Baroness May of Maidenhead (Con)

My Lords, I first add my best wishes to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield on his retirement and thank him for the contributions that he has made to this House. It has been said by other speakers, including the right reverend Prelate, that this is an important piece of legislation if we are to restore trust in our democracy, and there are aspects of it with which I agree with the Government. I must confess that I do not agree with the Government on their proposals to extend the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds. I will say merely this. I think this was introduced with political motivations, but I will just say gently to the Government that I suspect that it may very well backfire on them. I also welcome any attempts to tighten up the rules on electronic campaigning material, but I just say this to the Government: I fear this is an area where it is going to be difficult for legislation to keep up with developments. I worry about the ability to use AI-generated material, which can put words into the mouths of any candidate, or indeed anybody involved with a political party or an election, which are untrue and have never been said by them. Keeping up with the developments of AI in this field is going to be difficult, and I ask the Government to make sure that they continue to keep a watchful eye on this particular area. The one aspect of this Bill on which I particularly wanted to comment and to support the Government’s moves is on the use of crypto assets. The Bill describes a crypto asset as “a cryptographically secured digital representation of value or contractual rights that uses a form of distributed ledger technology and can be transferred, stored or traded electronically”. I prefer the Bank of England’s statement in its primer on crypto assets: “A way of storing value electronically outside of centralised systems and away from regulators”. The Bank of England goes on to say: “Development is under way to make cryptocurrencies easier to use, but for now they can’t really be considered a legitimate form of money”. I have to say that I am generally a sceptic about crypto assets and cryptocurrencies, beyond even the aspects in relation to this piece of legislation. I first came across them as Home Secretary when they were the “currency of choice” for criminal gangs. They are a currency of choice for hostile state actors as well as those organised crime gangs. It is absolutely right that the Government are moving to find ways to ensure that crypto assets cannot be used as donations to political parties. But I would simply say this to the Government: I have seen the briefing from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Anti-Corruption and Responsible Tax, which points out that there are loopholes in what the Government are doing here in this piece of legislation. Crypto assets are banned for donations to political parties but not to candidates. There is not a sufficient attempt to look at how exchanges can be used to turn those crypto assets, supposedly legally, into donations. I think there is more that the Government should be doing, and I would urge the Government to look at this in particular. Crypto assets are used by people who want to avoid anybody knowing what they are doing, and in terms of our democracy and donations to political parties or candidates, we actually want the transparency of knowing who is making those donations. It is crypto assets in their various forms that will enable people who we do not want to see affecting our politics and affecting our democracies, who do so with evil intent and with intent of foreign interference. I welcome the fact that the Government are acting; I simply ask them to do more.