Political Parties and Elections Bill

My Lords, I do not think the two things go together, with the greatest respect. We will come to the capping of donations later. The noble Lord does not know what my view is on that; he will have to wait and see. But this amendment does not do what a lot of people believe it does. I am not certain what the procedure would be to get an amendment which eliminated that loophole in respect of companies or unincorporated associations through the Commons if this amendment went back to the other place. I am not certain that it would be feasible. We have had some discussion already on the concerns the Government have raised in response to this amendment. One is the anomaly about democratic participation. It may be said that there is no relevance between giving money to a political party and affecting the outcome of an election. My constituency won irrespective of the £90,000 donation from another candidate. But I accept it has an effect. Also, if we say that a person cannot give a donation but can be a Member of this House or a candidate for the Commons and can win, does that not have an enormous influence on how taxpayers’ money is spent? It is not just a question of how it is spent in elections, but also of how it is spent on all the other issues that we deal with. Those people have the right to sit in this place and the other place and spend that money. That is another flaw in the argument. I share the concern raised by the Electoral Commission about the need to verify whether a donation is permissible. The Electoral Commission’s own data suggest that more than 1,000 individual donations would need verification annually. That would be an extraordinarily difficult job. My other real concern is about the implication for constituency parties. At present political parties can fulfil their compliance duty to check that an individual is on an electoral role, or a company is registered at Companies House, by consulting public records. Obliging parties to check the residence status of donors for tax purposes would be an impossible task and I am sure it is nowhere near as easy as putting a cross on the tax form. Tax records are not public documents and, in any event, there is no single record of individual tax status. I am not sure whether, even if a cross would satisfy it, it would be possible to use that cross because information would then be being disclosed about that person’s tax. The consequence of that could be that a constituency party could find itself in difficulty and may end up having to repay the money. So there are many flaws in the argumentation. That is not to say that there is not a problem. Maybe there needs to be a wider discussion on the issue of tax status and participation in politics generally, but that is not a discussion for this Bill and this amendment does not achieve what it is intending to achieve.