HC Deb 13 December 1979 vol 975 cc1513-4
6. Mr. Palmer

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will introduce legislation to amend section 83 of the Representation of the People Act 1949, to make it obligatory that meetings held free of charge in school premises to further the candidatures of nominated persons for local government office shall in fact be public and not private or ticket meetings.

Mr. Brittan

We are reviewing the law on election meetings in the context of the Government's general examination of public order legislation.

Mr. Palmer

Is the hon. and learned Gentleman aware that in the summer of this year, during the course of a local government by-election in the Eastville ward of my constituency, a public meeting held by an extremist organisation—the National Front—was heavily guarded by police, and members of the public, including the headmistress of the school, were excluded from it? Is he also aware that the chief constable and the solicitor to the Avon education authority have expressed to me their concern about the present state of the law?

Mr. Brittan

I can understand the concern about the present state of the law, and it is exactly for that reason that we are reviewing it. The position is that only if it is possible to have a generally acceptable watertight definition of what is a public meeting will it be possible to make any change. I think that it is right to consider that in the context of other changes in public order legislation.

Mr. Edward Lyons

Will the hon. and learned Gentleman inform local authorities that there is no obligation to let schools to the National Front, or to any other political organisation, if the meetings are to be all-ticket or private, because for election purposes they must be public meetings? If, therefore, there is an indication that such meetings will be private or all-ticket, no local authority needs to grant the use of a school to the National Front in the first place.

Mr. Brittan

Section 83 of the Representation of the People Act 1949 deals with that point, in that it entitles a candidate at a local government election to use a suitable room free of charge in a publicly maintained school, but only for what is a public meeting of which reasonable notice has been given and which does not interfere with the use of the premises for educational purposes. I am sure that local authorities will heed that limitation.