house of lords official report - United Kingdom Parliament

1079 Political Parties and Elections Bill [LORDS] Political Parties and Elections Bill 1080
[LORD BATES]
these Benches are happy to put on the record the fact
that this is something we need to move towards in
principle, timing is everything in these matters, and
now is probably not the time to do this.
Whether we should act on the suggestion in the
probing amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord
Campbell-Savours, that it should be bumped into another
fiscal year would depend on the circumstances at the
time. However, in this case the position of these
Benches—certainly of the Front Bench—is to support
it in principle but to question the timing.
This leads me to the wider issue of the donations
cap. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, was generous in his
citations of my remarks on the first day of Report
when I referred to the importance of taking big money
and the significant influence that it has out of politics.
I take the points that have been presented with such
clarity by my noble friend Lord Hodgson in this
regard. However, whether we are talking about perceived
or actual influence, it is how the public perceive the
political process that is important.
The Liberal Democrats, of course, have their own
problems with major donors. Michael Brown, who
donated £2.5 million, has turned out to be a convicted
fraudster and yet they refuse to repay that money. It is
important in debates of this nature to recognise that
this is a problem for party politics which needs to be
sorted out. It is not only a problem for the two main
political parties; it affects all political parties.
This was touched upon by Sir Hayden Phillips in
his first report, Strengthening Democracy: Fair and
Sustainable Funding of Political Parties—The Review
of the Funding of Political Parties—March 2007, which
was in many ways the forerunner of the Hayden
Phillips process. He set out a principle which is worth
repeating at this stage. He said that his principle would
be that nothing should be agreed until everything is
agreed. It is an interesting point. He recognised the
complexity of the number of different moving parts
necessary to restore confidence in public life. Whether
it refers to major donations or to some of the other
issues touched on in another place concerning
constitutional reform, there is something holistic about
the need to tackle the whole issue in the round.
Lord Goodhart: My Lords, to say that nothing can
be done until everything can be done is, surely, a
wholly absurd position to take. A series of steps have
been taken, including the 2000 Act, which followed
the report of the committee, being amended in the
Electoral Administration Act 2006. This is a piecemeal
operation.
Lord Tyler: A very Conservative one, my Lords.
Lord Bates: My Lords, the noble Lord’s concern is
not necessarily with me but with Sir Hayden Phillips’s
principle number one. If he dissents from that, he is
entitled to make the point. I happen to disagree with
him. There is an argument that piecemeal reform
sometimes lacks overarching principles. However, good
legislation has overarching principles that should be
followed through in the process of getting everyone to
the table in order to reach some agreement.
That leads me to a key point on the donations cap.
There is a certain unstated element—I shall say no
more than that—on which I hope the noble Lord,
Lord Tyler, might comment. I should be grateful for
some clarity lest I inadvertently cast some aspersion
on the motives here. There is an implication of a
donations cap, as envisaged by the Hayden Phillips
review. To plug the gap, there would be an introduction
of public funding. The noble Lord is shaking his head,
so I will be happy to take that away. However, the
White Paper, Party Finance and Expenditure in the
United Kingdom, says:
“The public funding schemes he proposed”—
that is, Sir Hayden Phillips—
“based on a donations cap of £50,000, would have an overall cost
of around £20-£25m per year”.
Four million pounds here, £20 million to £25 million
there—we are beginning to build up to some significant
sums of money. That comes on top of a concern that
some people may be seeking tactical advantage, rather
than a principled point of seeing a decline in income
or a concern over future income streams, and hoping
to replace it with public funding as a whole.
When we talk about party funding, in many ways
the arms race has been triggered by a dramatic increase
in the amount of funding that is available to Members
of Parliament in their constituencies—the incumbency
factor. When I was serving in the other place, the
office cost allowance, as it was called then, was in the
region of £30,000. It was effectively enough to have an
assistant, perhaps a part-time caseworker in the
constituency, and then to pay for your printing, postage
and telephones. Now that figure is up to £90,000 just
for staff, and there is an additional element, the incidental
expenses provision, which is another £21,000.
Lord Campbell-Savours: Communications.
Lord Bates: I am coming to that, my Lords. As the
noble Lord points out, there is also a communications
allowance of £10,000 per year. Over the lifetime of a
Parliament, that builds up to £50,000 spent in a particular
constituency on promoting the case of the incumbent
Member. It is therefore not surprising that the nongoverning
party, the non-incumbent, would seek to
raise funds to try to match the firepower that has been
ranged against it in a democratic process.
I wish only to put that point on the record. I am not
saying that I have an answer for it, nor am I saying
what we ought to do about those allowances. That
needs to be addressed as part of the Kelly review that
is taking place, along with the questions of whether
they are inadvertently funding big money donations
and encouraging reliance on those big donations.
The interparty talks were an important part of the
process and all parties have engaged in them. The
argument was that if we were going to have meaningful
reform, all the political parties needed to get around
the table, have their heads metaphorically banged
together and sort this out, realising that there is a
problem. The trade unions are perceived to have an
influence on the Government. It causes concern from
time to time when you see questions in debates about
public sector funding cuts, and then you have a party