingness to breach the House’s Code of Conduct, contrary to the requirement that they should always act on their personal honour. The commissioner found that Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate had in addition breached the code by improper use of the House’s facilities for hosting functions and by entering into an agreement to accept payment in return for providing a parliamentary service.

The Sub-Committee on Lords’ Conduct has the function of recommending the appropriate sanction for breaches of the code and has recommended suspension of Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate for six months and of Lord Laird for four months. The Committee for Privileges and Conduct has the task of reviewing the findings of the Commissioner for Standards and the recommended penalty in the event of any appeal by any Member of the House investigated by the commissioner. The Committee for Privileges and Conduct considered appeals by both Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate and Lord Laird and heard evidence from both of them. The committee decided not to uphold their appeals. Accordingly, I beg to move the first Motion in my name on the Order Paper.

That Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate be suspended from the service of the House for six months.

That the Report from the Select Committee on the Conduct of Lord Laird (10th Report, HL Paper 96) be agreed to.

That Lord Laird be suspended from the service of the House for four months.

That Baroness Quin be appointed a member of the Select Committee in place of Lord Carter of Coles, resigned.

That Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall be appointed a member of the Select Committee in place of Lord Filkin, resigned.

That it is expedient that a joint committee of Lords and Commons be appointed to consider and report on the draft Modern Slavery Bill presented to both Houses on 16 December (Cm 8770) and that the committee should report on the draft Bill by 10 April 2014.

That the draft order and regulations laid before the House on 17, 23 and 30 October be approved.

Relevant documents: 9th, 11th and 12th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 9 December

That the draft order laid before the House on 19 November be approved.

Relevant documents: 15th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 17 December

That the amendments for the Report stage be marshalled and considered in the following order:

Clauses 1 to 10, Schedule 1, Clause 11, Schedule 2, Clauses 12 to 86, Schedule 3, Clauses 87 to 96, Schedule 4, Clauses 97 to 105, Schedule 5, Clauses 106 to 120, Schedule 6, Clauses 121 to 138, Schedule 7, Clause 139, Schedule 8, Clauses 140 to 142, Schedule 9, Clauses 143 to 166, Schedule 10, Clauses 167 to 171.

My Lords, in moving Amendment 166, I wish to speak also to Amendment 166B. At Second Reading, a number of noble Lords expressed concern about the changes to the existing limits on controlled expenditure that Clause 27 seeks to introduce. Justification for such a change is obviously necessary. The Explanatory Notes provide no assistance in understanding the rationale for this change. In his response at Second Reading the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, did not explain what problems had been caused by the existing limits. I am confident that if there was sound justification for reducing the expenditure limits based on past experience of the operation of Section 85 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 within its limited scope of activities, the Minister would have advised the House of that. That is particularly so where justification was sought by noble Lords, but none was forthcoming.

If there have been no problems, why reduce the limits which have been in existence for at least 13 years? Moreover, how can the Government justify reducing expenditure limits while at the same time increasing the range of qualifying activities? In his reply, will the noble and learned Lord the Advocate-General please answer the following questions? First, what is the reason for Clause 27(1)? Secondly, what problems have been caused over the years by having the existing limits? Thirdly, in proposing to reduce the limits, what assessment did the Government make of the likely increase in expenditure caused by the extension of controlled activities introduced by Clause 26? If the noble and learned Lord has no answer that justifies this extreme provision, will he acknowledge the strength of feeling that exists that this clause is grossly unfair, is a disproportionate interference in the right to freedom of speech and political engagement, and is an obstruction to democracy?

My Lords, we have Amendment 166A in this group. Before I come to it, I have a great deal of sympathy for the approach of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, but with an important reservation. I noted with interest that he referred to the advice of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, but the committee gave much more detailed consideration to some of these issues in its later report of November 2011. That is the context in which we are having this discussion. Our amendment seeks to return to the existing, well known situation of the registration threshold, with one very important qualification, to which I will refer when I also speak to the amendments being proposed by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, and others.

Nursing my cold and cough yesterday evening, I carefully read the whole of our Hansard proceedings on Monday. If anybody has been having as much difficulty in sleeping as I have recently, I fully endorse that as a very good way of avoiding insomnia. I was struck that almost all the constructive amendments to make this part of the Bill more workable and effective came from the Cross Benches, and from the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Benches. This clearly reflects the reality outside the Houses of Parliament. The organisations potentially affected by its provisions want to ensure that the Bill deals with the doubts and the defects in the existing law, the PPERA 2000, rather than simply maintain some of the unsatisfactory features of that status quo.

I have met representatives of literally dozens—scores, perhaps even hundreds—of organisations over recent weeks, some charities and some not, to discuss the perceived effects of the Bill. It is becoming increasingly clear that all serious organisations recognise that the loophole that could enable a single-issue-obsessed multimillionaire or campaign group to target huge sums of money into one or more marginal seats must be addressed. One of the problems with the other amendments in this group is that they do not restrict that targeting into a small number of seats. Our amendment does.

I am sorry to stop the noble Lord in full flow, but we have all had many conversations with charities over the past weeks and not one charity has mentioned that to me personally or to my noble friend. Can the noble Lord name the charity that has these grave fears?

My Lords, they are innumerable: NCVO, Bond and a whole number of organisations have said to us that targeting into one constituency or a small number of constituencies is recognised as a possible problem. It is not something that they necessarily want to do but they recognise that there could be a threat.

As my noble friend Lady Williams pointed out so powerfully on Monday evening, this type of deliberate distortion of our electoral process is far advanced elsewhere, in the USA in particular, but is already on its way this side of the Atlantic as well. By definition, however, we need to ensure that the net is not of so fine a mesh that we create a totally inappropriate bureaucracy for much smaller, much more locally based groups. Here I think I share the objectives of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, and others.

I referred on Monday to this essential balance between transparency and accountability on the one hand and excessive regulation on the other. The collective contention of very many organisations is that while the 2000 legislation was a concern and is defective, many of them simply did not have to worry in the past because their spending came beneath the existing thresholds.

In evidence to the Commons Select Committee, the chair of the Electoral Commission described the threshold as the measure that determined how far you go down in the pyramid of organisations engaged in campaigning. I think she described the situation very well. It is not a simple, two-dimensional triangle; it is a three-dimensional pyramid, so the further you go down in terms of the threshold, the more small organisations—huge numbers of organisations—potentially feel threatened and have to look to the way in which they are operating. At the top are a small number of large organisations that might seek deliberately and decisively,

“to promote or procure electoral success”,

of a party or candidate—the now accepted definition in the Bill—and at the bottom are a whole range of smaller bodies that are concerned that their activities might be perceived to be doing so.

We can continue to seek to reassure them as to whether they really would be caught by definition or we can provide explicit reassurance in the Bill by lifting the threshold to its existing level. I think we should do just that. Our amendment on this subject deals neatly with the conundrum that the Government have faced in so doing. My noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire said in his letter to colleagues on 5 December that in increasing the thresholds the Government would,

“need to take account of the consequences for the constituency limits set out in the legislation and the Government will reflect further on the detail of how to bring this about”.

This comes to the nub of the issue I referred to earlier. I hope that the amendment helps my noble friend.

The Minister was right, of course, that it would be plainly illogical to have a simple threshold of £10,000—or a much bigger one of £20,000 or £25,000—and then have a constituency spending limit during the post-dissolution period of £5,800. An organisation could be spending the whole limit of £5,800 and beyond without even being registered and therefore without declaring the expenditure. This would undermine the whole spirit of transparency and accountability that runs through the Bill. In the second part of our amendment, we stipulate that a higher threshold can apply unless all the spending is targeted in one constituency. I have heard the argument that this somehow adds complexity, but I do not accept that.

Of course, in a later group we will come to other detailed amendments, which clarify and make more workable the application of constituency limits. A whole section will do just that. I am sure that the Committee will recognise how crucial these are to the success of the Bill, and to its acceptance by MPs in the other place. After all, they themselves face very stringent expenditure limits at elections. When Amendment 166A in this group is taken in conjunction with our later Amendment 170A, which clarifies the scope of the constituency limit, it will be very clear when spending has occurred only in one constituency.

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, and my noble friend Lord Tyler have fought this issue pretty well. I will make a short contribution to the debate on this important topic. Amendments 167 and 168 accept that there need to be limits, but seek to change as little as possible. As was pointed out by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, the reason for this is that there is not evidence that the limits so far have caused great difficulties or given rise to many problems. The amendments therefore seek not to reduce the amounts from £10,000 to £5,000 and from £5,000 to £2,000, but merely to restore the purchasing power of those figures. I must say to my noble and learned friend on the Front Bench that I think £2,000 for a single constituency is a very low sum indeed. Hiring a hall and some audio equipment would make a very sizeable dent in that sum.

The Bank of England’s inflation indicator, a wonderful thing to play with of an afternoon, enables you to check purchasing power on any day from 1750 to 2012. The purchasing power of £1 in 1750 is equivalent to £187.76 in 2012, just as an aside. The relevant figures are from 2000 to 2012. The purchasing power of £1 in 2000 was equivalent to £1.42 in 2012. In other words, inflation has averaged 2.9% per annum, and therefore the purchasing power of £1 is now only 70p. On that basis, applying that across the piece, you come out with a figure of £14,200 from £10,000, or £7,100 from £5,000. I have merely rounded it to the nearest £1,000.

The reason for my contribution to this debate is that I think we want as few changes as possible. This matter was debated at great length during the PPERA proceedings, and all we seek to do is restore the status quo ante in terms of purchasing power. I hope that the Government will look with favour on this contribution to the debate on an important topic.

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 167A and 167B. The Government have indicated quite clearly that they will raise the registration threshold, so the question at issue is what the sum should be. We have had various alternatives put before us already today. The recommendation of the commission that I have the privilege of chairing is £20,000 for England and £10,000 for the other three nations.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, reminded us of the Neill committee’s recommendation in 1998 that the limit should be £25,000 and that that should be the figure also for Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. He posed a very sharp question: why should the registration thresholds be lower for those nations? Although our commission eventually plumped for the figure of £10,000 for those three nations, we were very tempted to put it higher, particularly because of all the difficulties in Northern Ireland, the key role that charities are playing there and their great desire not to be identified with any particular political party at this time of emergence from conflict to democracy. There is therefore a very strong case for Northern Ireland’s registration threshold to be higher.

The reasons for the raising the thresholds are obvious. The Electoral Commission says that they should be raised to at least the present PPERA levels. The argument for raising them higher than that is, first, the increased range of activities—even if you take out staff time, as we hope the Government will, there is still an increased range of activities which will cost more money. The second is inflation. Perhaps most important of all is the stated aim of the Government to give smaller charities in particular more freedom of manoeuvre without the fear that they might overstep the line.

In our report, we summed up what all smaller charities were saying. They had said that,

“they limited or stopped altogether some campaigning activity in order to ensure they did not get close to the registration threshold. For many organisations, the perceived issue of reputational risk associated with registering as a third party was important in addition to the administrative burden. The reputational risk was a particular concern to some NGOs”.

This was the case with Oxfam. Evidence gathered for the report stated that:

“Oxfam deliberately chose to ensure their spending was capped under £10,000 so they didn’t have to register, because for charities, they see it as a real brand reputational risk, they have to register as a third party because we are meant to be really apolitical NGOs. But yes they do have large budgets but have chosen not to spend them on election campaigns”.

That question of reputational risk for charities in particular is an important consideration.

So much of this legislation, and the lowering of the thresholds in particular that we are talking about now, represents an attempt to escape the influence of the super-PACs in this country. It is as though a huge net has been thrown in order to catch some great fish which might swim across the Atlantic, but the only effect of which is to trap smaller fish quite legitimately swimming freely in the waters of democracy. I hope that the Government will raise the threshold very high indeed in order that their stated aim might be achieved; that is, that smaller charities can get on with their legitimate business of campaigning on policies without fear of being caught.

On Monday, the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, referred to his 15 years working with the Countryside Alliance. He said that,

“we were punctilious about not promoting or procuring the electoral advantage of a party or candidate”.

I am sure that they were. He continued:

“We were punctilious about these matters”.—[Official Report, 16/12/13; col. 1097.]

In fact, we understand that the Countryside Alliance had specific legal advice that its activities would be subject to PPERA regulations if it spent enough on materials to breach the registration threshold. It did not register, but that is only because it did not spend enough on printed materials. As the case study in the second commission report shows, it would clearly have needed to register under the Bill because of the new activities subject to registration. Its activities were not just to become transparent through regulation but would have been restricted because of the lower spending cap and the very low constituency limits.

In our report we set out the particular case of the Countryside Alliance and the difficulties that it would find itself in as a result of the Bill, and I wonder whether the Minister was aware of that legal advice at the time. The Government have given lots of reassurances to charities that they are not in the business of promoting or procuring the electoral advantages of a particular party, but that reassurance does not work because the sting is in not that sentence but the qualifications. A charity campaigning on policy can suddenly find that inadvertently, even if it has not mentioned a political party, and even if its primary purpose is something else altogether, it is coming up to the line where it might be caught by this regulation. It is this in particular that the commission wishes to draw to the attention of the Minister as we debate this amendment on thresholds; they need to be as high as possible in order to allow the maximum freedom that should properly be allowed in a democratic society.

I ask the noble and right reverend Lord to give us his view about the last part of the amendment spoken to by my noble friend Lord Tyler. All the way through this, we are trying to find a balance between the very legitimate arguments put forward by charities, not least by the noble and right reverend Lord himself, and the real danger—I am sorry to have to say this again—of there being very heavy expenditure within one or a few constituencies that might, almost inevitably, alter the outcome of an election, despite the fact that it was not the intention to elect a particular candidate. At a certain point the level of material, campaigning and so on begins to reach such a high volume that it is very hard to make that distinction; indeed, it is an unreal distinction in those cases.

Secondly, it is crucial that we hear from the noble and right reverend Lord on the issue of bunching together different kinds of campaigns in a particular constituency. Does he recognise that it is not difficult to find all kinds of ways around our incredibly complicated registration and election regulations? It is therefore true that those small fish can grow to be quite big fish, and there is a temptation to follow the examples elsewhere. Not only does that give an illegitimate basis on which to hold the election but, perhaps equally important, it discourages people of moderate income from standing for Parliament because of the very large figures that they are supposed to meet. Will he address that part of the issue before he completes his presentation?

I have listened with great attention to what the noble Baroness has said, as I did on Monday when she suggested that the commission had not taken that point seriously enough. I was going to address it when we came to talk about constituency limits because there are a whole range of issues related to them. I notice also what the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said about constituency limits, and I take very seriously what he has said: there is clearly a major issue there that has to be addressed. There are other issues connected with constituency limits that also need to be taken into account, though, not least all the complications of trying to ascertain which constituency it might be attributed to. I take seriously what noble Lords have said but, if I may, I will address it when we come to address the amendments on constituency limits.

My Lords, I put my name also to Amendments 167A and 167B on which the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, has just spoken. Essentially they are amendments about registration thresholds and I will confine what I am going to say, quite briefly, to that aspect. It is clearly accepted that the thresholds are going to go up from those proposed in the Bill, which are very low indeed. The question is clearly: how far? If the aim is to catch wealthy organisations and individuals and to prevent undue influence on the electoral process by those with money, the response has got to be proportionate, as I am sure the Minister would accept.

As the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, said, the mesh of the net has got to be set so that small NGOs and charities can carry on with their campaigning work without being frightened off by the fear of the expense and the staff time that registration and its associated bureaucracy—which I hope later we will cut down to a degree—will entail. The larger organisations are to be caught; the smaller ones should not be, so that they can carry on with their usual activity.

The current thresholds under PPERA have done just that; hence the lack of problems arising from the drafting of the definition. This was revealed only by the most recent consultation, because most small organisations simply did not meet the existing threshold. However, those thresholds will not be enough if the activities covered by the Bill, even the non-contentious ones, are included, as everyone agrees that larger staff costs will be included with them.

I remind the House that the Electoral Commission said in relation to this very aspect that,

“we think the Bill’s Impact Assessment under-estimates both the regulatory burden that the Bill would impose on registered campaigners, and the number of non-party campaigners that may need to register with us as a result of the Bill’s provisions”,

and the lower threshold. The Electoral Commission is going to be faced with a great deal more work.

I am sorry hear to that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has been having difficulty sleeping. Indeed, the speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, on Monday caused me some lack of sleep. She chided me about what I had said about ogres coming out of the woodwork, so I had a further look at it. Because she has just raised the point now, I will say this. She produced shocking figures about what was going on in America and raised the spectre of this somehow creeping across the Atlantic and affecting our electoral process. No specific evidence has been produced for the need for specific constituency spending limits. The Government have produced no specific examples in defence of their argument on this topic—for example, of disproportionate spending in one constituency that has had undue influence on the outcome.

However, this is not the only piece of legislation that deals with this matter. There is also the Representation of the People Act 1983. Even if there were to be targeting of a specific candidate in a specific constituency, that Act covers constituency spending by candidates and also—this needs to be restated—spending by non-party campaigners who have campaigned for or against a specific candidate. What is more, breaches of the Representation of the People Act are the responsibility of the police to investigate, with all the sanctions that follow from that. The Electoral Commission does not have the enforcement powers for these rules. So, if these people exist, we in this country already have the powers to deal with them and the mechanism to do so.

My Lords, I have not been part of the commission, but I support what the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, and my noble and right reverend friend said about Amendments 167A and 167B. I was convinced by these amendments and then, when I heard the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, with his extraordinary mathematics on inflation, telling us how much it actually costs to put on a show, be it a conference or a different occasion, I was completely convinced. Then the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said that these things were costing far too much. Has he seen printers’ bills lately and does he know how much 3,000 leaflets will take out of your pocket in no time at all? These figures are still really quite limited, and I hope that the Government have seen sense. I have a feeling that we are not going to hear their answers because they are reserving them all for Report.

The issue I mentioned in relation to Clause 26 was that of smaller charities. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, was quite right in describing the role of smaller charities. My particular question for the Minister was: what happens if these charities are linked in a coalition? I know that we are going to discuss the coalitions again, but it hinges on this a little bit. Many of these charities which were spawned by the larger charities—Oxfam and Christian Aid—are now growing in their own right but nevertheless have a symbiotic connection and are often seen together in conferences. Will the Government reflect on that effect on smaller charities as well?

My Lords, I support Amendments 167A and 167B. I have two questions for the Government that have not been raised. First, we have had no specific evidence from the Government that the previous spending limits were overly permissive, resulting in undue influence on the outcome of general elections. Therefore, I would be grateful if the Minister would outline what specific evidence gave rise to this clause.

Secondly, because it again comes from the Government, I note that the Electoral Commission thinks that the regulatory burden that the Bill would impose on registered campaigners has been grossly underestimated in the Bill’s impact assessment. With many Bills coming before this House, I have had occasion to question the depth of the impact assessment. It really must go into the impact on others who will be affected by the Bill, and that has not happened in this case.

My Lords, noble Lords from across the House have made it abundantly clear that the Government’s decision to significantly reduce the threshold at which organisations register with the Electoral Commission was not based on any evidence and would significantly hamper the ability of civil society organisations to participate in democracy in the run-up to an election. I add to that the comments from committees of this House and of the other place about the lack of an evidential base for this policy.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights said:

“We are not yet satisfied that the Government has sufficiently explained the need for the reduced registration thresholds (particularly in light of the increased range of regulated activities)”.

The Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee said:

“In the absence of any evidence that there is a need to lower the threshold for third parties to register with the Electoral Commission, we recommend that the Government revert to the existing levels”.

The reductions are patently unreasonable and unfair, but they give rise to a particular concern because of the cumulative effect of provisions in the Bill. The evidence of that is overwhelming in the report of the commission. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, was right to ask what assessment had been made of the cost of the new obligations and bureaucracy. I look forward to the Minister’s answer.

The decision taken by the Government when they drafted the Bill to lower the thresholds at the same time as increasing the range of regulated activities—including, astonishingly, staffing costs, which we debated on Monday—suggests that the Bill is more about stifling dissent in the run-up to an election than about taking big money out of politics; at least, that is certainly the effect of the proposals that they have come up with. The Network for International Development Organisations in Scotland has said that,

“a prevalent fear is that it will put a halt to all activity. If the threshold is as it stands, that would be one member of policy staff. Everybody else would have to stop work. It would effectively cut down some organisations”.

The Electoral Reform Society agrees, and says that:

“I think that this will kill small organisations. They just won’t participate. There is just too much bureaucracy. They’ve never had to register before”.

Finally, the RSPB corroborated both these statements, saying that,

“it is illogical to halve the thresholds and caps at the same time as widening the activities that count towards them; this could seriously curtail legitimate charitable work”.

I wonder why the thresholds were changed and I would be grateful for an explanation from the Minister.

The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, was, in many ways, fear-mongering about the flooding of organisations by big money. I have looked at Bond, because the noble Lord quoted it. It said that big money in a constituency was “theoretical” and that no one had provided a specific example. As the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, said, we are casting our net to catch the large fish but it is the small fish—which play a hugely important part in making our civil society vibrant—that are being caught, and the governance of the country will suffer.

My noble friend Lady Mallalieu was very clear about the issue. The Commission on Civil Society and Democratic Engagement says, in its report:

“The most important measures to avoid undue influence, such as US style super PACs, are already in PPERA and the Representation of the People Act. In addition, none of the measures introduced effect undue influence in relation to political parties or candidates”.

I look forward to the Minister’s response.

In closing, I will say that I, like others, am particularly concerned about the situation in Northern Ireland, where the reduction to £2,000 is not just unfair and unworkable but absurd. On Monday, we all agreed that civil society has a vital role in sustaining the peace process in Northern Ireland, where the situation is still fragile, and the reduction in the threshold can act only as an impediment to the fantastic work of its vibrant and valuable civil society. I look forward to hearing from the Minister that the Government have, indeed, listened and will move on this issue.

My Lords, I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, for introducing these amendments. It has been obvious since Second Reading in this House, and indeed before, that the registration threshold has given rise to considerable controversy and debate. As noble Lords are aware, third parties that incur controlled expenditure are not subject to any electoral controls on their activities provided they campaign only up to a particular expenditure threshold in a relevant election.

The 2000 Act sets this threshold at £10,000 for third parties campaigning in England and at £5,000 for third parties campaigning in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. As has been said by numerous contributors, the Bill amends these amounts to £5,000 and £2,000 respectively. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, perfectly fairly asked the purpose of this. The aim is to increase openness. There is a good argument that those who spend money in a way that can reasonably be regarded as intended to promote or procure success at any relevant election—to promote not a policy but the advantage of a party or candidate—should do so transparently. Amendment 166, tabled by the noble and learned Lord, seeks to return the thresholds to their original PPERA levels. The amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Tyler seeks the same result, but proposes a third threshold of £5,850 where spending has been incurred solely in a single constituency.

My noble friend Lord Hodgson goes a step further and suggests thresholds of £14,000 in England and £7,000 in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The amendments tabled by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, go further still and propose thresholds of £20,000 and £10,000 respectively. Finally, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, suggests a registration threshold of £25,000 applied to each of the constituent parts of the United Kingdom.

Noble Lords will know that when a third party registers with the Electoral Commission, it becomes a recognised third party. Upon registration, the third party becomes subject to spending and donation controls for the duration of the regulated period of the relevant election. The Bill intends to ensure greater transparency of campaign finance, which is why it revised the current registration thresholds to £5,000 and £2,000. It was intended to have the effect that more third parties would be required to account for expenditure and provide details of the donations they receive, bearing in mind that the fact of registration means that the expenditure can reasonably be regarded as intended to promote or procure success in a relevant election for a particular party or candidate.

I was going to bring this up in our stand part debate, because it is important. With the permission of the Committee, I will do so now. On Monday an impression was given—I am sure misleadingly—by the noble and learned Lord, which he has just now repeated. He said that,

“organisations … will incur controlled expenditure … only where their activities, ‘can reasonably be regarded as intended to promote or procure electoral success’, of ‘parties’ or ‘candidates’”.—[Official Report, 16/12/13; col. 1042.]

He keeps using that phrase, which is accurate, and in the Bill. However, that is only part of the definition. The House needs to recognise the point that my noble friend made on Monday. It is not simply about promoting but also, of course, about reducing the chances of electoral success. I think that the examples given were of the campaign against the war in Iraq or against the bedroom tax.

I will make just one other point. The law goes on to state:

“In determining whether expenditure can reasonably be regarded as intended to promote or procure electoral success … it is immaterial that it can reasonably be regarded as intended to achieve any other purpose as well”.

That, therefore, could be activity that is aimed at some other purpose, but which may damage a party, and so it would be covered. I am sure that the Minister did not want in any way to give a misleading impression, but by continuing to concentrate only on activity to promote a party rather than to harm it by discussing a policy—a policy that could suddenly become it—that is wider than his words perhaps suggest.

I hear what the noble Baroness says. I am sure, as she recognises, that it is difficult to be criticised for quoting directly from the Bill. However, she makes the point that there could be detriment to a party. It is quite proper, too, that if a third-party organisation was to campaign to try to defeat the Labour Party’s chances in a range of constituencies and its activities could be quite reasonably seen as aiming to thwart the Labour Party in a campaign, it is important that there is transparency—that people know where the money comes from and what is behind the campaign to do down a particular party. On Monday we had a debate on principal purpose which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, introduced. Of course there can be other purposes. It may be that in trying to do down the Labour Party that group hopes to raise funds and increase its membership. However, that does not detract from the fact that there is an electoral purpose, which is what we seek to catch. I see the noble Baroness shaking her head, but it is important to remind the House that the definition we are talking about is one that her party put into legislation in the 2000 Act. It is slightly ironic that I am having to defend that definition, when her own party put it into the original 2000 Act.

That Act covered publications, which are quite clearly and easily defined as this. The worry about this clause is that it includes rallies that might happen. They are not aimed at harming the Labour Party. On Iraq, they were aimed at stopping the war. The effect was to affect a political party. Therefore again, the Minister is suggesting that the activity has to be aimed at electoral outcome rather than at a particular policy. Every group that has spoken this morning about this as a result of reading his words on Monday, says that his words are narrower than what its lawyers tell them is suggested by the wording of the Bill.

My Lords, it is not a subjective test—we made that very clear. The Labour Party did not put a subjective test into its legislation in 2000. It is an objective test. Therefore, to say that it is solely about what a particular third-party organisation aims to do is not a fair representation of what it says. It is about what can reasonably be regarded. That is an objective test, and we rehearsed all the arguments for and against an objective or subjective test. Therefore it is not unreasonable to remind the Committee about what is here in the Act, which is a definition that the Government introduced by amendment in the other place because people clearly expressed that they wanted us to use the tried and tested definition that was used in the elections of 2005 and 2010. However, I accept that there has been a perception of the possibility of a chilling effect. I think I said that on Monday, and I accept that representations have been made to me and to my noble friends.

In the light of what the noble and learned Lord is saying, could he clarify what the position would be if a charity, or a non-charity, had a core campaign on which it had been working for some time, and during the regulated period the Government of the day, or an opposition party, adopted that policy—or, indeed, adopted a policy directly contrary to it? A party might adopt that campaign objective as policy—or, indeed, a party might introduce legislation affecting it. If the organisation steps up its campaigning because of the change in the political situation, does that core policy not then become something that is brought under the Bill, where it would not otherwise have been?

I think I addressed that point in our debate on Monday, and I quoted from the Electoral Commission’s guidance on the subject. The noble Baroness’s final sentence was interesting, because she asked what would happen if the organisation stepped up its campaign. I think I gave reasons on Monday why, if an organisation had a campaign that had been going on for many months or even years, and one party subsequently decided to endorse it, that should not affect the organisation. However, if it seized on that development and sought to ratchet up its campaign by several notches, and encouraged—at least by implication—people to vote in a certain way, that would make a difference. That is reflected in the Electoral Commission’s guidance. On Monday we had a discussion on whether it would be better to clarify such things in the Bill or to leave it to guidance. That is a perfectly legitimate question, and as I said then, it is one on which the Government would obviously want to reflect.

Will the Minister, during the reflective period, focus on the idea of something that suddenly becomes topical because the Government of the day introduce a Bill that does exactly the opposite of what the campaigning organisation wishes to achieve? He talked about “ratcheting up”, or increasing the volume. Surely that would be an inevitable part of campaigning if the organisation were suddenly faced with what it saw as a piece of hostile legislation. Would that organisation not then be able to campaign actively against the measure—although presumably, that is not something to which a Government who were anxious to encourage democracy would object?

We had a very thorough debate on this subject on Monday; I do not want to go over again everything that I said then, and rerun that debate. I will certainly reflect on what the noble Baroness has said; indeed, I spoke on Monday about some of the clarity sought. I think that the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, was encouraging me to act, and said that a number of people wanted to put things in the Bill. He listed a number of things, and I said that there had to be a balance between what we put in a Bill and what we leave to guidance. That is a perfectly proper matter for us to reflect on, and we shall bear the noble Baroness’s comments in mind.

I was about to say that charities and other campaigners had expressed fears that because low-level campaigning and expenditure could be regulated as a result of the Bill, small organisations would face a disproportionate reporting and compliance burden. Those concerns have been reflected in most of the contributions this morning. My noble friend Lord Tyler talked on Monday about the balance between transparency and regulation. Almost inevitably, the more transparent we seek to make the arrangements, the greater will be the amount of regulation. That point was echoed this morning by my noble friend Lady Williams.

This is the balance that we are trying to get right. We believe that there should be greater clarity about who is campaigning for the electoral success of parties or candidates—but equally, we do not want small campaigners to be dissuaded from taking part in public debate by fear of having onerous burdens placed upon them. Therefore, in line with what my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire committed in the House on 5 November, as I have said, and, indeed, as I said when opening the first set of amendments on Monday, the Government will bring forward amendments on Report to increase the registration thresholds.

Will my noble and learned friend make one point absolutely clear to the Committee? If, as has been suggested this morning, the registration threshold was moved as high as £25,000, it would be perfectly possible for an organisation or individual to spend £24,999.99p in one constituency without being in any way accountable for how that money was spent and without having to be transparent about where the money came from, even though that sum would far exceed what we might expect to have as the limit on spending. It simply would not be known that that was happening because the registration threshold was so high; hence the significance of the measure that my noble friends and I have tabled.

My noble friend anticipates what I was about to say. However, he is right, subject to the caveat in the Representation of the People Act and its interplay with the restrictions on spending in individual constituencies, that sum would be almost twice what the candidate could spend. It seems a bit perverse that, if you have a campaign, you cannot answer for it if you are a candidate or party. However, we will come on to the constituency limits and the important interplay with the Representation of the People Act.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, referred to the figure of £25,000, which, as my noble friend says, would allow quite a lot to be done without the need for transparency. Nevertheless, the noble and learned Lord made an important point abut there being the same threshold in each of the constituent parts of the United Kingdom. At a very early stage—I think before I had been given the “hospital pass” —I met a group of citizens in my former constituency as my successor thought that it would be a good idea for me to meet them. One of the points that they made was that, in reducing the thresholds from £10,000 and £5,000 to £5,000 and £2,000, there had been a bigger pro rata decrease for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I have certainly raised that issue. It is an important issue with regard to what the threshold is in the different parts of the United Kingdom. I certainly undertake that we will consider that point. I think it was also raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, specifically in relation to Northern Ireland.

I reiterate the point made by my noble friend Lord Tyler with regard to constituency limits, consistency and not subverting the constituency limit by having a threshold that is too high. I accept that some of those who argue for a higher level do not want a constituency limit at all, but we shall deal with that in greater detail later.

I repeat that our objective is to ensure transparency, but we need to strike a balance. We do not want to have a chilling effect, even if it is just a perception on the part of smaller organisations that they would exceed the threshold even if their activities were not necessarily ones that would require them to register. Therefore, I repeat that we believe a substantial increase from the level in the Bill would, indeed, be appropriate.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, possibly in a festive mood, tried to be seductive by suggesting that we accept his first amendment and restore the status quo. It is seductive but, at the risk of spoiling the Christmas spirit, I do not think that the legislative hokey-cokey of “in out, in out and shake it all about” is the best way to do this. The Government will bring forward an amendment on Report which, as I have indicated, will introduce a substantial increase from the level in the Bill. On that basis, I urge the noble and learned Lord to withdraw his amendment.

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords in all parts of the House for speaking in this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, suggested that the 2011 report was the more appropriate one. I went back to the 1998 report because that was the one which founded the 2000 Act, which set out the limits that we are discussing. On that basis, I went back to that report to find the justification for the legislation.

I hear what the noble and learned Lord the Advocate-General has said in response. I am disappointed that despite his white hair he is not Father Christmas and will not give me the gift that I was seeking. But I look forward to the amendment on Report and hope that it sets appropriate levels, and may not be confined to the £2,000 and £5,000 levels, but will be above that, if the Government are truly listening to the concerns of the third sector. With these observations I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

My Lords, Amendment 169B also stands in my name.

The issues here are similar to those raised in the previous group of amendments, except that they apply to the total control of expenditure that may be incurred by a recognised third party in the various constituent countries of the United Kingdom. The current limits are contained in paragraph 3(2) of Schedule 10 to the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act Act 2000. Clause 27(2)(a) proposes to alter these limits by substituting them for,

“2% of the maximum campaign expenditure limit in that part of the United Kingdom”.

The effect of that provision is that the relevant figures for the countries are: £319,000 for England, reduced from £793,000; £35,000 for Scotland, reduced from £108,000; £24,000 for Wales, reduced from £80,000; and £10,080 for Northern Ireland, reduced from £27,000. My concerns about these reductions are similar to those about the reductions in registration limits.

I will not repeat the figures, but I will ask the noble and learned Lord the Advocate-General to justify the changes in this particular paragraph. The activities subject to control have been extended, yet it is proposed to reduce the total permissible expenditure. Moreover, the period covered is 12 months before an election. At Second Reading I drew attention to the following anomaly: in the context of Scotland, I doubted whether a campaign group could fund a national rally about an issue of importance to it, within a budget of £35,000. Even if it could, such a rally would exhaust its budget, leaving it unable to campaign effectively in any other way.

The unrealistic level of expenditure is highlighted when one has regard to the provisions in paragraph 5 of Schedule 10 to the 2000 Act about elections to the Scottish Parliament. The relevant figure for controlled expenditure is £75,800 and the relevant period is four months prior to the election. At the risk of showing my lack of the mathematical expertise that the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, has, I say that a simple arithmetical approach of multiplying that figure by three would produce an equivalent annual figure of £227,400. But that, I acknowledge, is oversimplistic, as the greater part of any allowance will be expended in the last few months prior to an election. Accordingly, although probably still higher than the current annual figure of £108,000, the equivalent extrapolated figure would be approximate to it. If the proposed figure of £35,000, represented by the 2% introduced by Clause 27(2), is implemented, the discrepancy between the allowance for UK elections and elections to the Scottish Parliament is vast. Such a discrepancy for the same country in the same schedule to the 2000 Act demands an explanation and justification. In his reply will the noble and learned Lord the Advocate-General provide the House with the required explanation and justification for this disparity?

The deletion of this subsection will restore the status quo as far as limits are concerned, although the burden on that expenditure will be greater if the definition of controlled expenditure is expanded as proposed. I invite your Lordships to conclude that the effect of Amendment 169 would be to restore some public confidence in the democratic process and to avoid the absurdity and likely confusion that will arise from such disparate figures in Scotland, where campaign groups will be subject to different regimes within the same geographical boundaries.

Amendment 169B was tabled in case the previous amendment was not accepted, and the Government remained determined to reduce the overall figures and could justify such a policy. This amendment is a proposed compromise. By increasing the percentage from 2% to 5% the figure for England is more approximate to the current figure, and might even be slightly higher; but the decreases for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are less dramatic. The equivalent figure in Scotland would be £87,500. I beg to move.

My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendment 169A. I would like to ask the Minister what the rationale was behind such a drastic reduction in the spending limits. For England it was a 60% reduction; for the other nations it was 70%. This is a vast reduction, for which no reason was given. The commission which I have the privilege of chairing simply wishes to revert to the original PPERA figures plus inflation. Those are written in the amendment, and would mean £1,125,000 for the year for England; the comparable figures for Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales would be £155,000, £86,000 and £40,000. We are simply recommending the original PPERA figures plus inflation.

I will give one example of a big spending campaign which is concerned about the cap. In the 2010 general election, Hope not Hate registered £319,231 of spending in England with the Electoral Commission. It is a national grass-roots organisation that seeks to challenge and expose openly racist political parties, candidates and policies. It works on the assumption that there is a risk that far-right racist policies might be campaigned on vigorously at election time, and it wishes to oppose that with racially tolerant policies. For example, in an area like Barking and Dagenham in 2010 where it mobilised people, its spending included printing of leaflets and Hope not Hate newspapers, staff time to write campaign literature, media coverage costs, communicating the campaign to supporters, and its battle bus bill. Of course, an organisation such as this, quite properly, needs to register and needs to be totally transparent in what it does, but the spending limits proposed in the Bill would severely reduce what that organisation would be able to do. It spent in 2010 £319,231, which is above the limit in the Bill. There is clearly a strong case for reverting not only to PPERA but to PPERA plus inflation on the cap.

I wonder if I may ask the noble and right reverend Lord a question. He and his commission have justifiably encouraged us to see the package—how different elements of the Bill stick together. I draw his attention to the fact that his amendment, combined with other amendments to remove all constituency limits that he and his colleagues have proposed, would, if they were to be implemented, mean that the sum of £1.25 million could be spent in a small number of target marginal constituencies. That is a huge sum of money. When we come to the other sections that deal with constituency limits, will he think about the implications of the interaction between those two propositions from his commission?

The commission is keen to emphasise that every aspect of the Bill is integrated with every other. Clearly, constituency limits have to be taken into account very seriously when we are thinking about raising either the threshold or the cap.

I intervene briefly to support the Government and oppose the amendments put forward from the Cross Benches because the overall argument about undue influence is important here. As the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has just said in his intervention, it is not only a question of the total amount of money spent but of the way in which it is deployed in any geographical area, whether it is in one constituency, a number of constituencies, Scotland, Wales or England. That is the problem and that is why the Government are right to try to reduce the spending limits, with a view to reducing the possibility of undue influence.

There has been some discussion of the figures of a 60% or 70% reduction, and I obviously do not know exactly how they were arrived at in detail, but I know, as we all know, what happened at the last general election. As the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, rightly pointed out, spending by the Hope not Hate campaign throughout the whole country totalled £319,000. It was the third biggest spender, and only two registered third parties spent more than the Government are proposing—the public services union, Unison, which spent £671,000, and Vote for Change, which is a Liberal Democrat-backed organisation wanting change to the electoral system. Those are the only two organisations, apart from Hope not Hate, which spent anywhere near or above the amount proposed by the Government.

I fully accept that there will now be a different definition of controlled expenditure, and on previous amendments I pointed out that the Government should look very carefully at what is included in controlled expenditure, particularly in relation to staff costs. If they were to be removed from the definition of controlled expenditure, most of the problems in that regard would be solved. However, leaving that aside, the fact is that the spending of most other organisations that registered—all the fuss is about only the 30 or so organisations that took the trouble to register in the last general election—was way below £319,000, which is the limit proposed by the Government in the Bill. There is plenty of headroom there for people to run a proper campaign, given that they can concentrate those resources in a particular area. However, it is the overriding view of the Government that such a campaign should not unduly influence the result in any particular constituency. It is therefore entirely consistent with the logic of their position to reduce the spending limits as they propose.

I hope that the noble Lord is not suggesting that the Hope not Hate campaign unduly influenced the election with that £319,000, which was spread right across the country. Was it not a fundamental expression of democratic rights that that campaign should have been able to do that? I am sure that he would not want its work to be hindered.

I would not want its work to be hindered but there should not be undue influence in any particular set of constituencies or a constituency. That is what concerns me. If the noble and right reverend Lord says that this campaign was across the whole country, then clearly there was not an undue influence. None the less, if a campaign is focused on particular areas there may be undue influence.

My Lords, I rise very briefly indeed to support the proposal contained in the commission’s amendment, and simply to say in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Horam, that I am unaware of an example—I still await one, although I have asked a number of times—of where there has been undue influence as a result of excessive spending in one constituency or spending specifically directed against a candidate in the last election. It does not appear to have happened. This is a pretty draconian cut of between 60% and 70%. It is perhaps right that I should simply add that, so far as the commission is concerned and the package that has been spoken of, those figures reflect a period of 12 months. If, as I hope happens, the period is to be reduced to six months, those figures would need to be adjusted accordingly.

My Lords, I wish briefly to draw attention to what the Joint Committee on Human Rights said about this. I am a member of that committee and I apologise because I have a meeting this afternoon and will not be here for much of the rest of our debates. The committee acknowledged that the Government were right to review the maximum spending limits; I imagine that they need to be reviewed every so often, not least because of inflation, which the amendment addresses.

The committee’s report makes the point about the lower limits now being,

“applied to a wider list of controlled activities (such as media events, rallies, canvassing)”,

and that,

“the Government admits that it is difficult to assess how much is currently spent on these additional activities by third parties and therefore it is difficult to assess the impact of the measure. The Government’s inability to provide this assessment is of concern, and adds to the overall uncertainty and lack of understanding regarding the Bill”.

Is the Minister able to provide some assessment of what this will mean and allay the concerns that have been raised? In the absence of that and of decent evidence, which is generally lacking around the Bill, I strongly support the commission’s amendment.

My Lords, it will probably come as no surprise that the Labour Party supports reducing the cost of politics, not simply because that is right nor just because of the warnings sounded by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, who is not in her place, on Monday and this morning, but perhaps because Labour is outspent by the Conservatives. The current situation is bad for democracy, not simply for ourselves, and the major reason is because money and politics rarely mix. We want all groups, candidates and parties to be able to put their views to the electorate without needing to raise large sums or without having to be rich enough to fund a campaign themselves.

Although we are slightly unsure about the wording of the Bill, we think we have much in common with the intention behind the Government’s changes, in that we support transparency and lowering costs. However, we are concerned, for the reasons that we have just heard, about what they have sought to do and the figures that they have chosen. Neither the noble Lord, Lord Horam, nor the rest of us know where the figures come from. The Electoral Commission quite rightly says that it is for the Government to propose and for Parliament to decide on the appropriate limits, in order to balance that freedom of expression against controls of undue influence. The commission listed some of the factors we ought to think about, such as inflation and the wider range of activities. However, we find it difficult to see how the Government have thought about those matters in the way that my noble friend Lady Lister suggested because we have seen nothing of the assumptions that they have made about the costs associated with policy research, press, meetings, debates and staff, which will now be covered by the Bill—and over a 12-month period.

In the earlier debate the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, compared what a third party might be able to spend against what a candidate might spend; of course we are talking about a 12-month period, not when the candidates are affected in the short campaign. So, as others have done, we ask: what are the factors that led to these figures? Were they grabbed out of the ether, rather like the 500 seats in the Commons that the Government, as the House will remember, were set on last time? Did these figures just come out of a roulette wheel without rhyme or reason, or is there something that we could look at to test the Government’s assumptions that these are the rights figures? Without that, it is very hard to see the logic behind them.

My Lords, again we are grateful to the noble and leaned Lord, Lord Hardie, for introducing this part of the Bill and the consideration of the overall spending limits. As no doubt the Committee is aware, third parties are subject to limits on the amount of controlled expenditure that they may incur during the regulated period of a United Kingdom parliamentary general election. The initial figures set out in PPERA 2000 set the limit at £988,500 for the whole of the United Kingdom and this Bill, as has been heard, seeks to amend that limit to £390,000. The limit in either case is of course the aggregate of individual limits of each part of the United Kingdom. That means that expenditure is allocated in accordance with where its effect is most significantly felt. If a body has its head office in Scotland, for example, but undertakes and targets its campaign work only in England, then that spending will be allocated to the English limit and not the Scottish one.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, has tabled amendments so that the spending limit for third parties remains as it is in PPERA 2000, and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, has proposed limits that would take the spending limit to £1,406,000 across the United Kingdom as a whole. This substantial increase, as I understand it, is to reflect inflation since the original limit was set 13 years ago. There has been considerable discussion, not just in this House but also in the other place, about third-party campaigners and the potential to incur significant amounts of expenditure in campaigns. This was spoken about very eloquently by my noble friend Lady Williams. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, indicated that her party has no desire to see the cost of politics increase, nor, indeed, do we want to see a disproportionate effect on elections by those who have lots of money to throw around.

There is also the potential, given that limits are imposed on political parties—let us remember that, if we look at this in its full context, there are limits on political parties—that we would undermine that regime if their supporters could still demonstrate their backing by diverting funding to a formally or informally aligned party. Allowing very large sums to be spent to the benefit of parties that are candidates in this way risks, I believe, undermining the basic rules that have evolved over the years in terms of restriction of political spending in elections. The nature of third parties means that controls on their spending are necessary. I do not believe that we have really debated limits, but I do not think that anyone has challenged the principle that there should be some control on substantial spending.

There is some evidence of third-party expenditure increasing. In 2010, eight third-party organisations spent more than £100,000, although, as I think my noble friend Lord Horam correctly pointed out, most who were registered—and only 30 were registered—spent considerably less than that. Indeed, some who were registered spent nothing at all. Although there were eight who spent more than £100,000 in 2010, in 2005 only two groups did so. I believe, and we have said all these things many times, that it is about trying to strike the right balance to ensure transparency. We believe that the figure in the Bill is a reasonable limit for national third-party campaigning. Most campaigns in the last election did not spend anywhere near either the total amount that was available then or the amount that is proposed in this Bill.

It has been argued that these previous campaigns did not require third parties to account for a much wider range of activities, but it is worth reflecting on the fact that the Green Party, a political party, spent £330,000 on its national campaign in the 2010 general election. That campaign activity included incurring expenses on advertising, unsolicited materials, manifestos, market research, transport, media events and rallies—all activities that third parties should also account for. No one can doubt that the Green Party had a very strong voice in that campaign and indeed succeeded in getting its first ever Member elected to the House of Commons. It was a voice within a national debate. In fact, only four out of well over 100 registered political parties spent more than £390,000 in 2010: the Conservative Party, the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats and the UK Independence Party.

We are setting a limit which, as I said, only four political parties exceeded in 2010, and a party that was recognised as having played a full part, albeit without standing in every constituency, in a national election in all its activities spent less than £390,000. We do not believe that third parties should be dominating the electoral landscape—by “third parties” I do not mean political parties but such as we have discussed in this debate, as of course I think third parties have an important role to play in the party-political scene—and creating campaigning inequality among political parties. We believe that the spending limits are appropriate and proportionate.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, drew attention to the differential that exists in Schedule 10 to the 2000 Act, and I accept that this Bill is looking at the UK limits. It will also recognise that while you might have a campaign to be undertaken on a pan-UK basis, it is not quite the same as if you were focusing solely on Scotland for a Scottish election and so I think that there is some scope for a differential.

We believe that, having reduced the limit to a sum that has not inhibited, or would not have caught, the Green Party at the last election or indeed the vast majority of third parties that were registered and campaigned, this is not an unreasonable balance to be struck. I invite the noble and learned Lord to withdraw his amendment.

Will the Minister not acknowledge, in relation to the spending by the Green Party, that of course it did not have to include staff costs in the figure that he quoted? As the Bill now stands, third-party campaigners have to include staff costs, so there is not an even playing field. Furthermore, will he acknowledge that the whole political landscape now is very different from what it was, say, 20 or 30 years ago, with a dramatic decline in political-party membership and the rise in membership of third-party campaigners? Does the apparent indifference of so many people, sadly, to political-party campaigns and their enthusiasm and commitment to third-party campaigns not indicate that third-party campaigns should be treated equally seriously as a fundamental feature of our democracy along with political parties, particularly at election time?

The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, makes a fair point that, as a party, the staff costs were not included, but I think one of the reasons was referred to by my noble friend Lord Gardiner on Monday. Political parties’ staff are fully committed and are very transparently fighting an election, whereas one might reasonably assume that, when larger organisations undertake political campaigning—and we accept that they are registered because they believe that their campaigning could reasonably be judged to give an electoral advantage, or disadvantage, to one party or another—their staff’s time is not entirely taken up with it. He makes a fair point, but there is also a distinction because it would not be the entire staffing costs of a particular organisation that would be taken into account.

I wholly accept the point that has been made about the richness of the debate, with groups contributing in ways they have not done before, much of which is made possible, I suspect, by electronic media. Those of us who have had to stuff envelopes in the past probably realise that there are easier ways of campaigning and getting the message across, as well as being cheaper than the printed material which the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, mentioned in his earlier intervention. In some respects, campaigning costs themselves have gone down over the years because of the nature of much of modern campaigning.

I have been listening to the debate in as objective a fashion as I can manage. The noble and learned Lord has made a strong case for why the limits should perhaps not be increased, and to me he has also made a strong case for why the existing system is working well. The bit that still puzzles me, particularly in the light of the increased coverage of the new definition of controlled expenditure, is the justification for actually reducing the limits. That, I am afraid, I have not been convinced by.

My Lords, I think I indicated that even with the reduced limits, on the list I have before me there were only two organisations that went above them, one being UNISON and the other being Vote for a Change Ltd, and neither of those got anywhere near the limits set out in PPERA. Even with the reduced limits, most organisations would not get anywhere near them. I take the point made about staffing made by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries. Even a political party, the Green Party, which fought a fully fledged election campaign, admittedly not in every constituency but one that registered in the national campaign, did not reach the reduced limit. In trying to strike these balances, these limits are not unreasonable.

I am grateful to noble Lords on all sides of the Committee for participating in the debate. I hear what the Minister has said about what the effect of these limits would have been had they been applied to the last election and I want to reflect on that. I note also that the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, referred to the experience of the last general election.

I think that the noble and learned Lord also acknowledged that much of the difficulty might be removed if staff costs were taken out of the equation. Certainly that is a point the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, raised just now. I wish to reflect on these matters before Report, but in the meantime I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

My Lords, we gave notice of our intention to oppose the Question in order to say some of the things that have now been covered, so the Committee will be pleased to learn that I shall not repeat them. One of them is the lack of rationale given for the figures for the threshold and, indeed, for the spending limit. I congratulate the Minister, who has managed to give a whole answer without explaining why the figures were chosen. Given the questions that he was asked, it is a clever move. It remains the case that the Electoral Commission, which after all is the Government’s independent adviser, has called on them to raise the thresholds and put up the spending limits, because everything is going to be covered. Some organisations have been mentioned already, but the BMA, NCVO, RSPB, Oxfam, the Royal College of Nursing and ACEVO, which have to work with this, all say that they do not know why the changes to the thresholds and the spending limits are there, or how the new figures were chosen. That remains our worry about this clause.

I want to add one point, but I do not want to repeat the exchange that the noble and learned Lord and I had on the first group of amendments today. He again used the phrase that the provisions will cover only those things that are done in a way to “influence” an election. But as we know, the law says that it is immaterial whether something can be regarded as intended to achieve any other purpose as well, and therefore things that can be done not with the intention of influencing an election could well be covered. The definition of electoral material goes on to include, for example, a definition of a “candidate”, which,

“includes a future candidate, whether identifiable or not”.

There is no need to mention parties or candidates by name for an activity to be deemed to be controlled expenditure. That, I think, is one of the issues that remains with us even after the debates today. I think the Government still feel that the NGOs are exaggerating the potential damage. However, the NGOs will continue to worry about what is covered by both sets of limits in this clause, and by the lack of a rationale for the new figures.

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for raising these issues once again. The Government accept that the figures for the spending threshold for registration set out in the Bill need to be revisited, and I suspect that the outcome of that will reflect the concerns that have been expressed. However, I do not think I can honestly say that there is a scientific means of arriving at a figure, any more than I suspect the Labour Government used a scientific method to reach their figures for spending limits and thresholds in 2000. I repeat that the balance we seek is one that will secure greater transparency but not lead to unnecessary regulation, particularly taking into account the concerns that have been expressed by a number of smaller organisations. I hope that when we come back with our amendment, it will meet the test of not imposing undue burdens but providing for fair transparency.

I shall not rehearse again all the arguments that were made in the debate immediately prior to this on the total spending limit, but we must have regard to the fact of what one political party is able to do, and bear in mind that the fifth report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life thought that the existing limits were quite generous. Of course, no science will ever get this absolutely right, but the figure will nevertheless still allow the healthy involvement of a number of campaigning organisations.

The possible difference between us is that the noble Baroness takes the view that a subjective test should apply, whereas we are sticking by the objective test. That is a perfectly legitimate difference of view for us to have, but I believe that the objective test is more rational. It is reasonable and is the one that informed the legislation currently on the statute book. In respect of some of the concerns that the noble Baroness has expressed, organisations which are properly campaigning on issues and trying to persuade Governments to change policy or reinforce policies they already have would not be seen, on an objective test, as trying to secure an electoral advantage.

I hope that that reassurance will be passed on because it is important that those organisations continue to play their very proper role in trying to persuade Governments, Oppositions or whoever about particular policy issues. There is certainly no desire on the past of this Government to try in any way to inhibit that. With those remarks, which I hope were reassuring, I ask the Committee to agree that the clause should stand part of the Bill.

My Lords, I should apologise to Members who were anticipating that by now we might be moving on to the QSD. It is certainly not at my insistence that this group of amendments should be taken at 1.41 pm. However, as we have been gathering from all sides of the Committee during discussions this morning, the constituency limits, which are the subject of Clause 28 and therefore of this group, are very important and of central significance to the Bill.

We have heard that the Government did not bring this legislation forward to affect charity campaigning or to stop NGOs having their say about policy issues. The purpose of the Bill is to stop big money flooding into constituencies in the year before an election in an attempt to, in one direction, augment or to subvert candidates’ own spending limits. As I have already had occasion to say to the Committee, even if we in this House did not think that was important, there will be Members at the other end of the building who would think that it was extremely important—not least, perhaps, those pro-Europe Conservative MPs and candidates who might well be targeted by substantial sums of money, let alone others who may be in a similar position and a target for single-issue campaigning by individuals, multimillionaires or organisations.

Clause 28 is very important but it is by no means perfect, as has already been made apparent by many noble Lords this morning. The Bill talks about activity that has “significant effects” in a particular constituency or group of constituencies. The difficulty is that some of the groups that we have all met might, for example, hold a rally in one constituency which would have an effect on a great many others. I recall chairing just such a constituency rally, but if it had that significance for neighbouring constituencies in Cornwall, it would be very difficult to allocate the actual expenditure in any particular way. It would be very difficult to see what relative effect this was going to have in different adjoining constituencies. Frankly, as a former candidate, I rarely worried about somebody holding a meeting in the neighbouring constituency—or, for that matter, even in my own constituency—in terms of that affecting the outcome of the election. What affects elections most strongly is direct communication with electors and, as has already been mentioned this morning, the means of doing that have become more effective and cheaper in recent years. That is what can really sway a constituency result one way or another.

My Lords, I take seriously what the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has said and what earlier on the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, said. Clearly, if there is a possibility of abuse, that must be guarded against. The commission takes that seriously. However, we must also take into account a number of other factors, not least that the Electoral Commission regards constituency limits as they are in the Bill at the moment as unworkable and unenforceable. It states:

“In our previous briefings on Part 2 of the Bill we have noted that except in extreme cases, the new year-long constituency controls may be unenforceable within the regulated period, given the difficulty of obtaining robust evidence to determine and sanction breaches”.

That seems to be a key point. If the Electoral Commission believes that these controls cannot be enforced, there must be something fundamentally wrong with the law.

It should also be noted that political parties’ national campaigning during the year before a UK general election is not subject to limits on spending at constituency level. Why is there one rule on this for political parties? Perhaps I can ask the Minister to reply to this. Why, when according to the Bill there is to be a limit on what third-party campaigners can spend, should the political parties have a rule that says that there is no limit on what they can spend in a particular constituency? Furthermore, PPERA did not contain the provision for constituency limits. We have heard a lot about the threat of abuse at constituency level, but there was no clear evidence of abuse at the 2010 general election.

The Electoral Commission states:

“The existing controls for constituency level campaigning are set out in separate rules under the Representation of the People Act 1983 (RPA)”.

These controls cover constituency campaigning by candidates who are standing for election and spending by non-party campaigners who campaign for and against those candidates, as, for example, in “vote for this candidate”. Earlier on the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, made a point of this. Any potential abuses of the kind that the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, have pointed out are the responsibility of the police to investigate. The Electoral Commission does not have any enforcement powers in relation to these rules.

The main burden of the commission’s report, backed up by a number of vivid case examples, is that it would be impossible to comply with this law because a fair amount of campaigning crosses a number of different constituencies. For instance, the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign operates across three parliamentary constituencies. So far, the campaign has collected and spent around £36,000. The hospital serves a number of different constituencies. How on earth would the campaigning groups involved in the campaign allocate the different amounts of expenditure per particular constituency?

A similar problem arises in relation to Stop HS2. As well as the national organisation, there are 120 local action groups. In the Kenilworth and Southam constituency alone, there are 11 separate action groups. Stop HS2 goes through a whole range of different constituencies. How are the groups that are part of this campaign to allocate their expenditure to the different constituencies? Even if they were able to do that, how would the Electoral Commission be able to enforce it?

I shall not repeat other examples because of the shortage of time. They are all set out at the back of the report. One example relates to stopping climate change. We must take seriously what the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has said. It may be possible for the Government to bring forward a very sharply focused amendment to deal with that problem. As it stands at the moment, for the reasons I have given, it would be difficult if not impossible for campaigning groups to comply with the law and the Electoral Commission would have great difficulty in enforcing it.

My Lords, I, too, intend to oppose the Question that Clause 28 stand part of the Bill. I shall be brief.

Clause 28 needs to come out altogether. First, it is written in gobbledegook. At Second Reading I took up some of the House’s time by reading out part of Clause 28. I recommend it to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, for his insomnia. It is impossible for a criminal lawyer like me, not a charity lawyer or an electoral lawyer, to begin to understand it. It is inconceivable that any small charity or campaigning organisation without its own legal team would be able to look at it and understand it. They would be bound to have to seek expensive legal advice that would take money and staff away from the objects and the work that they were doing. Whatever else happens in relation to Clause 28, this present clause should be taken away and written in English.

Secondly, if the Government insist on having a clause of this nature, perhaps I may also point out, as has already been done by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, that it is unworkable. It is impossible to divide some of the expenditure by campaigning organisations between constituencies. Where does it leave the rally that draws people from a number of different constituencies? Where does it leave the battle bus that drives around the streets and crosses some constituency boundary? How on earth does an organiser who is running a national campaign apportion the particular pieces of his time to the various constituencies that may or may not be covered?

Thirdly, it is unenforceable. The Electoral Commission, comprising the people who are meant to be doing that, has said so, as your Lordships have just been reminded. One can well imagine the avalanche of complaints that are likely to be made to the Electoral Commission during and after a campaign, especially if a result has been close. Its resources are now stretched beyond what it is being required to do. It is unlikely that it will receive adequate additional resources to help with the Bill. If it does, they will be inadequate for investigating and dealing with the process of investigation and adjudication of these complaints.

Should I interpret the noble Baroness’s remarks that she is supporting the very carefully targeted Amendment 170A that I moved? That would deal with all the uncertainty to which she understandably refers.

That would certainly be a much better step than what is included at present. I would say that it is absolutely unnecessary. If it is right that the spending limits are to be reduced, does that not provide one safeguard? I return to my old friend, the Representation of the People Act 1983, which in any event provides the safeguard that people are concerned does not exist now. For all those reasons, Clause 28 needs to be scrapped.

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness about the way in which this clause has been written. I thoroughly applauded her speech at Second Reading in which she drew out the extent to which this is incredibly complicated, even for someone with some arithmetical skills, which I do not possess, let alone any understanding of law by a non-lawyer. None the less there is a supremely important principle in this clause and my noble friend Lord Tyler drew it out perfectly. In many ways it is the heart of this Bill.

The fundamental issue is that spending by political parties is controlled because we do not want there to be a free-for-all spending-wise in this country in the way there is in America. Therefore, we have control of political parties’ spending. We have control at a national level and we have control in a regulated period; we can argue about the length of the regulated period but we have one. We have control at the constituency level. That control must be strong. Therefore, we are really arguing about what the level of control should be.

I am quite amazed that the commission of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, said quite specifically that there should be no constituency limits on spending by third-party campaigners. That must be absolutely wrong in principle because they are not standing in the election. Why should they have an unlimited influence in a particular constituency as opposed to the people who have actually got the guts to stand for election and put their name, personality and fortune on the line in the hope of coming to Parliament? It must be wrong for them to be outbid financially by some third party, who is not willing to put their name and person up for election in the way the candidate has had the courage to do.

I hope that the noble and right reverend Lord will reflect on this. The idea that there should be no constituency limits is wrong in principle. Therefore, I think there should be a clause of this kind, although I would hope it would be very much better drafted than the one we have at the moment.

Secondly, the argument is put forward by the commission that any limits placed are unenforceable. Obviously, the commission is making the point that it is being asked to do a new task. Previously, the commission has looked post hoc at what has happened in a general election; here it is being asked to do it in real time, during the course of the election, to find out exactly what is going on and whether the system is being abused. That is a very difficult task and the commission is right to say that it is having tasks imposed on it that it has not done before and which therefore may well be very difficult to enforce, to the point of being unenforceable in some circumstances.

Those of us who have fought elections know that the existing limits on what parties can spend in elections are very often unenforceable in practice. As I know to my personal cost, parties find all sorts of devious ways around the amount that can be spent in a general election and it is very difficult to track them down. In that sense, the existing rules are unenforceable, but they do have a restraining effect. As a candidate in a general election, when I came to fight the election I knew that I had to get a little war chest together. The general assumption was that you had to try to get together about £10,000 to fight an election.

I will say in passing that most associations and local parties are extremely poor. Getting together £10,000 is quite hard to do. At the penultimate general election, when I was defending a majority of 269 against the Liberal Democrats, I reached £10,000 only by having a gift from the noble Lord, Lord Ashcroft, of £6,000; otherwise, I and the local party would have had to fork out. We are living in a poor world. Local parties do not have the resources of Oxfam and all those large organisations that want to home in on an election and put their view—as they rightly should, within proportionate limits—to the people who stand in elections.

Having constituency limits acts as a clear restraint on what parties think they can spend and what third parties think they can spend. Therefore, if there was a restraint of the kind the Government recommend, that would exercise a good influence on the whole electoral system.

The issue has been raised, in relation to the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign, that you cannot have a spending limit related to one constituency. There are three constituencies in Lewisham; of course you could have the expenditure divided between three constituencies. Some expenditure would not be allowed in a particular constituency. In Orpington, for example, there was always a huge banner, usually taped up by the Labour Party, in one main road in my constituency and it was never accounted for in the local expenses of the Labour Party in Orpington although it would actually influence people going round the M25 and other roads nearby. These things can be dealt with and there is no real difficulty in trying to apportion expenditure in the way that is described.

It is all perfectly possible, it is doable and it is essential if we are to have a proper democracy in this country. Indeed, I would argue that what the commission is proposing is actually anti-democratic.

I feel I ought to point out something that the commission made quite clear at the beginning of its report: that its recommendations were for the 2015 election only and that there should be a proper review post-2015. We had only six weeks to consult, despite the recommendation of a lot of bodies, including ourselves, that there should have been a proper three-month or six-month review. In the six weeks, we could not find a workable solution to this, so for the 2015 election our recommendation was that we should not have limits. We could not get our minds round this to find one that is really workable. The Government may be able to do this—we will just have to see—and they may accept the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. In defence of the commission, I point out that this was only for the interim because we had such a short time to consult.

I understand what the noble and right reverend Lord is saying and I accept that. None the less, I want him to understand that, in running a proper democracy, at a constituency level this is a very important issue.

I know that the noble Lord speaks in a personal capacity but he has also the very important, practical experience of being a member of the Electoral Commission. For the avoidance of doubt, I will read again the specific recommendation of the Electoral Commission on my Amendment 170A, which deals with this very important practical point of being able to tie down where precisely a campaign is aiming its efforts. The commission says:

“In principle we see potential benefits in defining the scope of activity covered by the constituency controls more specifically than in Part 2 of the Bill generally. For example, costs relating to material sent to specific addresses can be identified and evidenced with some confidence”,

which will deal with precisely the circumstances to which the noble Lord is referring. I hope, therefore, that there may be support from the Government for what I think is a very practical approach to this otherwise quite tricky problem.

I hear what my noble friend says and I think he will also recognise that the Electoral Commission made the point of practicality—whether this really is a practical way forward. Whether it is workable in practice has to be the test.

As the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, knows, I have supported quite a few of the recommendations of his commission, which was a very thoughtful and helpful exercise. But on this point, I am very certain that the Government must hold their ground for the sake of democracy in this country.

My Lords, because constituency-based limits seem to be even more inappropriate than some of the other sanctions we have been discussing when related to non-party charities and other organisations working in the criminal justice system, as the noble and right reverend Lord pointed out—and I have referred to these organisations already—I would like to preface my contention that Clause 28, which was so admirably described by the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, should not stand part of the Bill in its present form.

On Monday, we took almost six and a half hours to complete four groups of amendments in Committee, which not only confirmed what many other noble Lords have felt since it appeared—namely, that this is a thoroughly bad Bill—but caused me to reflect on its actual aim. My reflections were stimulated by the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, who suggested that its purpose was to prevent money taking over politics as it is doing in the United States.

On rereading Part 1, which is all about professional or consultant lobbyists, the scales fell from my eyes. The noble Baroness’s description of young people being trained to lobby by the Tea Party called to mind a conversation on the steps of Washington Cathedral one Sunday in September 1973 when I was accompanying my then boss, the Chief of the General Staff, to Matins during an official visit to the American army. A delightful elderly ex-ambassador to South Vietnam whom we met earlier in the visit said to him, “The trouble with this country is that it’s governed by whizz-kids, and the trouble with whizz-kids is that they haven’t got time to listen. You see, I’d told them that the Watergate building was in the Foggy Bottom district of Washington, and if they’d only called it the Foggy Bottom incident nobody would have taken them seriously”.

Then it dawned on me. Looking around Whitehall, I am struck by the numbers of whizz-kids advising every ministerial office. I understand that this is soon to be increased by 10 more per Secretary of State. They are not civil servants but whizz-kids: clever young people employed because they are uninhibited by practical experience. They are not afraid to put forward blue-skies theories, many of which I suspect that the more experienced Ministers would confine to the waste-paper basket.

The Bill is nothing more than a whizz-kid panic attack, brought on by the spectre of hordes of Tea Party-trained consultants flooding across the Atlantic and rotting up the 2015 election. Having panicked, they then tried to prove their virility by dreaming up preventive measures, which in their headlong rush they tried to process without submitting them to the normal procedures which, as we know, rubbished them once they saw them. This House too was swept along by this rush, until on Monday the voice of experience had a chance to make itself heard. I hope that on looking through Hansard their bosses will have realised that something is wrong and the whizz-kids need to be told to calm down. These hordes are not going to stream across the Atlantic, and even if they did we already have mechanisms in place that can cope with them.

Our political system, including our electoral system, may be at risk, in which case we may need to take remedial action. However, let us watch what happens in the 2015 election to see what action may need to be taken. Having made so much noise about the big society, the very last thing the Government ought to do is risk alienating voters by threatening the contribution of the voluntary sector, which is one the UK’s jewels. Rather than risk doing any more damage to ourselves and our reputation, surely we should now withdraw the Bill until we know whether we need such an instrument after 2015. I wonder whether any other noble Lords share the pious hopes of an old general.

I turn now to Clause 28. Again, we have had no examples from the Government of where disproportionate expenditure in one constituency has had an undue influence on the outcome of an election. Non-party organisations and charities, particularly those which work in the criminal justice system, are not organised into political constituencies. I cannot imagine how it is possible to divide their activities and apportion them to what is going on in constituencies, as my noble and right reverend friend pointed out. For example, consider the Shannon Trust, which provides the Toe by Toe reading programme in every prison in the country. Would it have to report how it is campaigning for funds in each of the constituencies which are involved in an election?

As has been pointed out, the Electoral Commission said that controls may be unenforceable within the regulated period, given the difficulty of obtaining robust evidence to determine and sanction breaches. If all of that is so abundantly clear to anyone looking at the whole system, why on earth are we presented with what the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, so rightly called gobbledegook which I defy anyone to understand?

My Lords, I rise as a fairly junior judge, and I also have pious hopes about the future of the Bill. My name is among those who oppose Clause 28 standing part of the Bill. I associate myself with the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, my noble and right reverend friend Lord Harries of Pentregarth and my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham. I will not repeat what they have said. Much of what I wanted to say has already been said, but I want to concentrate on two things.

My Lords, we have talked about taking money out of politics. If I heard the noble Lord, Lord Horam, correctly, he received a donation from the noble Lord, Lord Ashcroft, of £6,000. It is Labour Party policy that donations should be limited to £5,000, so perhaps the most important thing that we could do to get money out of politics—not under the Bill—would be for him and other members of his party to sign up to a maximum donation of £5,000.

Whatever the intention of constituency limits, we have heard that they are unworkable for campaigning organisations and certainly unenforceable by the Electoral Commission. As the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, said, political parties do not have these rules for national campaigning, let alone for a whole 12-month period. They do not have to account for staff costs nor try to parcel up their national spending by ward or constituency boundaries. However, political parties at least have a very good reason to organise by constituency; campaigning organisations do not. They campaign against wind farms, for a new zebra crossing, against payday lenders, or in favour of badgers. As we know, badgers move, as does HS2, which will run through hills and dales, counties and boroughs. Such campaigning does not fall into neat little constituency boundaries, which of course the Government anyway want to change for every election under their new law.

The new limit is £9,750 per constituency spread over a full year. That must cover costs of staff, hire of halls, adverts for meetings, posters and publicity. It will cause difficulty for small organisations which run a campaign limited to a geographical area but also for national campaigns with a federated structure. The boundaries for national and even local organisations rarely follow the constituency boundaries that we in politics know well.

Those organisations will need to estimate whether their campaigning costs relate to activity in particular constituencies and ensure that their planned spending will then stay within the new limit for each activity in each constituency. That will be problematic. First, they will have to find what the constituencies are. Many of them will not know—they are not political anoraks and they do not know the boundaries of those constituencies. They will then have to see which bit of spending lies where. It will be different for local organisations, but it will also be, as has been mentioned, virtually unenforceable within the time limit of this election by the Electoral Commission, particularly where breaches occur in the last few weeks of a campaign. It will require real-time monitoring; it will require the commission to respond to allegations across 650 constituencies during a whole 12-month period—that is, starting in May. I defy anyone who, like me, has run an organisation to be up and able to do by then something of that nature.

As has been said, this clause is incomprehensible, unworkable and unnecessary. The Conservatives, of course, have form on Clause 28. I suggest that they get rid of this one so that they do not have the same trouble as they did with the last one.

My Lords, it was clear from many of our previous debates that the issue of constituency limits had attracted considerable discussion, not to say controversy. The fundamental point here, which was very well made by my noble friends Lord Tyler and Lord Horam, is that it would be wrong if a third party could choose to direct its entire national spending limit at only one small part of the UK, thereby focusing the full force of the considerable spending available to it on that very small part. It would be disproportionate if that was one constituency. That point was articulated. It would be a travesty of the democratic process if so much was focused on one constituency.

To prevent such occurrences, the Bill introduces what I admit is a new provision whereby third parties will be permitted to spend only a certain proportion of their controlled expenditure in individual constituencies. Clause 28(6) limits per constituency spending to 0.05% of the maximum campaign expenditure limits applied to political parties. This amounts to £9,750. The limit applies for the duration of the regulated period for a UK parliamentary general election.

It is proposed that a third party’s expenditure would be wholly attributed to a constituency provided that the expenditure had “no significant effect” in any other constituency. It is of course possible that expenditure in a local area may be attributed to a number of constituencies—for example, in Lewisham, where I think that it would be relatively straightforward to see three constituencies.

I accept that if someone was handing out leaflets in Princes Street in Edinburgh, it would be very difficult to say that that was focused on a constituency—which I think used to be Edinburgh Central, but these boundary changes happen so often—and was not having an effect elsewhere. If anyone was handing out leaflets in the constituency which I formerly had the privilege of representing, in Kirkwall or in Lerwick, it would be almost impossible to suggest that it was intended to have an effect on any other constituency, as it would be focused in the one place. The concerns that have been expressed about how you identify boundaries will often be easier to determine with regard to specific case examples.

In response to a point that the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, raised on a number of occasions, I should stress that the limits on constituency spending do not remove or replace the important existing controls of the Representation of the People Act 1983. These rules are long-standing and stipulate that third parties campaigning for a candidate or candidates in a particular constituency—which includes negative campaigning against others—may spend only up to £500. Clause 34 would raise this amount to £700. While introducing a limited requirement to keep a record of such expenditure, the Bill does not otherwise affect the provisions of the Representation of the People Act. Third parties campaigning in local campaigns would be well advised to heed the strictures of the Act. First and foremost, if a particular organisation or group intends to go into a single constituency to promote a particular candidate, or to attack a particular candidate, it would be well advised to have regard to the provisions of the Representation of the People Act.

Will my noble friend confirm that that applies to the post-dissolution period in a constituency and not to the 12 months leading up to a poll?

My noble friend is absolutely right, but it is important that we do not lose sight of that provision.

There are other types of campaigning that are already regulated under PPERA and that we consider should be subject to the national third-party controlled expenditure campaigning limits and the constituency limits which this clause introduces: first, campaigning for or against a particular party; and, secondly, when a campaign is intended, or may reasonably be regarded as being intended, to support groups of candidates because they are of a particular type or because they support particular policies or hold particular views. For instance, if a third party campaigns with the message “vote for those candidates who support green taxes”, this would be spending regulated under PPERA and subject to the national third-party controlled expenditure campaigning limits and the proposed constituency limits. For both types of campaigning, a third party could choose to direct this entire national spending limit at only a small number of constituencies. That is why we consider this clause to be necessary.

A number of amendments have been proposed. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, has proposed Amendment 170, which would remove constituency limits altogether. I accept his point that this would be for the 2015 election, and that we must look at it in that context, but I think that there is concern that a huge loophole could be created.

Some have said that there was no evidence of a problem in 2010—or, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said, that there has been no example of a constituency being completely swayed or influenced by third party expenditure. But how many times do Ministers receive strictures because they did not anticipate a problem? If this were not in place, what would happen after the 2015 election if the kind of event to which the noble Lord refers had taken place in a constituency and there was felt to be a considerable travesty? I rather imagine that some would say, “Ministers knew they had a Bill going through Parliament. Why did they not do something about it at the time?”. Is it the case that we always have to wait for a problem or travesty to arise before we take action?

The constituency limits will be enforced by the Electoral Commission. I have heard the concerns that have been expressed about that. The Government have been in many discussions with the regulator on this issue, and we believe that the commission can regulate spending in constituencies in the same manner as it regulates national spending. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hardie, asked whether an Electoral Commission enforcement officer would be needed in each constituency. That is certainly not what is anticipated.

I did not say that. I was not anticipating 650 enforcement officers. I was suggesting that if there was to be contemporaneous enforcement of this provision, it would be necessary to monitor each of the 650 constituencies, and for the appropriate enforcement officer, who might be covering several constituencies, to take action.

I accept that clarification and apologise if I misrepresented the noble and learned Lord. As I think my noble friend Lord Horam indicated, the current political parties expenditure rules are not always the easiest to enforce. Very often the best enforcers are the opposition—because, as those of us who have had active experience of political campaigns know, if there is any hint that somewhere or other there has been jiggery-pokery or money spent that should not have been, the candidates on the receiving end will be very quick to alert the regulatory authorities to what has gone on.

The same applies to the question that was raised, quite fairly, about how expenditure could be attributed to a constituency. We believe that it would be in line with the current guidance that attributes spending between different parts of the United Kingdom. Where spending in constituency A has a minor effect in constituency B, the entire spending amount should be allocated to the constituency that it was aimed at. For example, if a third party advertised in a local paper in constituency A that just happened to be distributed in a small part of constituency B, the entire amount should be allocated to constituency A.

That was really brought home to me when the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, asked, “How would we allocate the timing of the activities of a battle bus?”. I say this with no criticism whatever, but those who have not been involved in party election campaigning do not understand the difficulties that are sometimes experienced by those who have to act as election agents in allocating and working out expenditure returns for those who are involved in it. The noble Baroness wishes to intervene but I am just going to give an example. In 1979, my noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood, then David Steel, the leader of the Liberal Party, probably introduced the battle bus to British politics. Immediately after that election in May 1979, I was adopted as the Liberal European candidate for the south of Scotland, which included the constituency of Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles. I had as my election agent the agent for Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles, who had been David Steel’s election agent in the general election that immediately preceded it. He went by the wonderful name of Riddle Dumble, and, as my election agent, he told me, “I’ve got this nightmare of trying to do David’s election expenses return; I have to sit down and allocate the amount of time that his battle bus was in the constituency, and what part of it represented constituency campaigning and what was part of the national campaign”. This is not something that is new.

We are professionals in a party. It is our job to run elections. That is the whole point that we are making. It is core to us; it is what we are trained for. I ran European elections. We know about it; we train our agents; we have the systems and have our computers set up for that; and we know ward boundaries and constituency boundaries. Here we are talking about different organisations that are here to help people with a drink problem, people in poverty and people who are going to be affected by the bedroom tax. They do not get trained in the way that we do.

I hear what the noble Baroness says, but if we are dealing with a situation where an organisation is trying to intervene in a constituency for the purpose of promoting the electoral advantage of one particular party, one particular candidate or a series of candidates in an area, then it is not unreasonable that there might be some responsibilities that go with that, particularly with the kind of substantial volume of money that we are talking about being spent in one or a number of focused geographical areas. No one is asking them to account for the work that they are doing in trying to tackle mental health issues or alcohol problem issues—that does not arise. They are caught by this only if the amount that they are spending in one particular constituency or group of constituencies is caught by these provisions, in which case there might just be a responsibility that goes with that. The point that I am making is that there is nothing new about that in terms of its enforceability. It is something that people, not least the Electoral Commission, have been grappling with for some time.

My noble friend Lord Tyler tabled a series of amendments that he hoped would add clarity to the provision. The word “clarity” is something that the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, would certainly echo. My noble friend quoted the Electoral Commission with regard to his Amendment 170A, which would mean that election materials—leaflets, mailshots, adverts and so on that were specifically addressed to or delivered to households in a constituency, and unsolicited telephone calls to households—counted towards constituency limits. The main issue that I have with this amendment is that there could be key activities, such as rallies or events that were deliberately focused on an area, which would not be regulated, and it would not restrict material from otherwise being distributed or displayed. As I said, leaflets being handed out in the middle of George Square in Glasgow are different from leaflets being handed out in the marketplace of Thurso, for example, in the Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross constituency, which could not be said to be influencing any other constituency. However, I hear what numerous contributors have said in this debate about simplification, and there is an obligation on us to look at the provisions, without giving any commitment, to see if there is the possibility of looking generally at the question of simplification.

My noble friend also tabled Amendments 170B and 170D, altering constituency limits so that the figure was £10,000 for the whole of the regulated period and £5,000 for the post-Dissolution period. He has already pointed out that RPA kicks in for the post-Dissolution period. As for the proposal that there should be an opportunity for the Secretary of State to amend the constituency limits by order, there is already provision in Clause 30 for the Secretary State to amend constituency limits by order on the recommendation of the Electoral Commission. I hope that that covers his concerns, but no doubt if he thinks that they do not meet what he was proposing, he will indicate that to me.

His final amendment was one that I thought had much to commend it in terms of, as he said, trying to encourage political engagement. Amendment 170G would allow the constituency limit to be exceeded to a maximum of £15,000, or £10,000 in the post-Dissolution period, if a third party’s controlled expenditure was being funded by donations of less than £250 from donors within a parliamentary constituency. It would also allow a third party to spend up to 50% more than the national limit that would otherwise apply.

Because amounts below £500 are not currently considered to be donations under PPERA, the amendment would require a third party to carry out permissibility checks and record all donations, however small. This would be a fundamental change to the PPERA donation rules and would be likely to involve unmanageable compliance. Given the concerns that have been expressed about compliance and regulatory burdens, that factor would have to be borne in mind. It would increase the burden and would also risk having the opposite effect to what was intended. A large third party organisation with members and donors across the country may be able to identify sufficient donors in each constituency to give itself a disproportionate advantage, whereas a small organisation funded by very small donations would not be able to benefit in the same way.

I referred earlier to the Representation of the People Act. We are also concerned that linking expenditure to local donations in constituencies in this way could quite easily risk confusion with and undermine RPA rules or third party candidate campaigns, and I know that my noble friend would not wish to have such confusion between the two regimes. I hope that noble Lords agree that there is a need for constituency limits and that these can be properly enforced. I urge my noble friend to withdraw his amendment.

My Lords, I will respond very briefly to the debate. I think my noble friend the Minister will accept that there is real concern about making sure that we have—if we are going to have—applicable, effective and manageable constituency limits. Therefore, I am sure that we will return to this on Report. If we do not and were to remove the whole of Clause 28, I am sure that it would be put back, in one form or another, by our colleagues in the other place, who have a considerable interest in the extent to which their constituencies are subjected to considerable investment—

My Lords, perhaps I may point out that it has already been through the other place and it was not thus amended.

The very fact that it has come to us is making the point for me. I think that the other place would consider it essential to retain some constituency limits. However, I accept that there are concerns about workability. I hope my amendments will improve the extent to which they will be manageable and enforceable, but in the mean time I am happy to withdraw the amendment.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to commemorate the role of armed forces and other personnel from the Indian sub-continent in the First World War.

My Lords, I am pleased that this important subject was called for debate today. The centenary of the First World War is almost upon us. This war saw conflict and suffering on an unprecedented scale. The four war years serve as both a reminder and a commemoration of the struggles and the sacrifice of so many people across the world. I hope that time will encourage us all to honour and appreciate the lasting impact these events have had and will continue to have for generations to come.

In March this year I spoke in a debate on the centenary of the war in your Lordships’ House. I specifically focused on the contribution of Indian forces then and I want to expand on those points today. The significant part they played is not widely acknowledged and the sacrifice made by the Indians and the suffering they endured need to be fully appreciated. I hope today’s debate will serve to inform others and help address the situation.

This matter holds a special significance to me; I trace my family heritage back to India. That is where my father originally lived before moving to Uganda in the 1920s. I feel a deep connection with the many stories documented by Indian soldiers throughout the conflict. On the outbreak of the First World War all opposition to the British Government ceased, and the feelings of Indians at large were well summed up by the Honourable Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, a former president of the Indian National Congress. He assured the viceroy and the governor-general that,

“India would ensure the sacrifice of men and money in order that the British armies shall triumph”.

India raised the world’s largest volunteer army, with a total of 1.5 million people, during the First World War. Indians from all over the world, from such remote countries as Australia and Argentina, came forward to serve the Empire in its hour of need. More than 1 million of these personnel were sent overseas and 140,000 were engaged in active service on the western front. This marked the first time that Indian soldiers had ever fought on European ground.

They were originally called on to help when the British forces were suffering heavy causalities, which reinforces just how historically important their role was. The great Mahatma Gandhi was instrumental in making the case for Indian assistance. On 13 August 1914, he and 50 other activists signed an important circular, which stated the decision,

“for the sake of the Motherland and the Empire to place our services unconditionally, during this crisis, at the disposal of the Authorities”.

The seven Indian expeditionary forces provided crucial support and fought directly alongside British Forces in Europe. For example, at the battle of Neuve Chapelle they provided half the attacking force. A British general described them as a magnificent body who performed the most useful and valuable service. The expeditionary forces also saw action in east Africa, Mesopotamia, Sinai, the Suez, Gallipoli and Palestine. The Royal Indian Marine also served alongside the Royal Navy in a number of functions. Some ships served as gunboats and others as coastal minesweepers. Their merchant services in transport and supply were also crucial to the war effort. More than 74,000 Indian troops were killed or declared missing in action during the First World War, a number that is testament to the level of sacrifice and loyalty shown by the Indians in supporting the Allied Forces.

Participants from the Indian subcontinent were recognised for their bravery and valour in combat during the First World War with more than 9,200 decorations, including 12 Victoria Cross medals. Sepoy Khudadad Khan was the first native-born Indian to win the Victoria Cross for his gallantry in the face of overwhelming numbers in Belgium. He served in the 129th Duke of Connaught’s Own Baluchis regiment. Similarly, the courage of Naik Darwan Singh Negi of the 1st Battalion of the 39th Garhwal Rifles was recognised in 1914. He was one of the very few soldiers to have the great honour of being personally presented with the Victoria Cross on the battlefield in France by King George V. A notable example of the spirit and pride of the Indian subcontinent soldiers is that of a platoon of Sikhs, who in 1914 died fighting in Belgium to the last man, who shot himself with his last cartridge rather than surrender to the enemy. The soldier believed in the concept of chardi kala, which gave him the strength to be courageous and not to surrender.

The participation of the Indian subcontinent was not confined to the battlefield alone. Doctors and students from the Indian Medical Service provided care and rehabilitation to the wounded and many Indian military hospitals were set up across the UK, perhaps the most famous of which was the Royal Pavilion Hospital in Brighton. This housed more than 600 wounded soldiers from the western front. As shocking as these facts and figures are, we must also remember the personal and social hardship that was felt by Indian citizens and families not directly involved in the conflict. Much of the essence of the war is captured in writings from the time, and India contributed in this respect, too. One of the greatest poets during those years was an Indian called Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore wrote in a letter on 18 November 1915 that the war was fought,

“for the cause of liberty”.

Speaking in 1921, upon the placing of the foundation stone of the All-India War Memorial, Lord Chelmsford, the viceroy of India, remarked that the,

“immortal story of the endurance and valour of the sons of India is a legacy which their sons and their sons’ sons will treasure above all the wealth the world can offer”.

This memorial, completed in 1931, remains a testament to the sacred memory of the Indian soldiers who fell in different parts of the world. There are indeed numerous similar memorials in existence across the world to commemorate those soldiers who gave their lives during the First World War. A site called the Chattri exists on the South Downs, at Patcham near Brighton. It is associated with 53 Hindu and Sikh soldiers whose remains were cremated at that spot. A memorial service is held there every year. There is also a Muslim burial ground on Horsell Common in Woking, where 17 Indian soldiers were originally buried. Further burials took place after the Second World War. Renovation works are currently taking place there in preparation for next year’s anniversary. In Neuve Chapelle in France, there is a memorial that has been erected to honour the memory of the Indian soldiers who died fighting in Europe. In addition, I know that some years ago the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, led a successful campaign to erect a memorial on Constitution Hill to soldiers from India and other regions of the British Empire who served in the two world wars.

The commitment of these brave men to the war effort often emerged from a strong sense of personal duty to the Empire. Many letters written by Indian soldiers at that time reveal the honour they felt in fighting for their king. It was this loyalty and dedication that endeared many British troops to them. Indeed, alongside the military assistance they provided, there was the opportunity for social interaction between our different cultures.

I know that the Government have been proactive in developing a substantial programme of tributes and events, including last month’s announcement that a series of lectures will be held to commemorate the contribution of Commonwealth countries to the war effort. I shall be obliged if my noble friend the Minister can explain to your Lordships’ House what plans have been formulated to honour the contribution by the people of India during the First World War. I am looking forward to sharing in the commemoration and honouring their memories.

My Lords, next year we commemorate the centenary of the First World War, which until 1939 used to be called the Great War. The Government, the British Library and various organisations have provided a syllabus of a wide range of activities that should be undertaken, and adequate resources for this. I welcome this, but have two reservations. First, I am not sure that those organisations are entirely clear about what they are commemorating. Commemorating the war: what can that mean? Do they mean our victory in the war or remembering those who died? We need to be clear about what exactly we are commemorating. Secondly, how should we be commemorating? Are we proceeding along the right lines?

On the first question, the war needs to be placed in a context. We need to ask how the war started. How did it become a world war, so that it was not just an ordinary war but had to be given a special name: the Great War or, after 1939, the First World War? What were we doing in the war? How did we use the war to break up the Ottoman Empire? How did the Germans intervene in the war in order to urge the Ottomans to declare jihad against Britain and France, while we in turn asked the Arabs to revolt against the Ottoman Empire and change the geography of the Middle East, as it is now? In short, we ought to understand the origins of the First World War and draw important lessons. It was a horrendous war which resulted in enormous tragedy and pain, as seen in the letters and poetry that grew out of it.

We could use the event to exorcise the fascination with war that has sadly been an important part of our psyche. We have more statues devoted to military generals and heroes than many other countries. It is about time that we asked ourselves whether there are some elements of our national psyche that need to be addressed more carefully than we have done so far.

Secondly, we need to commemorate the fact that the war was a collaborative effort. We were able to survive, maintaining our liberties and prosperity because of the enormous contribution of the Commonwealth troops. Indians alone contributed substantially: 1,250,000 Indians were involved, of whom about 72,000 died, 12,000 won medals and about 11 won the Victoria Cross. We must also not forget that about 200 Army nurses died, of whom more than 50% were Indians. Many of the Indian soldiers fought in a climate which was not at all familiar to them, in the European theatres of war. Many of them spent weeks in freezing, waterlogged trenches.

Since the war was a collaborative effort, in which others countries helped us, it is important to highlight the fact that this is not peculiar to the First World War. The situation was only slightly different in the Napoleonic wars. You need only to walk down the Royal Gallery and see the fresco on the right, which depicts Nelson’s death. In that picture, you see a black gentleman and an Arab, showing that even during the Napoleonic wars, countries other than our own contributed. Those are the two things that I would like to see commemorated.

How do we commemorate? Obviously, exhibitions, lectures and information packs for schools are all important, but I suggest three things in particular as relevant to commemorating the Indian contribution. First, the Indian community here should be involved in the planning and execution of the various projects, because the whole thing seems to be operating over their heads. Secondly, we should commemorate in such a way that the multi-ethnic character of Britain is highlighted and our people are able to feel at ease with it. In those areas where large numbers of ethnic minorities are concentrated, it might be useful to devote greater attention than we have done to commemorating the Indian contribution to the First World War so that Indian kids grow up knowing that they were part of this country’s history long before they arrived, and white kids grow up recognising that Indians are not simply arrivals after the Second World War but have also been making an important contribution.

We should also use the occasion to consolidate consciousness of the Commonwealth in our schools and the Commonwealth as an international institution, because the Commonwealth played an extremely important part. If we are lucky, in emphasising the Indian contribution we might also be able to bring the Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis together and create, here in Britain, the kind of harmony that should obtain, but sadly does not, in the subcontinent itself.

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, for initiating the debate. We shall for the next five years be marking the centenary of the Great War and remembering the horrors that it represented. I pay tribute immediately to all those who are planning events to commemorate the war, from the Imperial War Museum, to local museum services and to the thousands of community and local groups.

In the UK, we tend to think of the war in terms of family memories, local war memorials, the volunteers who responded to Kitchener’s call to arms, the Somme, Passchendaele, the war poets, literature, plays and so on. However, the role of the Indian Army in World War I is not as widely understood in the UK as it should be. I hope that the centenary commemoration over the next five years will be an opportunity to redress the balance.

The Indian Army played a critical role in France and Belgium in the early days of the war because it plugged the line on the western front before Kitchener’s army was ready to cross to Flanders and France. As we have heard, it was the first time that troops from the Indian Army had fought in Europe. The Indian Army also played a critical role in Mesopotamia in the early months of the war. In 1914, it was the largest volunteer army in the world and, during the course of the war, over 800,000 volunteered for the army and 400,000 for non-combatant roles. Some 657,000 troops went to Mesopotamia; 144,000 to Egypt and Palestine; 138,000 to France. Troops also went to East Africa and Gallipoli, and there were of course people in the navy and merchant navy. In autumn 1914, troops were moved from India to Mesopotamia to secure the oilfields if Turkey came out in support of Germany. As I mentioned, the movement of troops to Europe at the end of September 1914 was to help hold the western front against the German invasion of Belgium and France.

How do we mark the role of those from the Indian subcontinent and all that they did? There are two ways: places and people. On places, we have to have specific events on the western front. First, the role of the Indian Army in the first battle of Ypres in October 1914 was particularly important. In the first attack, on 26 October, the Indian Army demonstrated huge bravery, with over 200 soldiers killed. Secondly, its role at Neuve Chapelle, 25 miles south of Ypres, two days later on 28 October, when the German troops had driven a gap in the British lines, was marked. Its troops were engaged for six days in house-to-house fighting in Neuve Chapelle: 500 Indian Army officers and men were killed and almost 1,500 wounded. On 23 November, when German troops broke through at Festubert, near Ypres, Indian Army troops were ordered to recover the line by dawn, which they did showing immense bravery. I suggest there should be events at all three of those places, on the relevant centenary dates, to mark their massive contribution in those early days of fighting on the western front.

More troops were committed to Mesopotamia, which was largely an Indian Army campaign. Despite eventual success, by October 1918 11,000 Indian Army troops were killed, with 4,000 more dying from wounds and 12,500 from disease. Some 51,000 were wounded, many of whom were shipped home in inadequate hospital ships because they had to use ordinary troop ships. We should also mark the disaster at Kut, in the spring of 1916, where 9,000 Indian Army soldiers were captured and marched northwards. They were not treated as prisoners of war and 2,500 died on the march. We have heard about the East Africa campaign and Gallipoli, where another 1,700 died in 1915.

Turning to people, we have heard about the award of Victoria Crosses. There were nine on the western front, eight in the first two years of the war and they were won in Mesopotamia, Palestine and Egypt. Is there a case for commemorating the award of those crosses in the towns and villages the recipients came from in the Indian subcontinent or, perhaps, through their descendents? Some practical demonstration of our thanks to them is particularly important.

In conclusion, we have to express our appreciation to the people of the Indian subcontinent. Last year, I stood at the India Gate in Delhi pondering the enormous contribution made by so many individuals. Let us not forget that people from the Indian sub-continent kept volunteering throughout the war. We owe them a very great deal for the sacrifice of so many so far from home.

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, for securing this debate. Part of me is sorry that there are not more speakers, and part of me is very glad because it gives me a few more minutes to speak. I hope this is not because of lack of interest: perhaps holidays have started for most people.

This is an important issue and is particularly so for me personally because my father volunteered in the first war—I was going to say “Great War”. Gandhiji said to Indian students that they should volunteer but not fight to kill. So my father was a stretcher bearer in Mesopotamia. Goodness knows what kind of a time he had there. He would not speak about it, which tells us it was a pretty awful time for him. All I know is that he lived on bully beef. I remember him saying that and it was the first time I had heard the word.

Young people who were studying in this country also volunteered because Gandhiji said so. Gandhiji himself was an amazing man who had fought in the Boer War—I know we are not talking about that war—and was at the battle of Spion Kop. Spion Kop was a hill that some noble Lords will know about. All the stretcher bearers at that battle were Indians and Gandhiji held the rank of sergeant-major. It is good to remember his contribution. As the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, said, he actually canvassed people to join the British Army in the first and second wars and said, “We have to save the Empire”. Even Mark Tully got that wrong.

When I was deputy mayor and then mayor of Windsor and Maidenhead, I laid the first wreath on the war memorial. During my mayoralty, one of my fellow councillors asked me if Remembrance Day meant anything to me. Noble Lords might feel the same shock I did that an educated man, an elected councillor, had no idea what the Indians had done in the two world wars. This was so shocking to me I started to think about the memorial mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh. It took me many years to get people to agree to work for it and I am not sure anybody really believed we would get a memorial in the end, but we have one. I note what the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, said about the Indian community. I have been very disappointed indeed by the interest it has shown—or not shown—in the memorial. It is their memorial, built not by the Government but by people giving money. However much I have tried to get them interested in visiting, I have not been very successful. Every year, we have a commemoration—a gathering not a service—when we try to remember the people. The noble Lord, Lord Parekh, asked, “What is war?”. War—whichever war it is—is horrible but we should never forget the contribution of the people and that is what this debate is about.

I remind noble Lords that when the British Expeditionary Force went to France the British standing army was very small and it lost. The first group who came to support them were 150,000 members of the Indian standing army. When they arrived in November they had no warm clothing. It was not just that they were not used to the cold: the army had not thought to provide them with the appropriate clothing. This has happened in many wars. There was also a lot of racism, and many problems with food. Nevertheless, our people were stalwart, and stayed with the Army and fought—and in such a way that they cannot be said to have been just cannon fodder. They were wonderful people and had a very important role to play in both roles.

Brighton Pavilion is an interesting place, because the then Prince of Wales thought that if he put the wounded Indian soldiers in Brighton Pavilion they would feel at home. Those people were from villages and had never seen any kind of palace, not even an Indian one, let alone the English Brighton Pavilion. In any case, they were put there; I hope that they were looked after but do not know whether they were—probably not terribly well, I should not wonder.

We have to work on the curriculum. We have to get some information about the Indian contribution in the curriculum—not just to the First World War, but even more importantly to the Second World War. I urge noble Lords to try their best to influence those who should be influenced.

My Lords, this short debate made possible by my noble friend Lord Sheikh, to whom we are all greatly indebted, provides us with an opportunity to recall and to reflect upon the immense contribution made by the peoples of the Indian subcontinent during the First World War. There is so much to remember, and so much to hold firmly in our minds with gratitude and veneration as the centenary of the outbreak of this terrible conflict approaches. The part played by the Indian Armed Forces and by all those who assisted them in their many tasks in three continents, on which my noble friend Lord Shipley has elaborated, should feature prominently in the period of commemoration that lies ahead.

Speaking as a historian, although I lack the eminence of the noble Lord, Professor Lord Morgan, who is to follow me and who can correct all my mistakes, I am particularly glad that the Imperial War Museum—the world’s leading authority on conflict and its impact, which as many noble Lords know is so conspicuously involved in the work of commemoration—has incorporated within its plans full recognition of India’s role as the biggest imperial contributor to the war. The museum’s famous First World War galleries will re-emerge next year, utterly transformed. One of the central objectives is to ensure that a proper understanding of India’s contribution and of the sacrifice made by its peoples is conveyed vividly and powerfully to visitors. Film, photography and representative items of warfare, which can stir the imagination so strongly, will all be deployed effectively for that purpose. Nor will the disappointment that was so widely felt in 1918 and thereafter be neglected. The final section of the renovated galleries will make clear the widespread discontent aroused by Britain’s decision to withhold from India the large measure of self-government that was conferred elsewhere as dominion status emerged.

I very much hope that the Imperial War Museum’s plans will be widely noted, as I am sure the Minister will agree. The plans need to be reflected at all levels throughout the country to make commemorative activity full and complete. That is particularly important where India is concerned, since among British historians there was for too long a tendency to underrate the contribution its peoples made. It was suggested, for example, that the Indian Army Corps, dispatched to France on the outbreak of war, failed to come up to expectations. Nothing could be further from the truth, as the current generation of my fellow historians has now properly acknowledged. Indian troops—and they alone—made good Britain’s acute shortfall in trained manpower in the first year of war on the western front. As one senior British officer emphasised,

“they filled a gap in the line when we had no other troops to put in”.

It should be added that that was at a great cost to themselves. By 1915 the Indian Army Corps had lost 50% of its original strength. Indian troops taught the rest of the British Expeditionary Force the art of patrolling in a form that would be suited to trench warfare on the western front. Skills that had been learnt while skirmishing in the Himalayas were adapted to a new purpose in the first night raids on the western front.

We can hear the voices of brave men from India, caught movingly in the letters they sent home. Here is one written on 1 May 1915 from the hospital established for them at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton:

“Do not be anxious about me. We are very well looked after. White soldiers are always besides our beds—day and night. The King has given a strict order that no trouble be given to any black man … in hospital. Men in hospital are tended like flowers, and the King and Queen sometimes come to visit them”.

I hope that that might provide a measure of reassurance to the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, who wondered about the treatment that had been accorded to Indian soldiers in hospital in Brighton. The Indian troops, to whom so much is owed, speak to us across the century through such letters published in a fascinating volume entitled Indian Voices of the Great War.

At the moment we know rather less about what courageous Indian troops had to say about the grave hardships which they faced in Mesopotamia, where most of them served—some 650,000 altogether, as my noble friend Lord Shipley mentioned. It was very much an Indian campaign from first to last. In Britain today it is not remembered with the gratitude that it deserves, or with sufficient consciousness of the sacrifices that were made. My noble friend Lord Shipley referred to the siege of Kut in early 1916, where Indian soldiers endured terrible privations. After the inevitable surrender they were held captive by the Turks in conditions so appalling that more than half of them died. Next year’s commemorations must give full and proper recognition to those sacrifices.

There is one thing above all on which our country should reflect. As we look back across the century to the First World War, it is surely always important to remember that the magnificent contribution of the peoples of the Indian subcontinent to the great common endeavour in war also contributed to strengthening ties with the people of Britain—ties that would survive all the political difficulties, violence and crises that were to follow.

My Lords, this debate, admirably launched by the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, is very welcome. It enables us to pay proper tribute to the courage and sacrifice of the over 1 million Indian troops who took part in the First World War, as well as enabling us to test the Government’s resolve: how far will they subscribe to what we heard from the Minister, that the commemoration of the war would not be a celebration of militarism but would deal with matters such as the role of women, trade unions and new currents in poetry, and that in the case of Ireland it would focus not only on the Irish troops who volunteered to fight in the war, but also on the fact that it led to the Easter Rising and to the domination of Sinn Fein?

So it should be in India. As we have heard in a series of admirable speeches, Indian troops fought in very large numbers on the western front and in east Africa; enormous numbers fought in Mesopotamia and at the terrible siege of Kut al-Amara. The names of Indian troops are recorded in monuments in at Neuve Chapelle and on the Menin Gate. My own father served with Indian troops in the First World War in Palestine and always spoke with enormous warmth about that experience.

Gandhi encouraged Indians to volunteer for the British Army. At the same time, it is important to say how Gandhi shows how the war changed the perceptions of so many public figures in India. He was not at first the major nationalist in India—that was BG Tilak, who founded the Home Rule League. By the end of the war, Gandhi was convinced that the experiences of India in the war—the sacrifice of Indian troops—had given a new sense of unity and identity to all Indians; as we know, Gandhi worked a great deal with Muslims as well as with Hindus. The war gave the movement for home rule—swaraj—and Gandhi himself a new historical significance. Gandhi therefore illustrates what we should perhaps most fundamentally commemorate about the First World War.

We should note how the war encouraged movements in India to expand and to take up wider horizons. At first, Gandhi himself focused on internal issues within India—famously, the role of the untouchables, which he worked in a dedicated fashion to cope with in his own community. But by the end of the war he was adopting a much wider viewpoint, and challenging what he saw as the harshness of British rule, and how far a war supposedly fought to liberate subject nationalities was in fact reinforcing British control over his country. It is enormously important both for Gandhi and for the Indian nationalist movement that the First World War within India encouraged the famous non-violent strategies with which Gandhi is associated to work against the grain of imperial policy and win support for Indian nationalism outside India. Gandhi did this very conspicuously, if I may say so, within the Labour Party.

The First World War should be commemorated above all because in India, and thereby in a wider world, it was a period of historic change. The legacy of the Indian troops fighting so gallantly, on the western front and elsewhere, was not a stronger commitment of Indians to imperial rule; it marked the beginning of the end for the Raj. It was followed by the Rowlatt Bills against what was called terrorism, and by the terrible massacre at Amritsar. General Dyer was sacked after Amritsar, but Indians were appalled by the sympathy shown by many people in this country for his conduct. It is deeply to the discredit to the House of Lords that at that time it passed a Motion sympathising with and supporting General Dyer.

The legacy of the war appears to be commemorated in the imperial architecture of Lutyens and Baker in New Delhi. But the most prescient observer of these developments was the former French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, who said that it would be,

“the grandest ruin of them all”.

That, perhaps, is what we should be commemorating.

My Lords, it is with pride that I am able to speak to you today, because I was an officer in the Indian Army. We had quite a few here when I first came to your Lordships’ House, but we are withering away. I am old, but not old enough to have fought in the First World War. Lord Weatherill was probably the most famous officer of the Indian Army in World War II who has been among us. He had a great record of gallantry and service in a very wonderful Indian cavalry regiment in Burma.

My father was in the Indian Army too, as was the father of the noble Baroness, Lady Flather. He too fought in Mesopotamia, and also in Gallipoli. He was then in the British Army, but fought alongside a couple of battalions of the Indian Army. He was so impressed by their gallantry, by the way they fought and by the way in which they were commanded and organised that he said to himself, “If I get out of this mess, I shall transfer to the Indian Army.” And he did—for the next 30 years.

We have talked loosely and happily about the bravery of the Indian Army, but I would like to take you into a battalion of the Indian Army as it was then, and show you the various components. As the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said, there was no conscription: every man was a volunteer. Some regiments were strictly of one warrior, martial tribe; others were mixed. There were about 14 or 15 Punjab regiments, and in those there were Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus and Christians, completely integrated. There is a lesson there, you know, for the good people of Bradford and elsewhere in our nation. Of course they lived, not separately, but alongside each other, because they all ate different types of food, but there was a mosque, a Hindu temple and a Sikh gurdwara, there was the nearest Christian church, and there was often a Buddhist temple. We used to go to each other’s—and that was really rather good. It was the first real sign of integration of the people in India in those days. The Indian Army led, and later the police in India did much the same.

There was a difference of content, in that we had two types of officer in the battalion—the King’s commissioned officer and the Viceroy’s commissioned officer. They were probably the most important part of the Indian Army. The average British battalion had probably 30 or 40 British officers. But in an Indian Army battalion we had only about a dozen, because underneath those 12 or so officers the Viceroy commissioned officer was also an officer: he had his own officers mess, soldiers saluted him, and he provided the stability and the junior leadership of the Indian Army battalion—a rather special sort of battalion.

I do not think that it is generally known that in peacetime, the British officer was not accepted in the Indian Army unless he passed very high up out of Sandhurst. My father was the Indian Army instructor at the Staff College next door to Sandhurst, and I remember all those hopefuls coming to him to be looked at to see whether they were up to the very high standard of British Army officer required. He took some, and I know that he rejected one or two. You certainly needed to pass out in the first 25 or 30 at Sandhurst to be accepted.

May I end on a story? The Duke of Wellington always said that he learnt his soldiering in India, and he was damn nearly beaten by the Marathas, who had been led by probably one of the greatest guerrilla leaders in history, a man called Shivaji. The Duke, like all of us, learnt a lot in India.

My Lords, as this is a time-limited debate and we have to give the Minister time to give a complete response, I am time-limited to one minute. I shall try to observe that limit, but I may slightly exceed it. I do not think it is important for me to say what I would have said if I had had time, because I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, will give us other opportunities to reflect on some of the important issues that have been raised today. So many good speeches have been made that anything I would have said would have been relatively uninformed and lacking in authority.

However, I would like to say two things. It seems to me that the legacy of the Empire and Commonwealth soldiers, like so many aspects of the First World War, will be argued about. The centenary debates must capture the fact that the tale of the Empire and Commonwealth soldiers is a contested, complex story—a human story of valour and tragedy, of victory and futility, of respect and racism, and of forgetting and re-remembering. What cannot be doubted is that these events and encounters provide an important foundation stone for an understanding of the making of modern Britain. If we know the history, we can hope to understand how we became the country we are today. It is important to recognise that the British and Empire Army that fought the First World War a century ago had more in common, demographically, with the Britain of 2014 than that of 1914.

A number of noble Lords have asked the Minister to give us more details about what events are planned. Within that response, will he think hard about what my noble friend Lord Morgan said about the resolve of the Government to make sure that this is an all-inclusive, non-celebratory event?

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for generously curtailing his speech to allow me more time to respond. On behalf of all who have spoken in this debate, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, for giving us the opportunity to discuss how we commemorate the role of soldiers from the Indian subcontinent in the First World War. As the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, said, the emphasis on commemoration, not celebration, is absolutely central to everything that we will do. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, for what he has done not only in initiating this debate but in ensuring that we are reminded of, acknowledge and recognise the contribution made by people from the Indian subcontinent to business and our culture in general.

The noble Baroness, Lady Flather, spoke of her personal story and experience at the war memorial in Maidenhead, and of people’s ignorance of the enormous contribution made by forces personnel from the Indian subcontinent. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, spoke very powerfully about the need to ensure that that contribution is not forgotten in any way. That is one of the reasons why I reassure noble Lords that the commemorations will have education and the curriculum at their centre.

The noble Lord, Lord Morgan, who is a distinguished historian, will recognise that this is not about the Government handing down a sterile statement or version of history that people must discover. What we want to do—this is the purpose of all the Government’s action in this area—is simply to encourage people to pause, think and take note of the scale of the suffering, and the reasons for it, and to engage with it in a very personal way and draw their own conclusions about what happened.

The most powerful contributions in this debate came from noble Lords who brought their personal experiences to it, such as the noble Viscount, Lord Slim. We appreciate their comments very much. The noble Viscount, Lord Slim, said that the Indian Army was an entirely voluntary army. The fact that it raised so many volunteers to fight in a different continent should be humbling for all of us who cherish our freedom won through their efforts, energies and sacrifice. That is another reason why we want to ensure that that is not forgotten.

I want to mention a couple of things that the Government plan to do. The British High Commission in New Delhi is working with the Indians on a number of projects to mark the centenary. These include a guidebook about the Indian Army’s role in France and Flanders, the digitisation of the Indian Army’s war diaries and the production of a number of books about India’s contribution and experiences. My noble friend Lord Lexden spoke about the voices that we can hear down the generations emanating from moving letters, and how those will be central to the Imperial War Museum’s new galleries’ commemoration of the contribution which India made.

The Government plan to recognise the outstanding contribution of Victoria Cross recipients. The Indian corps won 13,000 medals for gallantry, including 12 Victoria Crosses. We will create lasting memorials to all those who served with courage and valour. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, asked how these people might be commemorated in their own country. There are plans for paving stones to be inscribed with the names of the recipients of the VC in the cities, towns and villages from where they came, but Her Majesty’s Government cannot dictate how other countries commemorate these people but we are coming together as a Commonwealth to recognise them.

A number of noble Lords referred to the importance of the Commonwealth. Indeed, the commemoration process will begin at the end of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow next year. The first service will be a Commonwealth service with the entire Commonwealth coming together to commemorate the First World War and recognise its effects. That service will be held in Glasgow cathedral. More countries were involved in the war than not—from the vast Indian subcontinent to the small island of Nevis. All should be remembered for the part they played, and I assure noble Lords that that is central to the commemoration plans.

The noble Lords, Lord Morgan and Lord Parekh, and the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, referred to the role of Gandhi. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, has written extensively on the life of Gandhi. It is absolutely appropriate that his life, example and story should also be part of the commemoration process. Indeed, my noble friend Lady Warsi has initiated a series of lectures with the Curzon Institute to explore the stories of the individuals involved. The noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, referred to soldiers such as Sepoy Khudadad Khan, the first soldier from the Indian subcontinent to be awarded the Victoria Cross. I would mention also Walter Tull, the first Black British officer and George Blackman of Barbados, the last survivor who served in the war from the West Indies, who passed away in 2003 at the age of 106. We will come back to these personal stories time and again as we realise that they are the most powerful way of communicating the horrors which affected the world at that time, and that they shaped a generation.

My right honourable and noble friend Lady Warsi has visited Grootebeek military cemetery and the First World War graves of soldiers from her parents’ home village in Pakistan—another personal story. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, asked whether there would be commemorations at Neuve-Chapelle. Those preparations are being discussed and I think that my noble friend Lady Warsi will find the contributions to this debate very helpful.

I am afraid that because of the time constraints I have not been able to cover this matter in as much depth as I would like. Nevertheless, this has been a very important debate. There is no doubt that we could not have prevailed in the First World War without the support and sacrifice of our Commonwealth partners. As we came together then, so the centenary gives us an opportunity to come together now, not just people in this country but also people in the subcontinent, as noble Lords said, with the different faith traditions and nationalities which make up that subcontinent. We should come together to reaffirm our shared values, forged through experiences that will not be forgotten, and that bind us together inseparably.

Recognition of the important role that those from the Indian subcontinent played is an integral part of the Government’s plans for an inclusive commemoration —the inclusive commemoration that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, implored us to establish. This commemoration will not airbrush the horror of the war nor shy away from the concept of victory. We approach the centenary in a spirit of reconciliation, acknowledging that the loss and suffering recognised no national boundaries and that those who were once our adversaries are now our partners in building a better world.

My Lords, in putting my name down to oppose Clause 29 standing part of the Bill, I hope that the Minister will be able to explain what this whole clause is really about, and what mischief it is intended to block. I went to the Public Bill Office, whose staff have been extraordinarily helpful on this occasion, as on so many others. In order to run through my amendments and to make sure that I understood the Bill properly and what I was putting forward, I asked about this clause, and what it really meant. I said to them, you are all highly trained lawyers; you will be able to tell me what it is all about. They said that they deliberately do not have lawyers in the Public Bill Office because it is very important for people to understand legislation, and that is why they are lay people and not lawyers. I said, “That’s very good—I’ll leave this with you for a day, and perhaps you can tell me what all of this is about”. I went back the next day and they said that they were very sorry but they did not think they would be able to help me with this one. I then contacted the lawyer who specialises in electoral law who has been advising the commission, and asked her. She sent me a reply. I am still not quite sure that I understand what it is all about, but this is what she says:

“Clause 29 imposes limits on the amount non-parties can spend on activity that could reasonably be regarded as promoting a particular party and none other, to £38,500, unless they have the party’s authorisation. This limits the freedom of expression association beyond the limits of proportionality”.

She adds:

“Although not a focus of the commission’s work, it is another position that would leave groups open to inadvertence, and the onus on what parties do, as opposed to campaigners’ intent. If the rest of the commission’s recommendations are implemented, this would be a highly peculiar—and, from a regulatory viewpoint, bizarre—provision to remain”.

I hope that the Minister will be able to explain what this clause is really about, and what mischief it is intended to block.

My Lords, my name is also down to oppose the question that Clause 29 stand part. We had some powerful speeches from Welsh Members of your Lordships’ House the other day about the living language that is Welsh. This is another part of the Bill that is written in the living language of gobbledegook, although that is living only in parts of Whitehall. I, too, was completely puzzled by it. I obtained the Explanatory Notes, read them with care, and was none the wiser at the end of it. This, I hope, will also be included in the undertaking that the Minister gave when he said that he felt an obligation to look at those parts of the Bill that are incomprehensible. This certainly needs translating; it has been written by lawyers for lawyers—of a specialist sort—yet not for the people who have actually to apply it, particularly those in small charities and organisations. They have to be able to understand the detail of the Bill. I hope this clause can be completely rewritten, if indeed large parts of it are at all necessary.

My Lords, I also put my name down here. I apologise to your Lordships for not being able to participate for the latter part of Monday, and earlier today. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, have both indicated something that ought to be of prime and absolute concern to every Member of both Houses of Parliament: legislation should be intelligible. People to whom this will apply ought to know what the law says they can and cannot do. In this House and in another place, I have often advocated a redistribution of Sir Ernest Gowers’s famous book Plain Words. If anyone needs a copy, it is those who give—devoted and conscientious, I am sure—service to my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness, because what has been produced here is utterly incomprehensible, to moderately intelligent people in all parts of this House. First, we need my noble and learned friend to give us a child’s guide from the Dispatch Box, to tell us what is intended. He should then take this clause away, which is total gobbledegook, as the noble Baroness said a few moments ago, and after Christmas, bring us a new year’s gift of something which we can all understand.

My Lords, I hear the message. The current provisions of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 do not prevent political parties benefiting from expenditure by third parties in a way that would enable the political parties to avoid party spending limits. Although measures exist to regulate political party spending, third-party spending and the notional campaign expenditure of political parties—that is, spending by third parties for or on behalf of a political party—those measures are not necessarily effective in ensuring that all spending for the benefit of a political party is properly captured. Our concern, which influences or informs this clause, is that that risks undermining trust in the controls on party spending.

Clause 29 therefore introduces a new measure that requires third parties that spend significant sums in a way that can reasonably be regarded as supporting a particular political party or its candidates to be specifically authorised by the relevant political party to campaign in that manner. I heard and will certainly reflect on what the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, of Pentregarth, said—that this might somehow be something that innocent people or groups can stumble into, but I rather think that the political reality on the ground is that if a particular group is, to all intents and purposes, supporting the Liberal Democrats—I am being neutral about this—it will not do so innocently or without any notion that that is what it is doing.

Under proposed new Section 94B(3), authorisation would be required only in instances where the third party wishes to incur expenditure that exceeds 10% of its spending limit for a part of the UK. This would be treated as “targeted controlled expenditure”, and the Bill defines it as more than 0.2% of the maximum campaign expenditure limit for political parties in that part of the United Kingdom. That limit would be £31,980 in England, £3,540 in Scotland, £2,400 in Wales and £1,080 in Northern Ireland. If a political party does not want the third party to spend more than 10% of its spending limit in support of it, or for that expenditure to count towards its limit, it can simply withhold authorisation. A third party will commit an offence if it either exceeds the targeted expenditure limit without authorisation or exceeds an authorised cap set by a political party. In other words, if such a group comes to the Liberal Democrats, in the highly unlikely event that the Liberal Democrat treasurer says, “Sorry, we are not going to accept your offer of going beyond the 10% limit and we are not giving you authorisation”, it would be an offence if the group then spent money in obvious support of the Liberal Democrats beyond the 10%.

The intention of this clause is to bring a greater degree of transparency where third parties campaign to support a particular political party or its candidates. Requiring expenditure incurred as part of that campaigning to count towards the spending limits of both the third party and the political party, and for this information then to be disclosed to the public, will prevent political parties evading their spending limits by relying on co-ordinated support from campaigning groups. Clause 29 will not prevent third parties campaigning up to a significant limit without needing any kind of authorisation from a political party. Nor will it curtail third-party expenditure that cannot reasonably be regarded as intended to benefit a particular party—for example, because that expenditure supports multiple parties or candidates who support the third party’s aims.

This is an important provision to try to prevent the spending limits on political parties being circumscribed or undermined by third parties campaigning on their behalf. It does so by requiring authorisation at 10% of the third party’s spending limit. I take the point that what I believe is a relatively simple and important principle or objective may not have been expressed in the most felicitous terms. I would normally share my noble friend Lord Cormack’s desire to see legislation in much plainer English. I confess that having negotiated a coalition agreement with the Labour Party in the Scottish Parliament in 2003, including a commitment to making progress towards drafting legislation in plain English, I fear that we failed to honour that commitment. That suggests that it is easier said than done. Some challenges are bigger than others.

I do not know whether delivering the objective can be done in much simpler language. In the previous clause, much of the apparent complexities related to an interrelationship between different relevant periods because of different elections. However, judging by the mood of the House, we at least ought to look at this clause to see if something can be done in that regard. However, the underlying objective, to stop the subversion of the limits on party political funding, is a proper objective.

My Lords, I have tabled this proposed new clause with my colleagues, my noble friends Lady Williams of Crosby and Lady Tyler of Enfield and, in a private capacity, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth. We have given it the heading:

“Third parties acting in concert”.

We think that that is a better definition of the problem that has been brought to our attention on many occasions than using the word “coalition”, which might have other overtones.

Among all the groups that we have met, the present PPERA 2000 rules on this type of working between different organisations have emerged as a major area of concern. Indeed, they have caused great confusion and, more than anything else, given rise to the alleged chilling effect among smaller organisations. I checked with the Electoral Commission earlier this week about what exactly is meant by the present rules. Suppose organisation A contributes £15,000 to a combined operation, which acts in concert in some form of policy coalition. Then organisation B contributes £375,000 to that same campaign. Therefore, under the present rules, A and B have to record £390,000 as having been spent. However, vitally, organisation A, which has spent only £15,000, is recorded as having spent right up to the total of £390,000. That creates an extremely difficult situation for small organisations. Just by being caught up by some joint operation, they get clobbered because they might very well want to take on some different campaign activity that is nothing to do with that original campaign, and then find that they have already exceeded the limit. That is the nature of the present law, and that is the nature of the present problem that so many organisations have drawn to our attention.

The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and his colleagues have a good amendment that would deal with this for small organisations making a contribution below the registration threshold and, of course, that is welcome. Our amendment goes further: it embodies the principle that any one group or any one campaign should be capped at the level of the national or constituency limit. We do this by engaging in the amendment with the phrase,

“common plan or other arrangement”,

which is already referred to in the 2000 Act. We are effectively saying that the money spent on that plan should be capped—it should not then be carried forward for any other campaign of a different nature—or that that money spent by a different organisation should be capped. If, in my example, organisation A was spending only £15,000, that would be the limit of the restraint on it because it clearly would not be contributing a huge sum. Just because organisation B has spent a considerable sum in pursuance of the common plan, it should not be effectively restricted by what has happened with one of their allies.

There is a way around these rules at present, which is to set up an umbrella organisation to accept donations from all the different organisations involved, but if they simply campaign together then they will be caught by the present rules. There is a defect in the 2000 PPERA rules and the Bill is our opportunity to deal with it, remove that uncertainty and assist a number of organisations that feel that this is a real constraint on what they are permitted to do. I should say briefly that, on these Benches, we strongly refute the case for Amendment 182A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, which would seek to take away all the coalition rules. It would mean no constraint whatever on organisations, allowing them simply and artificially to multiply and then provide multiple spending limits. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, is not here to explain exactly the rationale for those original 2000 PPERA rules, which were thought at the time to be both necessary and desirable. Unfortunately, they have proved to be, to a large extent, not very effective and, in some respects, a discouragement to small organisations being involved in perfectly proper campaigning operations.

The amendment of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, goes a long way to dealing with the problem, but we think that our approach goes a little further and we hope that the Government will accept the direction in which it is going. I beg to move.

My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendment 170M. First of all, the charities and campaigning groups have indicated very strongly that what the present Bill puts forward on coalition working is totally unacceptable. All charities are encouraged by the Charity Commission and by their own trustees to work together in coalitions. We have seen many very successful examples of coalition working, but under the law as it is put forward in Part 2 of the Bill, the total amount of money spent by the coalition is attributed to each single member of the coalition. This must be, by any standard, totally unfair. We have racked our brains for the past six weeks and do not feel that we have come up with any solution to the fundamental problem. Therefore, in the first week after we come back, we will be calling a round table conference to which the Minister has agreed to come and various other people will be invited, to see whether, together, we can crack this fundamental problem of coalition working and how it can be fairly regulated. I am sure that the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, to which I put my name in a private capacity, will be very much on the table to be considered at that point.

However, as he mentioned, our Amendment 170M will go some way towards solving the problem for smaller groups. In that amendment, we mark the difference between a minor third party and a nominated third party. A minor third party is one that has not yet reached the registration threshold. If it is working in coalition with other parties, on the basis of my amendment it will be able to nominate another party, called the nominated third party. With the agreement of both the third party and the nominated third party, the money that the minor third party spends on that campaign will be attributed to the nominated third party as part of its overall expenditure and the minor third party will simply be able to indicate to the Electoral Commission that it is below the threshold and has, as it were, contributed this amount of money towards the nominated third party, which is very likely to be regulated. We believe that this is quite a neat way of ensuring that smaller parties—those which do not hit the registration threshold and certainly are very anxious to work in coalition —will not be brought within the scope of regulated expenditure. The Electoral Commission, in examining this amendment, remarked that it is “attractive in principle”, but wants to think about it further to see whether there are any unintended consequences.

The issue of coalition working is one of the key areas about which charities and campaigning groups are concerned. I will not go through any of the examples set out at the end of our report, but I would draw the attention of noble Lords to the Human Rights Consortium in Northern Ireland, which has been referred to at least once in this debate already, where something like 180 NGOs work together on a crucial issue. That gives some indication of why getting coalition working right is absolutely fundamental to the charity sector and, indeed, to the workings of our democracy.

My Lords, I add my support for Amendment 170H, to which my name is attached. As my noble friend Lord Tyler has already explained, the amendment seeks to apply the limit of £390,000 to any one registered third party or to any one coalition campaign, but not to limit the spending of one body by virtue of the spending of another. That is a key point.

As I looked into this issue, it became clear that, under the existing 2000 legislation, if a number of organisations campaign together on one issue, each member has to account for the full amount spent on that joint campaign, regardless of their individual contributions, however large or small. As I understand it, this aggregated reporting of coalition spending was put in place at the time as a form of anti-avoidance mechanism for these rules. My concerns are based on my own experience of working in coalitions of charities, and focus on the impact that this can have on collaborative working across the voluntary sector. I am particularly concerned about the impact on small and medium-sized charities and other organisations. In the year before an election, small organisations are quite unlikely to join coalitions for fear of having to deal with the related administrative burdens, while larger organisations are likely to walk away from such coalitions in order to avoid reaching the maximum expenditure limits.

I have also looked at the work of the Commission on Civil Society and Democratic Engagement, and I pay tribute to the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, for highlighting the issue of the impact on coalitions of charities. I was struck by how charities would be affected, because they will have to deal with two regulators. I know very well that the Charity Commission encourages coalition working in order to achieve the efficient use of resources—and, frankly, because when smaller charities work together they are likely to have a far greater impact on the policy area they are concerned about.

My personal experience is based on three things. For two and a half years I was the chair of the Kids in the Middle coalition—an interesting coalition of around 30 charities in the children and families sector, working with 30 of the country’s agony aunts and one or two agony uncles. It was all about the impact that very high-conflict separation of parents can have on children. I like to think that it was a rather effective campaign in terms of the things that were achieved, but I fear for how such a coalition of charities would be able to operate under the Bill as it stands.

I am also currently the chair of a coalition of charities called the Making Every Adult Matter group, which looks at how organisations trying to help adults with multiple and complex needs can better work together to produce more joined-up solutions on the ground. It is very difficult for small to medium-sized charities, given the size of their resources, to campaign individually. They simply do not have the resources to do it, and it is probably not a very good use of their very limited time.

I will finish by making a couple of broader points about coalitions and how they could be affected by this legislation unless these amendments are taken on board. It is really important that coalitions are able to campaign effectively, often over a long period of time, to get their point across. I think, for example, of the Mental Health Alliance, which has existed for nearly 10 years. The lead organisations in any alliance or collaboration need to have clarity that they themselves will not be penalised by excessive regulation if their campaign happens to straddle election periods. They also need to be absolutely sure that their governance responsibilities are clear.

I feel quite strongly about federated charities. I was chief executive for five years of Relate, a federated organisation in exactly the same position as federated charities such as Mind or Age UK. They are federations of local independent charities that operate under an umbrella and are federated with a central charity. My concern is that, unless an amendment of the type that we are talking about is taken forward, individual charities that work as part of an umbrella charity will find themselves in a very difficult position and will perhaps feel that they would not wish to be involved in any campaigning work. That would be very unfortunate.

My Lords, my name is on Amendment 170M. This issue creates a number of problems, some of which have been mentioned and some of which have not. One concern is that it gives a completely misleading impression of what each partner in a coalition has spent, because it has to include everybody else’s contribution with its own. This does not give the impression of transparency—if that is what we are trying to achieve—but just the opposite. It gives the public a picture of smaller organisations, and the campaign as a whole, spending far more than they have actually done.

It also of course reduces the amount that can be spent by those groups on other messages or campaigns that they may be conducting. It is inhibiting in both ways and provides the opposite of transparency—it draws a veil over the whole coalition and does not give a true picture to those who want to see how much each of them is spending. Others have said that it is a discouragement to coalition working, which charities are encouraged to do.

We also know from the evidence we have heard that there is very considerable concern about coalitions that involve charities and non-charities working together. How does the Minister see such a coalition working if he were tempted to agree to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, which sought to take charities out of the Bill? If that was done, the charity would of course be under no obligation to register or, indeed, to record its contribution, but the non-charity would. If he has a chance to do so, I would be grateful if the Minister could deal with my worry about that particular situation.

It is quite clear, as we grapple with this, that five weeks is totally insufficient to reach a proper conclusion that would create transparency but at the same time not inhibit proper campaigning. The Electoral Commission has said that, ahead of Report in this House, it is looking at all the options for mitigating the burdens on campaigners with a common plan that spend less than the registration threshold, and that it will publish its conclusions to help the House before that stage.