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Hope is thin on the democratic ground right now. The threat in the UK grows clearer every day as the flames thrown by Trump’s tech horsemen threaten to set our smouldering political landscape ablaze. But there is one ray of hope on the UK’s political horizon. It is coming not from Westminster, but from the Welsh parliament.
Last summer, the Welsh Government, committed to act against political deception. Since then, the question has hung: what action exactly will it take? The original commitment, delivered on the floor of the Senedd, had been made through gritted teeth when it became clear that if it went to a vote, the Government would lose. The job of advising on a way forward was given to the Senedd’s Standards of Conduct Committee.
Those of us at the organisation I work for, Compassion in Politics, who have been campaigning for a criminal penalty for what we see, as in effect, a fraud on the electorate, were not overly optimistic. We were tipped off by a journalist that the Committee was planning to water down the commitment. That fear has been partially justified. The report does fall short of recommending a new criminal offence of political deception for serving politicians, saying that they are “not convinced that a new criminal offence would have the intended effect of restoring trust in the system” because “the risks and the unintended consequences currently outweigh the benefits in favour of a beefing up of existing measures.”
However, when it comes to political candidates it does contain a bolder and potentially game-changing recommendation.
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Their report recommends that the Welsh equivalent of the Representation of the People Act, the RPO, be amended to ensure that any political candidate or campaign manager who issues a deliberately false statement to gain electoral advantage could be guilty of an offence.
This would mean that any candidate tempted to take tricks from Trump’s playbook would face the prospect of being barred from taking office. Just imagine, for a moment, how that could change the political landscape. It is potentially revolutionary.
And, although the committee has shied away from creating a specific criminal offence for serving politicians, it has opened up a pathway by which serving politicians could still be found guilty of an offence. Any Senedd member who has been selected to stand for re-election will technically be a candidate and therefore subject to the expanded law.
The report’s twin track approach of legislating for candidates but not for elected politicians, of course raises a difficult question which the Welsh Government will need to address: why should candidates be held to a higher standard than serving politicians? The simple answer is: they shouldn’t.
There is a simple solution that is already gaining currency in the Senedd: amend the RPO so that it applies to serving politicians as well as candidates, thereby creating consistency and a one-stop measure.
But even if that change doesn’t come at this juncture, expanding potential criminal sanctions for candidates and campaign managers is still bold new territory, one that Adam Price MS who proposed the original measure, has described as “globally significant”.
It is also a victory for a campaign that has too often been dismissed as naïve. Lying, we have been told, is a perennial problem, as old as politics itself. But that is not only defeatist it is also disingenuous. If lying can be prohibited in a whole range of other professions, including by statute when it came to the delivery of goods and services, then why is it not possible to prohibit it in politics? Well, of course it is and today’s report confirms that.
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Today’s move is the result of the sort of cross-party, collaborative and issues-based approach that we need to see more of in modern politics. The measure has been championed primarily by three Members of the Senedd, each from a different party: Plaid’s former leader Adam Price MS who has championed this cause since the Iraq war, the leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, Jane Dodds MS and Welsh Labour’s Lee Waters. They rightly recognised that this is an issue that goes beyond party politics.
So now that Wales has shown that it is willing to take bold action, what about Westminster?
The dangers Westminster faces are no different from Wales. The country is still reeling, nearly nine years on, from the lies told during the Brexit referendum. Without action, any unscrupulous candidate or MP can still use their platform to spread and amplify lies unchecked.
The UK Government has so far been reluctant to engage on the issue, but now that the case has been accepted by its Welsh counterparts, the courage that Wales has shown needs to be replicated in Westminster.
Last month, the Prime Minister himself called for debate to be “based on facts and truth, not on lies”. In response forty prominent academics, politicians and civil society leaders, signed a letter reminding him that there was a ready-made measure that could do just that and called on the government to follow Wales’ lead. Signatories included Professors AC Grayling, Danny Dorling and Kate Pickett as well as Caroline Lucas and serving parliamentarians.
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It’s a simple, clear fix designed not just to protect the political space but also to help to restore trust in the political class. The public petition calling on the government to introduce a criminal law has now been signed by over 202,000 members of the public.
At a time when the wolves of autocracy are threatening to blow our walls down it is time to shore them up. Ensuring that the rogue bad actor will be disqualified from taking office if they attempt to deceive the electorate is an immediate first step. Just look at how differently things would have played out in the US if such a provision had been in place.
The writing is on the wall. Will Westminster read it and protect our democracy from those with a political platform who deliberately spread misinformation while it still has time? The movement of those who hope so is growing.