172.Paragraph 9 of Schedule 9 determines the campaign expenditure limits that apply when the period during which a parliamentary general election is pending overlaps with the relevant period for a European Parliamentary election and/or an election to a devolved legislature. Paragraph 1(3) of Schedule 9 defines the period during which a parliamentary general election is pending as the period beginning with the date on which Her Majesty’s intention to dissolve Parliament is announced and ending with the date of the election. Where such an overlap occurs, and a party is contesting each of the elections, the expenditure limits that would apply to that party in respect of each election (by virtue of paragraphs 3 to 8, as the case may be) are aggregated. A party that contested all constituencies and/or regions in each of the elections would be able to incur campaign expenditure up to the limits set out in the following table:
173.Paragraph 9(4) defines the relevant period during which the aggregate expenditure limits would apply. The limits of the relevant period are dependent on whether the parliamentary election takes place either, on the one hand, on the same day as or later than the other election(s) or, on the other hand, earlier than the other election(s). Two examples will illustrate this. First, if a Scottish Parliamentary election was held on 5 May 2011 and was followed by a parliamentary general election on 2 June 2011 (having been announced prior to 5 May), the relevant period would run from 3 June 2010 to 2 June 2011. Second, if a parliamentary general election was held on 31 March 2011 and was followed by a Scottish Parliamentary election on 5 May 2011, the relevant period would run from 1 April 2010 to 5 May 2011.
174.Paragraph 9(5) determines the campaign expenditure limits to apply when two parliamentary general elections are pending during different parts of the relevant period (as defined in paragraph 4 to 8) for a European Parliamentary election or an election to a devolved legislature or a combination of the two. For this provision to operate, two parliamentary general elections would need to be held within some four months of each other (the two 1974 elections were held seven months and ten days apart). A possible scenario would be:
175.In such a scenario, paragraph 9(5) determines the campaign expenditure limits to apply in “the first relevant period” (as defined in paragraph 9(6)) and “the second relevant period” (as defined in paragraph 9(7)). The first relevant period would, in this example, be the period beginning 26 February 2009 (that is, 365 days before the date of the first parliamentary general election) and ending on 26 May 2009 (the date on which Her Majesty announced her intention to dissolve Parliament in connection with the second parliamentary general election). The limit on campaign expenditure that a party could incur during the first relevant period would be the aggregate of the limits that would apply to the first parliamentary election and the European election by virtue of paragraphs 3 and 4 respectively.
176.In the same example, the second relevant period would run from 27 May 2009 (the day after Her Majesty announced her intention to dissolve Parliament in connection with the second parliamentary general election) to 7 July 2009 (the date of the second parliamentary general election). The limit on campaign expenditure that a party could incur during the second relevant period would be the limit that would apply to the second parliamentary election by virtue of paragraph 3.
Commentary on Sections Part V: Control of campaign expenditure Combined limits where parliamentary election pending