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Political Parties (Funding)

The hon. Gentleman will get his brownie points for making such party points. He has got it off his chest. I am aware of all those names. If he is asking me whether I am proud that such people were involved—they go back to the 1970s and were few in number—of course I am not proud of it. I am ashamed. That goes for everyone in the Labour party, whether we are Labour Members of Parliament or not. All those who are active in our political movement and in the trade unions are ashamed of all those matters. We have never said otherwise. Why do these very rich individuals want to contribute? In my view, with some exceptions, as I said, they want rewards. They want to end up in another place or get a knighthood. The hon. Member for East Devon (Mr. Swire) smiled. I have a list of the top 10 companies that donated to the Conservative party between 1979 and 1992—United Biscuits, Hanson, Taylor Woodrow, George Weston Holdings and the rest. It is interesting that in eight of those 10 companies, every company executive or chair received some kind of reward. In the case of United Biscuits, that was one peerage and one knighthood, in the case of Hanson, two peerages, Taylor Woodrow, one peerage and one knighthood, P&O—we know about P&O, do we not?—one peerage and three knighthoods, and Glaxo, two knighthoods. Of the two companies that did not receive anything, one, George Weston Holdings, was headed by a Canadian, and the other company had two directors, of whom one was a hereditary peer.