Election Candidates

When the hon. Member for Hammersmith and Fulham (Mr. Hands) began his speech, he said—I hope not out of a sense of naivety or innocence, although perhaps there was a bit of naivety and innocence on my part—that he did not intend to make this a party political issue, but wanted to examine the matter in the round. He seems to have come to the House on the pretence of being concerned about propriety, ethics and regulations governing election expenses, yet he has spent the best part—two thirds—of the time for the debate making scurrilous attacks on the London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, who is the Labour party candidate in next Thursday's election, and on the Labour party in London and as a whole. If I may say so, he does not come to this with clean hands—I mean no pun. The hon. Gentleman repeated serious, groundless allegations against one of the candidates just six days before the poll and, frankly, he wastes the resources of the House by so doing. I will talk about the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 in a moment, but first I will deal with the complaints that the hon. Gentleman made to the Electoral Commission. Given that he also attacked the commission, I remind him that it was set up under the Act as an independent organisation to oversee and regulate party funding and the behaviour of candidates and parties in this area. The hon. Gentleman lodged a complaint with the commission that Ken Livingstone had failed to register donations in the 2008 campaign. The commission investigated his complaint and decided—I think that it reported this to the relevant Select Committee only a month or so ago, although I might not be right—that the PPERA rules had not been broken because all the money was given to the Labour party in London as a whole, rather than to Mr. Livingstone directly. A spokesman for the commission said that it had met the Labour party and Ken Livingstone's election agent and that it was satisfied that there was no evidence of a breach. When the independent Electoral Commission says that there is no evidence of a breach, it is not right for the hon. Gentleman to use the facilities of the House, under the cloak of parliamentary privilege, to try to resurrect such scurrilous and unfounded allegations. The hon. Gentleman referred to the hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson), but of course Henley is not in London. As a Member of this House, the hon. Member for Henley has to make declarations in the Register of Members' Interests, so he is in a slightly different position; he has to ensure that he complies with the rules of the House, as well as the rules of the Electoral Commission. As far as I can see, neither the Labour party candidate, the Liberal Democrat candidate nor any other candidate has reported individual donations. I assume that that is because they, like the Labour party candidate, have had donations made to their party, rather than to themselves as a regulated donee. The hon. Member for Hammersmith and Fulham made a good attempt at throwing the dirt around. It is pretty low politics—dirty politics, to borrow from the title of the book by his good and helpful friend, Lord Ashcroft, whom I understand donated a sizeable amount of money—£44,000—to the hon. Gentleman's 2005 general election campaign.