At the moment political parties face higher fines for data protection breaches than they do for breaking election law. The risk is that fines for breaking election law just become part of the cost of doing business for political parties, especially those with the deepest pockets and richest donors. The Electoral Commission must be independent of both the Government and Parliament.

My speeches to the House: We can all agree that the Government are constantly overreaching themselves and trying to accrue more and more powers. It is perfectly acceptable to try to ensure that the Government do not do so in this case. The Electoral Commission must be independent of both the Government and Parliament. This is a way to avoid any sort of conflict of interest for all MPs and, at times, for us. While we normally support any efforts to subject decisions to parliamentary scrutiny, it would be a false solution in this case. The strategy and policy statement must be removed from the Bill absolutely and entirely, rather than simply adding Parliament’s conflict of interest to that of the Government. We heard from Lords earlier who said, “Let’s get rid of the Bill”. Let us get rid of as much as we can on the way.

Clearly, you have to make the political parties pay attention. At the moment political parties face higher fines for data protection breaches than they do for breaking election law, which is really inappropriate. The risk is that fines for breaking election law just become part of the cost of doing business for political parties, especially those with the deepest pockets and richest donors. That is clearly not the Green Party, but it could be other political parties represented in this Chamber.

Amendment 18 would mean that the penalties for breaking election law would actually hurt the law-breakers. It follows the same logic as the general data protection regulations by implementing proportional fines so that big organisations have to pay attention.

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