Political Parties and Elections Bill

The hon. and learned Gentleman tempts me to go down a different route, but if he returns to the amendments proposed on Report in the Commons, he will see that my party made a proposal that would have dealt fairly with the union link with the Labour party, but I do not want to go down that route, because it is not before us tonight. Let me conclude by pointing out a couple of difficulties in the present draft of the Bill. First, it is not clear whether the legislation would be easily evaded simply by using companies as a conduit for donations. There appears to be an inconsistency between two parts of the way in which the provisions work. They start simply by talking about whether individuals satisfy particular tax status rules, but the declaration part of the provisions talks about whether that individual has caused a donation to be made. That seems to be different. Whether an individual is a permissible donor based on their tax status is one question; whether the person has caused a donation to be made is a second question. One can cause a donation to be made without being a donor oneself: one can use a company as a conduit or agent. The Government have got things half right. In the declaration provisions, they are getting there—it is about causing donations—but they need to think about whether the provisions themselves, not just the declarations provisions, should cover people causing donations to be made. In fact, in previous debates on this matter, we proposed, without any vote being called, provisions that would, in effect, equate the individuals who control companies with those companies. That would have the effect of changing the entire position. Let me end by talking about consensus. Throughout the debates on the Bill, for almost a year, the Government have said that it is not possible to make any further progress with the Hayden Phillips proposals, with the cap on donations that would apply to everyone, with global spending restrictions and with a fair resolution of the relationship between the Labour party and the unions, because there was no consensus. In effect, the Conservative party had a veto on any progress on those matters. We now reach this late stage on the Bill and—the hon. Member for Huntingdon must be right about this, because he makes it so, by the very fact that he objects—the Government have broken that consensus. I very much regret that the Government have wasted the opportunity, throughout the rest of the debates on the Bill, to break the consensus in a far more general way and, to take one of the points made by the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon, to produce a comprehensive settlement of the party funding issue in a way that would have satisfied the public, even though it might not have satisfied the parties.