---

Political Parties (Funding)

I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker. We must have proposals that we all agree will take us away from the culture of big donors. We must have proposals to deal with transparency and linkage in respect of trade union affiliation fees. We must accept that trade union donations beyond affiliation fees come within the rules on donors. We need real caps on expenditure, which need to be both local and national and both between and during elections. We need to end the abuse that has been growing over recent years, and which I tried to address in previous legislation that the Government did not support, whereby central parties spend large amounts in certain marginal seats on material that does not specifically refer to a candidate and thus falls outside the existing expenditure limits, but which is clear abuse of the spirit of the legislation. We need to give the Electoral Commission real teeth so that it actually becomes an investigating body rather than merely a reactive one. The matter is urgent and we will not accept any party reverting to tribal type and simply trying to get the best deal in its own interest. We will not accept partisan legislation that deals with only part of the problem and not the whole. Consensus is possible and it should embrace all the parties in the House. I include the minority parties, which have an important locus in the matter. Throughout the course of the negotiations so far, I have said regularly that we must include not only the minority parties in the House, but also parties not represented in the House because they, too, have a legitimate voice.