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Political Parties and Elections Bill

No, I have gone on too long and I want to draw my speech to a close. The fourth objection is one of simple equity. We in the House have cheerfully voted ourselves huge increases in the amount of taxpayers' money we can spend on promoting our activities as incumbent MPs. There is a case for and against that, and we believe that the communications allowance is a step too far. None the less, at the same time as we expand the scope for taxpayer-funded publicity for MPs, it cannot be right for the governing party to try to limit what candidates who seek to unseat us can spend from money that they have raised privately. That is outrageous. We might expect it in Mugabe's Zimbabwe, but in Britain it is simply unacceptable. In conclusion, we cannot support this curate's egg of a Bill. It is good to hear the Justice Secretary sounding rather more conciliatory today than he did in the summer, when he seemed more than usually keen to have the sun of his Back Benchers' favour warming him—it would of course be wrong for us to speculate on why that might have been, but I am sure that there were the best of reasons. We stand ready to work with him and talk with him to find acceptable answers to the problems, as we have been throughout the process. It is too late to achieve the long-awaited settlement of party funding that Sir Hayden Phillips worked so diligently with us to achieve. There will need to be another attempt to reach the consensus desirable for such an outcome, but it will have to wait for another day and another year. In the meantime, I commend our amendment to the House.