Political Parties and Elections Bill

My Lords, briefly, I support this amendment and the excellent speeches made by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, and my noble friend Lord Tyler. The speeches were in support of the amendment, with the sole exception of the noble Baroness, Lady Gould. She made two points. First, she broadly agrees with the amendment but thinks that it does not go far enough. That is no reason to oppose it. Her practical point was that it would be very difficult for parties to check whether donations met this test. I do not think, off the top of my head, that it would be difficult. All one would need would be a requirement that any person making a donation signed a form to say that they were wholly resident or domiciled in this country for tax purposes, that a donation could not be accepted if that were not so, and that it would be a criminal offence to accept a donation without that form and a criminal offence to sign it if that were not true. It would be very easy indeed for the Electoral Commission to check with the tax authorities whether any person had signed the form wrongly. I cannot see that that is a problem. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Myners, is here. I know that he is very sympathetic to the drift of all this, and I am sure he will quickly tell me if I have not got this quite right. The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, is looking for problems where they do not exist.