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Foreign Interference in UK Politics

My Lords, I will resist the temptation to ask the Minister to remind us what consultation the previous Conservative Government carried out with either his party or mine over, for example, changing the electoral system for elections of mayors or expense limits for general elections.

Instead, to go to the heart of the matter, these Benches very much share the concerns set out in the Rycroft review about the risk of foreign money influencing, or even corrupting, our politics. We therefore broadly welcome the Government’s commitment to implementing the report. However, I have some concerns about the intended speed of implementation, some of the loopholes that will remain, and one particular issue that is not mentioned in the Government’s response, which I suspect the Minister can successfully predict.

I turn first to the intended pace of implementation. On recommendation 4, regarding non-party campaigners and related issues, the Government have said they will

“commit to consultation and further work”.

They are not even committing to action on that one. On recommendation 14, on internet advertising, the Government have promised “proposals in due course”. On recommendation 16, on think tanks and associated issues, the Government’s commitment is that they will

“consider opportunities for further work”.

I fear that you can almost hear the wheels of Whitehall grinding to a halt as you consider that phrase. I hope the Minister can set out clear timelines for the Government’s intended progress on those recommendations, which are, after all, on substantive major issues such as the role of online advertising.

On loopholes, I have raised before the question of the Government’s apparent inconsistent approach to politics and the media. They appear to be sticking to a significant control test for companies that permits greater foreign ownership of a company that donates to our politics than is permitted for a company that owns one of our newspapers. It remains unclear to me why the Government think that a lower level of protection against foreign interference in our politics than in our media is appropriate. I hope the Minister might be able to clarify that.

The Government are proposing—in a broad sense, this is a welcome step in the right direction—introducing a new threshold of £2,230, above which pre-campaign donations to individual candidates would need to be declared. That sounds a reasonable threshold, until one remembers that British-wide political parties will typically stand 633 candidates across the country, or, if not contesting the Speaker’s seat, 632 candidates. Therefore, 632 lots of some £2,000 gets you to nearly £1.5 million-worth of donations that could be made legally, legitimately and in secret, unless the Government also propose to go a little further and introduce aggregation requirements around those donations to individual candidates. I hope the Minister can tell us what is intended on that front.

Indeed, the Government Statement is rather silent on whether similar protection will be extended to, for example, elections for the Mayor of Greater Manchester or the Mayor of London. Those, among other elected posts at other levels of election, have important power, and, although we have not yet had a track record of having to worry about foreign money in such elections, it would seem to me prudent to extend such protections.

Finally, I turn to the consolidation of election law and the dangers, costs and complexity that arise from the messy and fragile state of election law, In the past, I have used the parallel of a teenager with a messy bedroom—the Government never quite decide that now is the time to start cleaning up that bedroom The Rycroft review said:

“I urge Government to consider”

action in this area. Because that was a boxed-out urging of the Government to consider, rather than a formal recommendation, the Government’s response so far has been silent on that particular part of the Rycroft review. I hope the Minister, having been urged by Rycroft to consider this issue, can tell us what consideration the Government have come to.

To push on one specific example, consolidation does not have to a be a big project, put off for ever only to be done in one big bang. It is possible to pick off little individual issues. For example, it is possible to look at redundant legislation on the statute book, the repeal of which would have no or only minimal knock-on consequences. It is a bit like picking up the dirty crisp packet from the middle of the floor—we are not going to tidy the whole bedroom but can at least pick up some of the easy bits. I have one specific question. The Parliamentary Elections Act 1695 seems to me to be the perfect crisp packet—an easy thing that could be picked off and repealed under the Representation of the People Bill. I hope the Minister can tell us that that is going to be added to the Government’s plans.