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Political Parties (Funding and Expenditure)

I am also grateful for prior sight of the Justice Secretary's statement and the White Paper. We Liberal Democrats welcome new investigatory powers for the Electoral Commission, its proposed new governance arrangements and transparency for unincorporated associations. In general, however, I have to say that this is a woefully inadequate package, and the Secretary of State is getting scant reward for his modesty from the official Opposition. There is nothing in this statement that will stop the arms race between the parties. He was quite right in his remarks about Dr. Pinto-Duschinsky's paper—which was, by the way, produced and published by a Conservative-leaning think-tank. Nor is there anything that will clean up party funding by capping big contributions. There are no caps on donations or local spending, and is public confidence not at a low because the Labour and Conservative parties are seen to be in the pockets of big business or the trade unions? Is it not scandalous that there is nothing here that will impede Lord Ashcroft, through his UK company, Bearwood Corporate Services Ltd, in trying to buy any number of parliamentary seats? Lord Ashcroft already accounted for 8 per cent. of Conservative funding last year. The Justice Secretary says that he can legislate only with all-party consensus, but in that case, many abuses would never have been cleared up, including some of the most anti-democratic practices of the trade union movement that were put right in 1984 by the Conservative party against the Labour party's views at that time. Are we now to give miscreants a right of veto over new offences? Does the Justice Secretary really think it just a coincidence that the Conservative party broke off cross-party talks in the very quarter when it took record donations of £9.7 million, which was an increase on the previous quarter's £3.7 million and a record quarter for a non-election year? Was that mere coincidence? Why should the Government not now legislate to remove the stink of big-money politics? Is it not time that millions of votes, not millions of pounds, decided British elections?