REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE BILL (Hansard, 23 March 1977)

§ Lord WELLS-PESTELL
My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. Your Lordships will be aware that county council elections in England and Wales are due to be held on Thursday, 5th May. Elections to the Greater London Council are to take place on the same day. District council elections in Scotland will be held on 3rd May and in Northern Ireland on 18th May. This Bill will be of particular interest to those noble Lords who are standing as candidates in these elections.
The limits on expenditure by candidates at local elections in Great Britain are 614 laid down by Section 64(2) of the Representation of the People Act 1949, as amended. The purpose of these limits is to ensure that all candidates can fight the elections on equal terms and without excessive expenditure. From time to time, it has been necessary to increase the limits to take account of inflation. This happened in 1969 and, except for the limits relating to elections to the Greater London Council, again in 1974. The Government received representations from many quarters that these limits should once again be raised because the existing limits would present serious difficulties to candidates at the forthcoming local government elections. The Government therefore consulted the political Parties and the local authority associations. As a result of these consultations, there is general agreement that the limits should be raised broadly to take account of the fall in the value of money since April 1974, when the Representation of the People (No. 2) Act 1974 received the Royal Assent.
Separate limits for Greater London Council election expenses were introduced for the first time in the Representation of the People Act 1969. When other local government election expenses limits were raised in 1974, it was generally agreed that the Greater London Council limits were still adequate. The Government therefore take the line that it would now be appropriate to raise the expenses limits for Greater London Council elections on the same basis as the others, to compensate for the fall in money value since 1974. So far as the Government are aware, there is no disagreement with this approach among those whom the Government consulted.
The provisions of the Bill itself may be very briefly summarised. The limit on a candidate's election expenses at Greater London Council elections is raised to £320, together with an additional 2p for every entry in the register of electors to be used at the election as first published. This represents a 60 per cent. increase on the existing figures of £200, together with an additional 5p for every four entries in the register. Clause 1(1) of the Bill also raises the limit at any other local government election in Great Britain to £72, together with an additional 1.5p for every entry in the register. This is slightly less than the 60 per cent. increase. A straight 60 per cent. rise would have 615 produced a sum per elector of 1.6p and it was felt that there was some advantage in simplifying the formula. The elections to which this limit applies are county and district council elections in England and Wales, community council elections in Wales, and parish council elections in England. The limit also applies to regional, island areas, and district council elections in Scotland.
My Lords, we are taking this opportunity also to raise the limit on candidates' election expenses at ward elections in the City of London. It has been customary to keep the limits in line with the limit on candidates' expenses at other local government elections. This tradition is continued by Clause 1(2) of the Bill. The Bill breaks new ground in Clause 1(3) by dealing with candidates' expenses in Northern Ireland local elections. The effect is to bring these limits into line with those for local elections generally in Great Britain. Hitherto, the limits in Northern Ireland have been set under Northern Ireland legislation. That legislation, however, has never exceeded the amount set for Great Britain. As a matter of fact, provision has recently been made in the Northern Ireland (Local Elections) Order 1977 to raise the limits in Northern Ireland to those laid down under the present legislation for Great Britain. It was not possible for that order to anticipate this Bill. To ensure, therefore, that the limits in Northern Ireland continue to be in line with those for the rest of the United Kingdom, we are proposing to supersede the provisions of Article 7.1 of the Northern Ireland (Local Elections) Order 1977 by the provisions of Clause 1(3) of the Bill now before your Lordships. I am sure that your Lordships will agree that this course is justified in the circumstances.
This legislation is uncontroversial and has passed with all-Party support through another place. It is urgently needed to enable candidates to prepare effective election campaigns in the forthcoming local government elections in May. I do not think that I need say any more, other than to beg to move that the Bill be read a second time.

Viscount LONG
My Lords, this is 616 indeed a very important Bill for those who are to enter into local government, and it is important, too, from the point of view of the expenses incurred. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, for the way he has put the facts and given us the information relating to the Bill. He mentioned just now those of your Lordships who will be going in for local government, but if I might say so there are also many others who will be interested. In this respect it is important that we here in Parliament must also remember that there is another type of parliament within our democracy, that of local government. It is important that we remember those who give their services to try to better conditions for those who live in the cities and towns. A Member of Parliament has his expenses, but he sees some of his constituents only once a week, at a Friday or a Saturday surgery.
In the old days, in order for people to embark upon service on local authorities they had to pay expenses from their own pockets so as to advertise their politics, or the reason why they were seeking to be elected to local government. All of us in the House welcome the idea that all candidates will be able to have the same expenses, and so those who in the past were unable to afford to incur these expenses will now have the same rights as others. I believe that this is a great step forward and, with my noble friends, I welcome it. I do so because many of us on this side of the House know what local government involves, and we know of its difficulties. I am sure that this feeling is shared in the whole House.
As the noble Lord said, the expenses allowance in London has risen to £320, and then there is the figure of 2p per head on the register. But there is a smaller figure in respect of local government outide the Greater London area. I should like to ask the noble Lord the reason for this difference. I should have thought that in other cities, such as Birmingham, there would be similar difficulties to those in London. Can the noble Lord inform the House of the reason for this enormous gap between the figure for the Greater London Council and that which applies to other districts? Can he let me know how this is arrived at, and, equally, how these figures have been arrived at? What committee decided how much the expenses should 617 be? I admit that the Government and local authorities, including the different branches which work within that sphere, were able to agree on how to arrive at these figures; but I do not understand at this stage—I stand to be corrected by the noble Lord—how you get to the figure of £320 for the Greater London Council and yet have a smaller proportion in other cities.
My Lords, I leave that for a moment, if I may, because I think another important part of this Bill which is interesting to me, and others in your Lordships' House, is that this is the first time that I have seen Northern Ireland incorporated into a Bill. Many of your Lordships have dealt with Bills which have in fact covered only Great Britain, leaving out Northern Ireland; but here we see, for the first time, that Northern Ireland local government is incorporated and we have the United Kingdom as a whole. I find that very interesting, and I wondered whether the noble Lord could enlarge on it, because this might be the forerunner of many more Bills coming before your Lordships' House with Northern Ireland incorporated in them, and not being dealt with as a separate country as such.
My Lords, the Northern Ireland question being as it is, the other point I should like to ask the noble Lord is this. I believe that it was in 1965 that there was a Speaker's Conference on the subject of local government expenses, or that it was part of the agenda; and I am given to understand—I may be quite wrong here—that there is to be a further Speaker's Conference to renew the ideas concerning expenses for local government office. If I am right, I think it was the noble Lord's Minister in another place who mentioned that there is to be a further Speaker's Conference on the expenses of local government elections, and I wondered whether the noble Lord could possibly throw any light on this.
My Lords, we would not attempt to hold up this Bill. We believe that local government is vitally important. It is vitally important to have the right people there, and those who could not afford to stand will now be able to have election expenses. That is indeed vital to them; and so local government can go on, in carrying out the different acts of legislation that Parliament delegates to them and 618 thus carrying on helping the people in the streets, in the districts and in the towns. We would not like to hold up this Bill at all. It is not controversial, and I hope it goes through as soon as is possible. I am grateful to the noble Lord for his advice. I hope he can answer the questions I have put to him, but if he cannot I will gladly have him write to me.

§ Lord WELLS-PESTELL
My Lords, with regard to the fixing of the amount, that is the Government's responsibility and I think I said that the Government had consulted the political Parties—I think I am right in saying every political Party represented in Parliament—and also all the local authority associations, getting from them their views on what would be a reasonable fixed sum and a reasonable figure in respect of each entry. I think those of us who have had some experience of standing for county councils in large cities, and also in country areas, know that the costs—printing costs, for instance —are much higher; and I think it is fair to say that in local elections in a country area things of that kind can be done much more economically than they can be done in the large cities.
The noble Viscount raised the question of what this meant in terms of money as compared with what it was. If I may take one of the Greater London Council electoral divisions—I am thinking of Holborn and St. Pancras South, which is part of the London Borough of Camden but which is a Greater London Council electoral area—there are roughly about 40,000 electors in that particular electoral area; and whereas under the old limits the top amount was £700, they will now be able to spend something like £1,120, so there will be an increase of about £420. If we move into the smaller areas, where there is an electorate of, say, only 1,000, the new limit will be £87 as against £55.
The other point that the noble Viscount raised related to Northern Ireland. I think I am right in saying that there was an Order in Council on the 9th March to increase the amounts, and the amount in Northern Ireland was increased on that date to £45 with a penny per entry on the register. This Bill was more or less in process, and it was felt quite pointless to bring all the other areas up to a particular 619 standard and still leave Northern Ireland lagging behind. It has therefore been incorporated in this Bill, with the result that Article 7(1) of the Northern Ireland (Local Elections) Order 1977 will be superseded by Clause 1(3) of this Bill.