The Elections Bill: some good ideas, but more thought needed

Posted on October 1, 2021 by The Constitution Unit

The Elections Bill has been subject to both criticism and praise, as discussed by our Deputy Director Alan Renwick on this blog, and numerous contributors to a parliamentary inquiry. Justin Fisher, a panellist at the Unit’s recent seminar on the bill, argues that it has several good proposals, but that more thought about certain aspects is required.

Of all the provisions in the Elections Bill, most attention has been paid to plans to introduce voter identification and greater political control of the Electoral Commission. Those provisions are obviously important, but the bill also includes significant proposals relating to notional expenditure and ‘third parties’ – organisations that campaign in elections but do not themselves field candidates. Some of these proposals, while ostensibly positive and well intentioned, have the potential to significantly affect the conduct of elections if they emerge from the scrutiny process unchanged. Others represent a disproportionate response, which are likely to lead to difficulties.

Notional Expenditure

Notional expenditure refers to campaign spending in and around constituencies which does not promote any particular candidate. Such spending is typically ascribed to the party at national level rather than the candidate at constituency-level. It is a by-product of the fact that there are different expenditure limits for candidates and for parties, and that under our electoral system, all parties target their campaign activity as far as possible on seats that they are seeking to gain or hold. Critics argue that candidate spending limits are rendered meaningless by parties’ targeting efforts, and matters came to a head at the 2015 election when in one seat, the candidate, his agent and a Conservative Party official were charged following allegations that campaign spending had not been properly declared. The candidate and agent were acquitted, but the party official was found guilty. The bill adopts a conservative approach to the issue but a sensible and most importantly, a workable one.

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The Elections Bill’s proposals on Electoral Commission governance: risks to electoral integrity and devolution

Posted on September 30, 2021 by The Constitution Unit

The Elections Bill has been subject to both criticism and praise, as discussed by Emilia Cieslak on this blog, and a panel of experts at a recent Unit seminar. In this post, Unit Deputy Director Alan Renwick identifies the threats to electoral integrity and devolution posed by the clauses of the bill that propose changes to the governance of the Electoral Commission.

The Elections Bill, currently before parliament, seeks to change many aspects of electoral law. Provisions to introduce voter ID requirements at polling stations have garnered most attention. But changes to the governance of the Electoral Commission also raise serious concerns. As currently formulated, they threaten both to weaken the vital independence of the elections watchdog and to violate the principles of the devolution settlement in Scotland and Wales.

Electoral Commission governance: principles and current practice

The Electoral Commission carries out a range of functions in overseeing elections and referendums and regulating campaign spending. As I have argued previously – in common with many others, not least the Committee on Standards in Public Life (CSPL) in a report published in July – the independence of the elections watchdog is vital to electoral integrity. If the government of the day can skew election or referendum conduct to suit its own ends, fairness – and thus democracy – is undermined. The Electoral Commission should, of course, be accountable too. An appropriate balance of independence and accountability is needed.

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What new challenges does the changing nature of campaigning pose for referendum regulation?

Posted on January 9, 2018 by The Constitution Unit

Earlier this year, the Constitution Unit established an Independent Commission on Referendums to review the role of referendums in British democracy – whose work will be discussed at a public seminar next week. In this blogpost, Alan Renwick and Jess Sargeant examine some of the difficult questions the commission will have to consider. Their focus is on the way in which political campaigning has changed since 2000, when the current legislation regulating referendums was enacted.

The UK’s current legislation regulating the conduct of referendums – the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act (PPERA) 2000 – was designed and introduced almost two decades ago. Since then, technological innovations have led to new ways of campaigning and communicating. These changes create new challenges for referendums regulation. While most of these challenges are not unique to referendums – they apply equally to elections – one key task of the Independent Commission on Referendums is to assess how well the existing rules work in the context of new digital developments and to consider solutions to some of the problems posed by the modern world. This blog post explores just some of those challenges.

Financial regulation doesn’t reflect the modern world

Increasingly, political campaigners are using social media to communicate with voters. We know this because we can observe political adverts on Facebook, Twitter, and even Instagram during elections and referendum campaigns. However, we have very little information about how much money they are spending to do so. This is because financial regulation of political campaigns, first designed in 2000, has yet to be updated to reflect the nature of campaigning in the modern world.

Registered referendum campaign groups are required to submit returns of referendum expenses. The purpose of these transparency requirements is to allow campaign spending to be scrutinised by both the Electoral Commission and the public. Financial transparency requirements apply equally to expenses incurred for online and for offline campaigning. However, how this is reported makes scrutiny of online spending difficult. There is no separate category for spending on social media: such spending is reported as either ‘advertising’ or ‘unsolicited material sent to voters’. Furthermore, within this category it is only identifiable if spent directly with the platform, such as Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. Spending through agencies remains opaque, with no breakdown of how money is used. In this area, it could be argued that transparency requirements are rendered meaningless.

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