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Political Parties and Elections Bill

I just want to finish this point, because I am conscious of the fact that the Front-Bench speeches are taking a lot of time and many others wish to speak. The impact assessment is inaccurate. The compliance burden on the central party and the registered treasurer will be very substantial, given the number of transactions involved, the number of accounting units of parties involved and the lack of professional staff in most accounting units. Treasurers in local parties are volunteers, and the threat of new regulatory sanctions being available to the Electoral Commission will cause a flight of volunteers from legitimate party activity. We all earnestly say that we want to encourage more political activism and voluntarism so that more people engage with the political process. The Bill will have exactly the reverse effect. The impact assessment estimates a cost to political parties of such rules in the region of £7,000 to £10,000, but that massively underestimates the volume of donations over £200 and the cost of verification. The language that is redolent of the anti-money laundering provisions, and the high tests, will require far greater resources in the future. The idea that reasonable steps would involve no more than five minutes' work, as the impact assessment suggests, is manifestly absurd. Five minutes is no more than one telephone call, which would tell the party little and provide no comfort whatever. For a much bigger donation, any party will delve much more deeply under the existing rules. Having been chairman of the Conservative party, I can say that we do that, although it is not clear from the Abrahams case that Labour has always done the same—I suspect that it does now.