Eighth Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation
Wednesday 28 April 1999
[Mr. Nicholas Winterton in the Chair]
Draft European Parliamentary Elections (Northern Ireland) (Amendment)
Regulations 1999
4.30 pm
The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr. Paul Murphy): I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft European Parliamentary Elections (Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Regulations 1999.
The background to the order concerns the European elections legislation that the House considered some time ago. As members of the Committee will know, the method in Great Britain by which European Members of Parliament are elected is now different, in that they will be elected on a regional list system. In Northern Ireland, however, the system that has been used for some time for obvious reasons is the single transferable vote under which Northern Ireland is treated as a single constituency. The House has already decided that the STV system will remain in Northern Ireland and that three Members will be elected under that system.
I shall now explain several technical, detailed amendments that were made when the changes were made in Great Britain and which now apply to Northern Ireland. The European Parliamentary Elections Act 1999 changed some of the terminology applicable to all European parliamentary elections in the United Kingdom. Consequently, references to European ``parliamentary constituencies'' and ``representatives'' no longer exist. Such descriptions will be amended to ``electoral regions'' and ``Members of the European Parliament''. Incidentally, no alteration will be made by the regulations to the existing mechanism for triggering a by-election or associated electoral procedures.
Members of the Committee will know that that is not the case in Great Britain. It now has a different system for by-elections, because they relate to substitutes in a regional list system. That will not apply to Northern Ireland; if a by-election is created there, the present system will continue and an ordinary by-election will be held.
Another change is that the regulations made under the Registration of Political Parties Act 1998 will now apply to Northern Ireland. As for section 93 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 and the legislation for the Northern Ireland Assembly elections, which prohibit broadcast media coverage of a constituency campaign issue without the consent of all the candidates within that constituency, such consent is not required to cover issues that are considered to be national.
As I am sure the Committee will recognise, that distinction is often somewhat artificial, particularly given that, for the election, the whole of Northern Ireland is one constituency. It is impractical to seek the permission of all the candidates who may chose to stand in the electoral region—in this case, Northern Ireland. For the provision not to apply will make practical sense and will, for the elections, bring Northern Ireland into line with the rest of the United Kingdom.
We are also amending section 75 of the Representation of the People Act 1983. The Act limits the amount of expenditure not approved by an election agent, but which can be incurred by a third party during an election—in other words, when a body other than the candidate or his or her party incurs expenditure. The 1983 Act limited that amount to £5. As the provision applied to parliamentary elections, it was found to be in breach of article 10 of the European convention on human rights and it was the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in the Bowman case that the low limit on such spending placed an unjustified restriction on freedom of expression. We have therefore increased the sum for Northern Ireland from £5 to £5,000.
There is a reason for that increase. The Neill committee suggested a limit of £500 for each parliamentary constituency. Northern Ireland has 18 parliamentary constituencies, but Wales has 14 and some regions in England, Wales and Scotland have as few as 10. However, as the sum of £5,000 will be applied for the purposes of that election in all the regions of Great Britain, it makes sense that the same sum should apply in Northern Ireland.
Mr. William Ross (East Londonderry): Will the £5,000 be equitably spread over the varying populations of the regions in Great Britain, or will there be a wide variation, depending on electoral numbers?
Mr. Murphy: There is a wide variation in England, Scotland and Wales. As I said, many of the electoral regions in England are differently composed to the electoral regions in Wales. There are 14 in Wales and 10 in the north-west of England; Northern Ireland has 18, so there is no exact equivalence.
Mr. Dale Campbell-Savours (Workington): If that is correct, does it mean that the figure per head of population will be less in some regions than in others?
Mr. Murphy: Yes, but we are not referring to ordinary electoral expenses. We are referring to expenses that can be incurred by third parties. For example, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children can spend that money supporting or not supporting a candidate in a particular constituency where it could previously spend only £5, even though the agent for the candidate would not have been involved in such spending or policy making.
The European court has said that the £5 limit was an infringement of human rights, and it has consequently been changed. The figure in Britain has been determined at £5,000. It makes sense to have a similar determination for Northern Ireland. In the Northern Ireland context, for example, organisations that are not political parties could support either pro or anti-agreement candidates in the election to the European Parliament. They would therefore be bound by the new rule and not the rule that would allow them to spend only £5—a rule that today seems rather strange.
The basic figure of £500 for each Parliamentary constituency was recommended by the Neill committee, and I imagine that the £5,000 figure arose because many electoral regions in England have 10 members.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: I am sorry to press my hon. Friend on the matter, but is there not a danger that a group of candidates could aggregate or pool each candidate's £5,000 to create an artificial position, and thus a separate campaign?
Mr. Murphy: I do not know how it will run. This is the first time that the recommendation has been followed. We shall have to see what happens. For instance, I know that were my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Gapes) allowed to speak, he could give an example of a trade union that wanted to back one of my party's candidates about 20 years ago. For various policy reasons, the Labour candidate did not want the backing of that trade council. However, because the agent decided that the party did not want such backing, the issue went to court. It is that sort of thing that the regulations seek to avoid.
Mr. Ross: I am sure that the Minister must by now have had the opportunity to read the yesterday's proceedings in the other place, where my noble Friend, Lord Molyneaux raised that very question. Is the Minister yet able to tell the Committee that any number of individuals could put up £5,000? It is not a question of 10 candidates being able to pool 10 times £5,000, but of individuals, constituents and members of the public not involved in the election—one, five, 10, or even 50 of them—each being able to put up £5,000. Does not that matter deserve the most serious consideration? If I can catch your eye later, Mr. Winterton, I hope to expand on it.
Mr. Murphy: I am sure that when the hon. Gentleman has expanded on that, towards the end of the debate, I shall be able to answer some of those questions in detail. As a member of the Ulster Unionist party, does he agree in general that we do not want a great difference between the regulations for Belfast and those for Cardiff, Edinburgh and London? I accept the general point, and shall return to it. The change is not of our volition but is a consequence of a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights.
To bring them up to date, the regulations reflect an inflationary increase on the 1994 figures from £13,175 to £14,900 per candidate and 5.7p to 6.4p per elector. They contain nothing else of note, and I am perfectly happy to answer questions.
4.40 pm
Mr. Malcolm Moss (North-East Cambridgeshire): The Committee has already begun to gnaw on the cancerous bone at the heart of the regulations, which are madness. The Minister does not have the answers, although he is hoping to receive some from his team. Yesterday, in the other place, Lord Dubs could not answer the question asked by Lord Molyneux, either.
This is a most sinister development. All democrats—
Mr. Murphy: If the hon. Gentleman is worried about my being sinister, I shall put a stop to that straight away by saying that, on the question of freedom of expression, no limit is placed on the number of people who may spend £5,000.
Mr. Moss: I was right in that the answer came from the Minister's team. He is right. There was a European ruling, the Bowman judgment, which, as the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr. Ross) will remember, involved the SPUC. In April 1992, a Mrs. Bowman distributed 1.5 million SPUC leaflets in constituencies throughout the United Kingdom. The case specifically related to the 25,000 leaflets distributed in Halifax. The judgment was upheld on a technicality.
It is interesting to read the Neill report in that context. The Minister alluded to the fact that the Neill report recommended a limit of £500. Significantly, however, paragraph 10.63 of the section in the Neill report that refers to the Bowman case states:
``It is relevant to note that section 75''—
of the Representation of the People Act 1983—
``is confined to activities which are intended to promote or prejudice the electoral prospects of `particular candidates in a particular constituency'. Leaflets designed merely to bring factual information to the attention of voters or to assist a national campaign without referring to particular candidates fall outside the section.''
I did not use the word ``sinister'' lightly. This seems to afford people rights, individually and collectively, to embark on a negative personal campaign against someone—not only in European elections; presumably, it will also apply to parliamentary elections.
Unless constraints are imposed—which the regulations do not contain and to which the Neill report does not allude—we shall face a serious predicament. The maximum that a parliamentary candidate may spend is about £8,000. At £500 a throw, we need only 16 people in a parliamentary constituency to be spending as much as the parliamentary candidate promoting his party and its policies and manifesto.
That is insidious because if someone purports to distribute leaflets that support a different policy from that of the main parties, he or she cannot have the money, but if a person sets out to attack someone personally, he or she will receive it. Why have the Government let the proposal through?
Neill suggested £500, but that did not have to be the figure. In paragraph 10.59, which deals with the European ruling, the report states:
``The judges observed that there may be circumstances in which the right of freedom of expression and the right to enjoy a free election may come into conflict and it may be considered necessary, in the period preceding or during an election, to place certain restrictions, of a type which would not usually be acceptable, on freedom of expression, in order to secure the `free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of legislature.'''
That seems to give a green light to the Government to say, ``Hold on a minute. If we take this to its logical conclusion, we end up with a potentially dangerous situation.'' Why have the Government not built in a failsafe which would in certain circumstances mitigate against the
``free expression of the people in the choice of the legislature.''
Paragraph 10.59 of the report continues:
``In striking the balance between these two rights each Contracting State had a `margin of appreciation', meaning thereby that each State is (within reasonable limits) entitled to adopt the solution which best suits its circumstances and traditions.''
There is the get-out. The Government do not have to introduce the proposal. Each contracting state, each member of the European Court of Human Rights, can decide what is best with regard to how it runs its own elections.
I shall make two points. First, there is a margin in the European legislation, so we do not have to follow everyone else; we have freedom of action, best judged on how we do things. Secondly, the recommendation of £500 for a parliamentary constituency has been aggregated to £5,000 for European constituencies, but the Minister has not told us whether the £5,000 limit applies to European elections in Great Britain—in England, Scotland and Wales.
| 
