Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

I just want to say a few words to start with for my many supporters out there. I fear that I have been stitched up procedurally, and it may not be possible to vote on my new clause. I know that that will disappoint my many supporters, and it grieves me. I support Government new clauses 85 and 86, but so do the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. My new clause is in the same grouping, and the first vote will be on Government new clause 85. I shall not ask my friends to vote against my Government, so that will go through, and that will effectively kill all the other new clauses and amendments in that group. That is the stitch-up. My new clause proposes an approach that the others do not, and it would have retrospective effect, but I shall come to that. My Government have come to this issue very late—two or three months before a general election—but we have known that this has been a festering problem for years. Even last year, when Lord Campbell-Savours tabled amendments to the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009—which capped at £7,500 the donations that non-doms could made to political parties—the Government had to be forced into accepting that position. My friend the Secretary of State for Justice told me that I had the numbers—not that the argument was right, but that I had the numbers. What a tragedy it is that my Government act on that basis.