Ms Liz Carolan:

Believe it or not, in Europe this Bill is about as good as it gets. Sorry, my brain has gone. There is currently a piece of legislation at the European level and I will find the name and follow up. They are doing some thinking about political advertising but there are not many countries that are doing this well.

The UK Electoral Commission, which was only set up in the 2000s, has already issued numerous reports saying how it needs greater flexibility and greater powers to be able to respond and adapt. They have some really good provisions around the publication of expenditure data after elections which helps because it includes some political advertising spending data.

This is a part of our problem. Unfortunately, we cannot copy and paste from another country. Many other countries are looking to us as the headquarters for many of these companies.