Political Parties and Elections Bill

My right hon. Friend may well be right. I want to concentrate on the question of whether the proposed measure would have an impact within the context of the Human Rights Act and article 10, which is about freedom of expression. Unlike the hon. Member for Cambridge, I think that that is a real issue. The European Court of Human Rights has plainly considered that the right to donate, to put your money where your mouth is, is encompassed within article 10. One therefore has to answer this question: why single out those who live and are taxed abroad if we are allowing them to vote? The hon. Gentleman has given the reason; he says that tax exiles do not pay taxes in this country and that—I think this a little fanciful—the money that they save could be deployed for the purposes of donation. It is therefore, he says, perfectly legitimate to require that such people should be part of the tax system. I say with respect to the hon. Gentleman that placing so invasive a restriction on an individual on so flimsy and artificial a footing is not consistent with the principles that he upholds as a liberal. I sympathise with those principles because personal, individual freedom is a fundamental principle about which all in the House, from whatever political tradition, should be concerned; I know that there are Labour Members who feel as passionately about that as I do and the hon. Gentleman does. In considering what principle and the freedom of the individual require, we should not give credence to the convenient and expedient arguments articulated with great elegance and some sophistication by the hon. Gentleman. The hon. Gentleman's position would have been far more principled, and would have had more of the integrity that he ordinarily evinces in the House, if he had said that the measure looks like what it is. It is, regrettably, a capitulation by the Secretary of State to pressures with which he does not agree; he has adopted a measure in which he has no confidence. He has put it before the House for reasons that the rest of us can only guess at. The principled approach would be to do precisely what the hon. Member for Cambridge said the Secretary of State should have done, and I completely agree: if a measure such as this is to be moved, it should be moved as part of a comprehensive settlement and on the basis of principle, not partisanship. I have great respect for the Secretary of State for Justice, who is an urbane and civilised member of the Government and for whom one can only have considerable respect. However, on this occasion he has come to the Dispatch Box and, in a sense, declined to give a substantive rationale or justification for the measure. When challenged, he said that he had used the same argument as his challenger—and he said that so half-heartedly and apologetically. That does not, I am afraid, attract confidence that the measure has the substance, solidity and soundness that it ought to have if the House is to feel obliged to vote for it.