Welsh Lawmakers Consider Legislation Banning Politicians From Lying During Election Campaigns

The Welsh Parliament is considering a bill that would ban candidates from making false or misleading statements during election campaigns, but it faces an unsure future over concerns its wording is too vague.The proposal to make campaign lies a criminal offense cleared its first legislative stage on Tuesday. It was put forth by a Labour party member, but it’s already running into criticism from other Labour lawmakers who say it will not pass in the Senedd without major revisions.The bipartisan think tank Compassion in Politics has led a seven-year campaign in favor of the measure. The group says recent research shows that voters’ trust in politicians is at its lowest level in 40 years, with just 11 percent of the British public trusting politicians to tell the truth.The group is pointing to the United States and says there need to be safeguards in place to block a Trump-like figure from rising to power in Wales on the back of persistent falsehoods and exaggerations.“When lies travel faster than the truth, democracy becomes dangerously easy to game,” the chief executive of Compassion in Politics, Jennifer Nadel, said in a statement. “This amendment is about drawing a clear line: deliberately deceiving the public in order to gain or retain power is not politics as usual, it is an abuse of trust.”The former leader of the Plaid Cymru party, Adam Price, is a longtime supporter of the proposal and calls the possibility that Wales could be the first country to make political lies a crime “pioneering.”“Democracy is in crisis and this is one of the things that we need to do in order to avert that crisis and restore trust,” Mr. Price said in a radio interview last year. “At the base level, people need to be able to believe what politicians are saying,” he added.A recent poll found a large majority of voters support punishing politicians who lie but there are concerns the proposed law as written could stifle free speech. Critics say the bill is flawed and doesn’t even define exactly what is “false or misleading” and how it would be applied or determined. The measure requires Welsh ministers to create a criminal offense only after the bill becomes law, the BBC reported.A criminal law expert at London School of Economics, Jeremy Horder, told the news outlet that an “over-broad false statement law” could “have an unduly chilling effect on the speech of conscientious people and media outlets.”Supporters say, however, there are safeguards in the bill to protect free speech and prosecutions would only apply in “the most serious and egregious cases of deliberate deception.”The bill is now headed to a committee for amendments before going before the full Senedd. There is no timeline for implementation if it is passed, but it is not expected to be in place for May elections

Welsh Lawmakers Consider Legislation Banning Politicians From Lying During Election Campaigns

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