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Political Parties (Funding and Expenditure)

I do not approve of that practice, and I have never followed it myself. We had a great debate about the communications allowance about 18 months ago, and one reason why it was introduced was to control the abuse of overspending, for example, on franked envelopes. That is one of the things that it has achieved, but I told the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) that if there are issues—[Interruption.] I know that there are—to discuss, we should discuss them, but that requires all three parties to sit down and discuss them in talks from which one party should not walk away, knowing that they are departing from an agreed agenda established by an independent inspector.