---

Political Parties: Funding

My Lords, it is entirely reprehensible that by accepting these loans, the Government—or at least Mr Blair and some of his colleagues—sought to undermine the safeguards that they put in place regarding donations. Will Sir Hayden Phillips’s committee consider voluntary or compulsory donations by taxpayers? Does the noble and learned Lord agree that when political parties get their snouts into the taxpayers’ trough, there will be no limit to the expenditure, and it will by no means eliminate problems and corruption regarding such expenditure?