Lord Markham (Con)

There have been over four hours of debate at this stage, with many views, and I shall speak briefly on what I think are two larger, overriding points to consider. First, this Bill is central to the legitimacy of our democracy and, as such, any rules that we set under the Bill must be fair, unbiased and consistent. I accept that that the acronym FUC is probably not the wisest acronym I have ever come up with, but I hope we can all agree that fairness, unbias and consistency need to be the bedrock of everything we consider here. Otherwise, as I think the noble Baroness, Lady Paul, said, we are in danger of seeing the Americanisation of our politics. I think anyone who has seen, in the American example, the way that states and districts have been gerrymandered, or the way that politically aligned district attorneys and judges from one party or another subvert the law in favour of one party or another, will accept that that is not a path any of us would want to go down, or the kind of democracy I believe any of us want. The second overriding point I want us to think about in our democracy is that we must not feed the narrative that this is an establishment stitch-up to somehow disadvantage Reform. We need only look at the recent AfD vote in east Germany or National Rally in France to see the inherent dangers of something being seen as an establishment stitch-up. We need to make sure that this is not an opportunity for Reform to cast this as somehow the establishment versus the people. That will only be to our detriment and we need to make sure that the Bill does not add fuel to that fire. With that in mind and with the principles of fairness, unbias and consistency, I will talk about some of the inconsistencies and the things that I think that the Bill sets against these. My noble friend Lord Jamieson set this out very clearly when he asked: why would we have a proposal that seeks to decrease voter security by moving away from voter ID, unless we were trying to make it easier for a certain segment of the population to vote than another, perhaps to disproportionately favour one party? Around the electoral age, I would say that, if we believe that 16 year-olds should be allowed to vote, we must give them the ability to inform themselves properly as well, and, like it or not, social media is the platform that is now the major forum for political views and exchanges. Yet at the same time we are restricting social media feeds and personalisation, which is the main way that 16 and 17 year-olds will receive political information. Surely, if we consider a 16 year-old old enough to choose a Government, we must accept that they are old enough to hear the arguments on all the media platforms without government restrictions. The second principle that I will take to Committee is that any rules on donations are fair and unbiased. Anything that we do which specifically rules in or out particular groups to the benefit of one party or another, such as the rules on union funding mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, will again put this Bill under the spotlight. If rules are seen to enable unfettered large union donations to Labour, while at the same time restricting large individual donations to Reform, including even retrospectively, I am afraid that there is a danger that we will feed the Reform narrative that this is an anti-establishment stitch-up, which will do much greater damage to our democracy. I believe and worry that this will give much more succour to their argument. I will finish by saying that as we go through Committee, the criteria I will be looking to test each measure on are fairness, unbias and consistency. I will probably try to come up with a better acronym, as I say, but those are the rules that I will be applying in Committee.