Lisa Smart

Let me begin by putting on record my thanks to the Minister, who I very much welcome to her place. In particular, I thank her predecessor, the hon. Member for Chester North and Neston (Samantha Dixon), who has shown with her comments today the grace and thoughtfulness with which she conducted herself throughout the whole process. We did not agree on everything in the Bill Committee—indeed, all members of the Bill Committee did not agree—but we conducted our discussions with good grace and occasionally a hint of humour. I am grateful for the work that the other members of the Bill Committee put in, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Zöe Franklin), who led for us on all matters to do with candidate safety and candidates, given her hugely relevant experience as a member of the Speaker’s Conference. It would be remiss of me not to share the gratitude of the House for Philip Rycroft’s efforts in conducting his review, the recommendations from which have given this legislation more teeth than it started out with. I do not think it will surprise anyone, however, that we Liberal Democrats think much more could and should be done. The political freedoms and assurances we have relied upon for decades are increasingly vulnerable to insidious, hostile actors. We saw an entirely unnecessary by-election over the summer. It was a waste of taxpayers’ money and was brought about by a resignation whose circumstances are under investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. Our rules should not permit a Member under investigation to trigger a by-election and then walk straight back in here at the public’s expense, and that is precisely what new clause 79 in my name would prevent. However, I do not believe it was selectable, so I will move on. That saga was yet another example of how big money is infiltrating our politics, with millions of pounds paid to politicians, uncapped donations and direct payments for inflammatory social media posts. It is totally disfiguring our politics. We have to tackle big money wherever it comes from, and that is a major omission from the Bill. New clause 88 would require the Secretary of State, within three months of Royal Assent, to publish proposals for a royal commission to consider a cap on political donations and the level at which that cap should be set, and whether existing limits on campaign expenditure and the period over which they bite are still fit for purpose. It would require those proposals to cover terms of reference, membership and funding, and the commission would have to report within 12 months. It is a straightforward request. It does not demand or impose limits without buy-in. It does not ask any Member to sign up to a particular figure. It takes a conversation that has been going on for the better part of 20 years or more, and gives it a proper remit, a proper deadline and a proper independent home. I want to be fair to the Government, because over the summer things have moved in a positive direction. I welcome the Prime Minister’s words about the defending democracy taskforce yesterday, but we need to hear more detail about how it will function, particularly around money coming into political parties in and around our politics, how its recommendations will come into force and, importantly, when they will come into force. The threat is real, the threat is now, and urgent action is vital. We have tabled further amendments on money in politics. New clauses 9 and 10 would introduce barriers on who can donate, preventing donations from those who are or have been members of, or political advisers to, foreign Administrations and those convicted of promoting or inciting political violence. New clauses 11 and 12 would require candidates and parties to declare and mitigate the risk of foreign-linked donations. Taken together, they are a natural extension of the “know your donor” scheme, which this Bill enhances. We should know exactly who funds us, and the public have that right, too. Money is not the only way in which influence is bought. We now live in a world where a handful of people own the platforms and write the algorithms that decide what millions of our constituents see about politics every day. When the owner of a social media platform can openly discuss handing tens of millions of pounds to a British political party, the danger is in plain sight, and the Bill does not meet the moment. The Government chose to reject sensible amendments on deepfakes, AI-generated content and the clear labelling of digital campaign material. Those were not wrecking amendments; they were an offer of cross-party work on a threat that is moving faster than we are legislating. I ask the Government even now to commit to the real-time disclosure of donations and a publicly searchable database of every pound spent on online political advertising, so that voters can see who is trying to influence them and with whose money. That will be more important as we extend the franchise. The Lib Dems warmly welcome the introduction of votes at 16. Indeed, we have campaigned on it for decades, but we are concerned that the current voter registration system does not work well for young people. If we want votes at 16 to be a success, we need the voter registration improvements that the Bill enables to be implemented in time for the next general election. I would welcome hearing some reassurance from the Minister, when she is winding up, that they will be in place for the next general election. My final point is the one that, I feel, matters the most. This Bill tidies the rules of the game, but it leaves the game itself untouched. There is no silver bullet for fixing our politics—it requires will, consensus and graft—but one thing that is shared by dozens and dozens of Members across the House is the understanding of the need for fairer votes. We cannot have a conversation about representing the people without addressing the elephant in the room: we have a voting system that handed one party two thirds of the seats in this House on barely a third of the vote. Millions of people cast ballots that changed nothing and elected no one, and then they are told to have faith in the result. I therefore tabled new clause 8 to bring in proportional representation for elections across the United Kingdom. It details the way in which a fairer voting system could be implemented, and it is disappointing that the Government have not taken the opportunity the Bill presents to rise to the occasion. First past the post is unfair and unrepresentative, and lets Governments take voters for granted. No amount of tightening around the edges fixes a system that was out of date a century ago. Despite identifying the crisis of confidence in our political system in their 2024 manifesto, this Government have yet to back even modest steps towards making our voting system fairer, such as a national commission on electoral reform, as detailed in new clause—