Political Parties and Elections Bill

That is exactly my view, and the view shared, I think, by most Conservative Members. I recommend it to the Government, because they will have supporters in a similar position—supporters who will feel cut out by the unwillingness of the legislation to allow them to participate fully in the way that other legally registered British voters can by virtue of residence. It is a dangerous principle to say that someone has to pay tax in a country to participate in its politics. There are all sorts of people in our country who, for good reasons, do not pay tax. Full participation cannot be linked to taxpaying. It is rather divisive to say otherwise, and I find it surprising that that view is taken by the Labour party, which normally stands up for people without much money who do not pay tax for that reason. It is strange to apply the argument in one direction but not in the other, when it comes to the issue of taxation. The American democracy may well have been based originally on the principle of no taxation without representation, but we do not want the principle that there can be full participation only with taxation. That would be a very odd principle indeed in a society where some people do not pay tax for good reasons. I hope that the Government will take the proposals away and think again. We know that they will think again, because their Front Benchers have promised that other amendments will be necessary to try to make sense of the inadequate amendments before us. I repeat what was said in an earlier exchange: it is quite wrong that something so important and fundamental to our democracy—issues relating to the participation rights of a wide range of British people—should be handled in such a way, at the last minute, without proper time for consideration of the amendments, without a further attempt to create consensus across the Chamber, and without proper discussion of the final amendments, which needs to take place.