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Political Parties: Funding

My Lords, perhaps I should declare an interest as a former chairman of the Conservative Party. There is a rather delicate party dance going on in reaction to this report. The Government love talking about the political spending arms race but are not very keen to talk about caps on donations. They are particularly not keen to talk about donations from trade unions. My party is keen on donation caps but—how can I put it?—is perhaps rather more coy about spending restraints. Is the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor aware that, if we are to clean up the system, we need both of these? SurelySir Hayden Phillips is quite correct when he says that the present position is unsustainable. Surely he is also right when he says that caps on donations must include trade unions, which otherwise remain open to the charge of buying influence. Equally, there must be limits on spending. I am not sure about ““rich Conservatives””, which was rather suggested. I was chairman of the Conservative Party when we fought the 1994 European election with no national posters whatever. We launched a lot of posters on vans, but we could not afford to put them up anywhereelse. The odd thing is that it did us no harmwhatever. As the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor said, the two main parties got through £90 million in the 12 months leading up to the 2005 election. Surely if parties are to spend at this ever-increasing rate, it is entirely unthinkable that they can say to the public, ““We want more taxpayer funding””.