Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

I do not want to get sucked into that issue—[Hon. Members: "Go on!"] No, I have read all the stuff in the newspapers about Zac Goldsmith not receiving a benefit from his non-dom status and how it was all a big mistake that would be put right, but I do not want to go there. I just want to draw attention to something that is on the record, because it is a scandal that a tax exile has been bankrolling the Conservatives' campaign and they will not give the money back. Lord Stevenson, the then chair of HOLAC, wrote to Tony Blair, then Prime Minister, about the issue:""The Commission has always required that nominees to the House of Lords must be resident in the UK for tax purposes. Following a review of our processes in 2005"—" following the Laidlaw scandal—""we will not vet nominees who are not resident in the UK for tax purposes; nominees need to be UK resident and paying taxes before the Commission will consider their nomination."" That is the effect of the scandal of the former vice-chairman of the Conservative party who was given a peerage in 2004. HOLAC will no longer even accept nominations if the person is not a UK resident for tax purposes. I turn now to Lord Ashcroft, whose case has some similarities to that of Lord Laidlaw. Lord Ashcroft gave an undertaking to the Political Honours Scrutiny Committee, the predecessor body of the House of Lords Appointments Commission, that he would become a UK resident for tax purposes in 2000. However, unlike with Lord Laidlaw, we have no record of his giving any assurance that he has done that. Now we are in an Alice in Wonderland situation, where for 10 years we have found it impossible to establish whether Lord Ashcroft has properly been elevated to the peerage, even though what I have described was, in a sense, a condition of his being elevated to the peerage. Like many other colleagues, I have read all 36 pages of the report from the Information Commissioner, who agrees with me that more information should be put into the public domain about the nature of the undertaking that was given by Michael Ashcroft—now Lord Ashcroft—and the form that that undertaking took. Let me remind the Committee—this is relevant and I want to get it on the record—that Michael Ashcroft was appointed to the House of Lords in 2000. A No. 10 statement was issued in March 2000 saying:""In order to meet the requirements for a Working Peer, Mr. Michael Ashcroft has given his clear and unequivocal assurance that he will take up permanent residence in the United Kingdom again before the end of the calendar year"—" that is, before the end of 2000. The statement continued:""He would be introduced into the House of lords only after taking up that residence."" Then the statement said:""These undertakings have been endorsed by the Leader of the Conservative Party"—" then the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague)—""and conveyed to the Prime Minister and to the Political Honours Scrutiny Committee."" That is very clear indeed; and yet for 10 years Lord Ashcroft has maintained that the matter is private and that no one else has the right to inquire into it, even though that undertaking was a condition of his elevation to the peerage. The Information Commissioner will be asking for—or rather, not asking for, but ordering—the release of that information within the next 35 days. Let me make a public request to Lord Ashcroft now: he should not wait 35 days; he should just speak out now and tell us what we all want to know. He just needs to say, "Yes, I am a UK resident for tax purposes, and I have been for each of the past 10 years," and then my new clause and this whole debate will be otiose and redundant. We will see what happens with Michael Ashcroft. I just want him to speak out and tell the truth, and I am sure that he will. I know that colleagues are uncomfortable about retrospection, and I am too. However, we have on the amendment paper today an amendment or new clause—I cannot remember which—that allows for retrospection in MPs' salaries. Legg, like it or not, is retrospective: he has gone back five years, which is retrospection with a capital R and in bold. The other thing about my new clause and retrospection is that it does not apply to the wider population, but to a small subset of the population: us and our colleagues in the House of Lords. I accept that it is in the public interest generally to avoid retrospective legislation, but there are cases where it is justified. I thought at this stage that I would be looking at the back of the head of my friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw), but he is not here. However, I will make this point anyway. The Criminal Evidence (Witness Anonymity) Act 2008 was introduced by him and it has retrospective provisions. The Election Publications Act 2001 was also introduced, I think, by my friend the Member for Blackburn, who was Home Secretary in 2001, so there are many—well, not many; I am getting carried away—there are a number of Acts containing retrospective provisions of which my friend the Member for Blackburn was the author. There is also the Banking Act 2009, which gives the Treasury powers to make orders with retrospective effect. I have tried to do a little homework for this debate, because to me it is about an important issue. The House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution has said:""there is no absolute prohibition on retrospective legislation in British Constitutional law or practice. There does, however, need to be a compelling reason in the public interest for a departure from the general principle that retrospective legislation is undesirable."" If ever there was an important issue that justified retrospective action, surely it is this one, where people have been in Parliament under what I would say were false pretences. That is as much as I can do here; I now leave it to people outside. What a sad reflection it is on our procedures that I have to rely on the Information Commissioner, who is acting on the view that I put to him, which is that there is a public interest imperative in knowing how people who, unlike us, are not elected get into the legislature down there, in the other place. The Information Commission is doing a very good job.