I do not think anyone is suggesting that these are improper payments; the suggestion is that there is a lack of transparency as to what they are. I am not sure I take the point about the Conservative Party being undemocratic, but we will leave that for a moment. The noble Lord invited me to look at the accounts on the Certification Officer’s website, and I have done so. The total political funding is about £24 million. The largest fund is that of Unite, with £7.8 million of income. When one tries to understand the expenditure within that, one sees that it simply states that political fund expenditure was £1.17 million and that expenditure under Section 82 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 was £3.82 million. No further information is supplied, other than the quite interesting information that Unite has in its balance sheet of the political fund £14.8 million. It is much the same for other unions—I have been through quite a few of them.
The point remains that I am sure that many members of unions would like to know and to have reported where their money is spent. Are all union members who are working on Trident submarines happy that union funds are spent supporting CND?