Political Parties and Elections Bill

That is consistent with my argument; we do not want our politics to be driven by money, as it would be if we simply had unlimited spending. The whole pressure of our politics would be to do with raising and spending money. That is the logic for having overall spending controls. To return to the Bill, the logic of that argument is that because we now have what is often described as a permanent election campaign—we no longer have a campaign confined to the three weeks or so of the formal election—driven from the centre by the party machines, which spend a great deal of money and deliver it locally where they can, we should control spending not just nationally, but locally, because that is what a permanent election campaign means. We get into some difficulties here and I want to be as honest as I can about them. It is inevitable in a first-past-the-post electoral system that the parties will concentrate their energies on marginal seats. That is what they do, and their financial energies are also focused on those seats. I want to stop Ashcroft as much as anybody else, because I find it offensive that an individual can, as it were, buy parliamentary seats. The research evidence is very clear that it is effective—[Interruption.] The research evidence is absolutely clear on that. I have to tell myself, however, that if Lord Ashcroft and his organisations were not doing this, but a political party was doing the same thing directly, it would of course be entirely logical and rational to spend a large amount of money on a marginal seat. If it is rational for a party to do it, what is the problem with an individual doing it on behalf of a party? That raises difficult issues. I come back to a point that has surfaced once or twice: this wretched communications allowance. I do not agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) on that, and I speak as someone who had grave reservations about the measure when it was proposed. Indeed, I voted against it because I thought that it would come back to haunt us. It is not true to say that the publications we put out are benign and nothing to do with party politics and elections. I am as guilty as anyone else; I am not talking just about other people. We put these things out, paid for by substantial amounts of public money—£40,000 to £50,000 during a Parliament—and we tell people, quite legitimately, that we are working night and day on their behalf, as we probably are. We include a picture with a policeman, a picture with some schoolchildren and a picture with a nurse, and we build up a picture of a person working night and day on our constituents' behalf. The subliminal message being pumped out from every page is, ““Vote for me!”” Let us at least be honest in this debate. If we have decided that we would like to spend £40,000 or £50,000 in public money over the course of a Parliament to say, ““Vote for me””, all I would say to colleagues with whom I share the desire to stop Ashcroft is that that makes the argument more difficult than it should be.