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Honours System (Reform)

: I suspect that there was always hypocrisy and claptrap, but if the hon. Gentleman asks whether I think that things were more dishonest at the beginning of the 20th century than they are at the beginning of the 21st, I am in no doubt that they were massively more dishonest then. To bring the story a little more up to date, just for historical accuracy, when the Home Affairs Committee tried in the 1990s to produce a report on party funding, it broke down on party lines. The Conservative majority of the day refused to assent to a proposition that party funding needed to be investigated and reformed.