Political Parties and Elections Bill

I think that it would be extremely dangerous for rich individuals to dictate our political life, and wherever that appears, it ought to be dealt with. It must, however, be dealt with in the context of a broad approach. We cannot single out individuals whom we do not like; we can take action only if we have found a principle on which we can base it. I believe that the principle in favour of constraining spending is that we do not want our politics to be driven by money. We want broad comparability between parties when they fight elections. That, after all, is why the regulations on campaign spending were introduced at the end of the 19th century. It is a consistent and traditional principle. What worries me is the disproportionality of the arrangements for the Electoral Commission if we get it wrong. I think everyone agrees that the commission has been in a sort of limbo—that it is, in a sense, both too weak and too powerful. It must be given a clear focus and clear enforcement powers, and at least the Bill will do that. The worry is that it may not pass the test of proportionality that we apply to regulators. Locally, we are dealing essentially with volunteers, who are liable to make mistakes but who are not criminals. Let us think for a moment about the series of so-called funding scandals that devour so much media attention nowadays. No doubt some of them are examples of not keeping the books properly or not being on top of the game, or of some kind of mismanagement of companies' offices or affairs. While all those failings are reprehensible, it is simply not true that they are examples of serial corruption in our public life. My worry is that if we establish a regime that makes it much more likely that ordinary party workers around the country will be fingered in a serious way because they have slipped up in some accounting arrangement which, in turn, will feed all kinds of media hysteria about yet another funding scandal, far from helping our political life, which is what the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) was talking about, we will do huge damage to it.