AMENDMENTS OF THE REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE ACTS. (Hansard, 4 May 1999)

§ Mr. Raynsford

I beg to move amendment No. 102, in page 174, line 38, at end insert— 'Broadcasting during elections 21A.—(1) Section 93 shall be amended as follows. (2) In subsection (1), after "local government election" there shall be inserted ", other than an Authority election,".'. Hon. Members who served on the Standing Committee will recall that I wrote to them on 4 March, setting out my intention to disapply section 93 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 for the purposes of the GLA elections. As I said in an earlier debate, elections to the authority will be treated as local authority elections for the purposes of the RPA, except when our proposed new electoral systems make current local government provisions impractical or inappropriate.

When changes are needed—as, for example, in broadcasting regulation at elections—I have been keen, as on other issues, to adopt a bipartisan approach. I have written to the main Opposition parties on a number of electoral issues, so that we might achieve—so far as possible—a consensus.

Hon. Members will recall that section 93 stipulates that an item cannot be broadcast during an election campaign without the consent of all the candidates in a particular constituency. As I said in my letter to Committee members, it would be completely impractical—given the arrangements for election, across the whole of London, of assembly members on the top-up list—to apply those provisions, as only one candidate would have to refuse consent for there to be no possibility of a broadcast. Such a situation would be nonsensical.

An approach similar to the one that we are proposing was adopted, after consultation with the parties, for elections to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. Equally, section 93 will not apply to elections to the European Parliament.

Amendment No. 102 is essential to ensure that workable arrangements can be put in place for coverage of the elections. Broadcasting organisations will still be bound by the requirements of impartiality, accuracy and balance that are placed on them by statute and by the broadcasting regulatory bodies. It is a practical and sensible amendment, which I hope the House will accept.