Political Parties and Elections Bill

Yes, indeed. As my right hon. Friend knows, I am a late and reluctant convert to the idea of any sort of state funding of political parties, but if there is to be any, it needs to be of that nature. It must be based on matching the small contributions of a great number of people, not handing over dollops of taxpayers' money unrelated to the popularity of the party concerned. The second main proposal by the Constitutional Affairs Committee and Hayden Phillips was for a global limit on campaign spending that would apply all year round, every year, throughout the electoral cycle, not only at election times. Campaigning is now a permanent feature of political life—it happens all the time. There is no close season any more, and money matters throughout the cycle. One of the things that we learned during the Committee's visits was that, if there are limits that apply only to particular times or localities, that is an open invitation to create mechanisms for evasion. There must be a global limit—even if there are other limits within it—that applies all the time to all sorts of spending. That is crucial to control party spending, not just candidate spending. Many Labour Members are concerned about the Ashcroft problem of targeted campaigning outside elections. As the Lord Chancellor said, that is currently not regulated even when the candidate is mentioned. However, that is not the essence of the Ashcroft problem—the essence is out-of-election targeted campaigning. That is why, whatever the Government's intention—the right hon. Member for Horsham says that it is a partisan intention; no doubt the Government will deny that—bringing back the trigger will not work. It will not control the Ashcroft spending, because that is party spending, not candidate spending. As my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr. Reid) said, the only constraint that the trigger will produce is that the people spending that money will have to avoid mentioning the candidate's name; they will be able to do absolutely everything else. Only by controlling party spending on a national basis can we get anywhere near controlling that sort of spending.