Political Parties and Elections Bill

In speaking to these amendments, perhaps I may preface my remarks by apologising to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, because I was not precisely in my place when he spoke. I was finding my way through the crowd as he rose to move the amendment. There was a degree of cross-party harmony on the previous piece of legislation that may not continue into this Bill, but we will see. The series of amendments we are discussing fall into two principal areas. One is the argument about donations. We discussed this at length in Committee and it was quite widely recognised that there is an anomaly in party political contributions, which do contribute towards the democratic health of our country. Indeed, the point was just made that if one is concerned about the environment and chooses to make a donation to a political party, that money is not eligible for tax relief. If someone chooses to make a donation to Greenpeace or another organisation, it is. That is a clear anomaly which needs to be addressed at some stage, although I stress the point that it should be considered at some stage. The noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, said that the cost of such a measure to the Exchequer would be around £4 million. I have no way of knowing whether the figure should be higher or lower, but my sense of the public mood at this time suggests that it would be difficult to argue in favour of an additional £4 million or £5 million of public funding being made available for political parties. While certainly we on these Benches are happy to put on the record the fact that this is something we need to move towards in principle, timing is everything in these matters, and now is probably not the time to do this. Whether we should act on the suggestion in the probing amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, that it should be bumped into another fiscal year would depend on the circumstances at the time. However, in this case the position of these Benches—certainly of the Front Bench—is to support it in principle but to question the timing. This leads me to the wider issue of the donations cap. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, was generous in his citations of my remarks on the first day of Report when I referred to the importance of taking big money and the significant influence that it has out of politics. I take the points that have been presented with such clarity by my noble friend Lord Hodgson in this regard. However, whether we are talking about perceived or actual influence, it is how the public perceive the political process that is important. The Liberal Democrats, of course, have their own problems with major donors. Michael Brown, who donated £2.5 million, has turned out to be a convicted fraudster and yet they refuse to repay that money. It is important in debates of this nature to recognise that this is a problem for party politics which needs to be sorted out. It is not only a problem for the two main political parties; it affects all political parties. This was touched upon by Sir Hayden Phillips in his first report, Strengthening Democracy: Fair and Sustainable Funding of Political Parties—The Review of the Funding of Political Parties—March 2007, which was in many ways the forerunner of the Hayden Phillips process. He set out a principle which is worth repeating at this stage. He said that his principle would be that nothing should be agreed until everything is agreed. It is an interesting point. He recognised the complexity of the number of different moving parts necessary to restore confidence in public life. Whether it refers to major donations or to some of the other issues touched on in another place concerning constitutional reform, there is something holistic about the need to tackle the whole issue in the round.