Lord Burns (CB)

My Lords, I will speak to Motion D1. In recent years, there has been an extraordinary and significant interest in what has become known as choice architecture. This was popularised by the book Nudge and by one of its authors, Richard Thaler, who received the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2017, partly for his work on it. One key point which is so relevant to the issues I have been raising is that he highlighted that when individuals are presented with a choice, any default option has a very important influence on their decision and should be taken into account in designing the process of choice. My previous amendment aimed to eliminate the impact of the default option, in one direction or another, when members wish to take advantage of the right not to pay the political contribution. It proposed that new members should be required to make an active choice between two options displayed on the application form: to pay or not to pay. This would eliminate the need for a default option, and potentially reflect more closely the true preferences of members. This proposal has not found favour in the House of Commons: clearly, the Government and the trade unions with political funds want to influence the decision of members in favour of paying the political contribution. They want as many members as possible to pay the contribution, and of course I understand the motivation.