Political Parties and Elections Bill

With the leave of the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I should like to respond to the debate. It has been characterised by two distinct kinds of speeches. The hon. Members for Huntingdon (Mr. Djanogly) and for Cambridge (David Howarth) and many—but not all—contributors from my side have sought to address the issues in a relatively measured way. There have also been some hyperbolic and partisan performances. I am only too well aware that if we scratch the surface, the issue of party funding arouses great tribal feelings. Whenever two or three Labour Members gather together, it does not take long for a peer's name beginning with "A" to fall from their lips; equally, a particular kind of Conservative Member will foam at the mouth at the very mention of trade unions. I understand that, which is why my general view has always been that we have to recognise the tribal nature of the issue and the fact that people feel strongly about it, and in a partisan way. However, we should also do our best to secure as close a consensus as possible on the issue. We have a great interest in the fortunes of our own parties, but we are also the trustees of our democracy. The ground rules for that democracy are set here, and we have to hold back a bit in case we descend to the position arrived at in parts of the United States. In those areas, even the setting of boundaries is the subject of the most extraordinary partisanship; how the boundaries are set would make even Mr. Gerry Mander blush. In general, we avoid that here but it is important that we should. To underline a point made by the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Mr. Wills), Conservative Members' hyperbole about the issue sits rather oddly with their behaviour—or rather lack of it—in the other place. The simple fact is that 80 per cent., or four out of five, of the peers who take the Conservative Whip—there are just over 200 of them—failed to vote against Lord Campbell-Savours' amendment when it was before that House in the middle of June; they could muster only 40 Members altogether. That leads me to feel that some of the opposition to this measure, particularly given the amendments that we are now introducing, is, to a high degree, quite synthetic. I hope, in any event, that when the Conservatives are able to examine these proposals in more detail—I apologise to the House for the fact that they were tabled on Friday and were therefore not available to most Members until this morning—they will recognise that they are not quite the end of civilisation as we know it. Indeed, they are a considerable modification—because they have to be—of what Lord Campbell-Savours put forward. It is also worth Conservative Members—I say this in a spirit of friendship—reflecting on the fact that, to my complete surprise, a significant number of respected Cross-Bench peers, who are wholly non-partisan, strongly supported the Campbell-Savours amendment. They included Lord Jay of Ewelme, a former head of the diplomatic service; Baroness D'Souza, the chair of the Cross-Bench peers; and, in particular, Lord Neill of Bladen, who has a very distinguished academic and judicial record, and who chaired, very well, the Committee on Standards in Public Life and produced the whopping great report in 1998 that laid the foundation of the party funding Bill that I introduced in 1999-2000. He made a very strident speech in favour of these changes. Of course—I put this on the record in answer to the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr. Cox)—I acknowledge what is patently true: that my position, and that of the Government, has shifted. However, as my right hon. Friend the Minister and I have made clear, that is because we judged that we needed to take account of the change in sentiment highlighted not least by the debate in the other place. It would probably be helpful if I answered one or two of the detailed points that have been made. It is continually amusing these days to see how the world has turned upside down somewhat as regards the European convention on human rights. I often notice that the convention and the Human Rights Act 1998 have become so much part of the common currency of British public life that Conservative Members cannot help themselves in praying in aid articles 8, 10 or 11 when it suits them, forgetting that their party has pledged to repeal the Human Rights Act and all its works, and probably to denounce the convention as well.