My Lords, I have always believed that public life is a vocation. I greatly regret the decline in membership of political parties over the nearly 44 years that I have been in the Palace of Westminster; I touched upon that in an earlier amendment today. We do not know the precise figures, but our three major political parties in this country together have probably less than a quarter of the membership of the National Trust. That is a dismal statistic, which we should all take to heart. However, we have to recognise the realities. One of those is that if the proposals of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, were adopted—and in principle I support them—they would not have an immediate and enormous transforming influence. I am glad to see him nodding assent.
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I have no objection to Short money or Cranborne money—both are essential. We do not support our opposition parties as much as we should, and I speak with some experience, having done a stint on the Front Bench in opposition after 1997. Of course, that is taxpayers’ money. It is also right—my noble friend Lord Tyler knows my opinion on this after our brief exchange in the previous debate—to give individual candidates the opportunity to communicate with their electors at the time of a general or European election.
However, apart from principles, tonight we have to look at practicalities. Would we advance the cause of a campaign which I support if we put this to a Division tonight when we know, even though we may regret it, that the two Front Benches would oppose it, and would we advance the cause if we mustered a fairly
derisory vote? I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, that there is a very wide measure of sympathy for what he proposes. However, that wide measure of sympathy would not necessarily be reflected in any Division late at night in your Lordships’ House. That could retard the case rather than advance it. I see him shaking his head, but that is a real point, and I hope made reasonably. We have to be very mindful of the realities of parliamentary arithmetic.
I hope, therefore, that what we could see from tonight is the launching of a campaign in both of the major parties—I hope among the Liberal Democrats, too—to persuade those who head up the various parties that this would be a modest but sensible move to make.