Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (Northern Ireland Political Parties) Order 2007

My Lords, that document will be certified as genuine by Ireland's Government; for example, by the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin. I am not arguing about what is easy to forge and what is not easy to forge, but the Electoral Commission would receive details of the donation from the recipient in Northern Ireland—the political party—accompanied by a certified document from the Department of Foreign Affairs that the donor was eligible to make the donation. In other words, they have to be eligible to make the donation in Ireland anyway, as that is where the constraint comes in. People who are not eligible to donate in Ireland are not eligible to donate in Northern Ireland. It is said that the check will be carried out by the Department of Foreign Affairs. I am happy to put that in a more detailed note. It is worth putting this next paragraph on the record. The Northern Ireland recipients—that is, the parties—will have to provide the information set out in new paragraph 2A of Schedule 6 to the 2000 Act in donation reports from Irish bodies. In practice, in order to accept the donation and to provide the information required in new paragraph 2A, the Northern Ireland recipient will need to be satisfied that the body has an office in Ireland or in Northern Ireland from which one or more of its principal activities are directed and that the body falls in one of the categories prescribed in Article 4.2. That will enable the Electoral Commission to check both individuals and companies—it obviously deals with donations from registered companies. In other words, the donor has to be legitimate; it cannot be a front company. The company must have the wherewithal and the legal authority to donate in Ireland in the first place. People may argue about this, but this is a constraint on what happens today. I repeat that today political parties in Northern Ireland can receive money from any individual of any nationality, from any company, anywhere in the world without having to make a report to anyone about the amount of money received. Therefore, there is progress on that. This is not completely aligned with the United Kingdom, for reasons that I have explained, which we shall have to live with. I fully accept the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bew, in his maiden speech that, come the next general election, people will be able to question legitimately from where the parties have got the money. There will be certain constraints about not being identified, but they will be free to make voluntary submissions about where the money came from. The fact is that there will be challenges about the money, which is quite legitimate in a democracy. We have set up a legal framework and we want it to operate fairly. On Question, Motion agreed to.