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Political Parties and Elections Bill

I agree with that, and there is a nice paradox, which I am sure political scientists will exercise themselves in exploring in years to come: the more, quite properly, the public know about our activities, the less they appear to like them, even if they are entirely legitimate and above board. I think that Members will be aware of the very nice passage in Roy Jenkins's biography of Churchill, in which he records all the money Winston Churchill hoovered up from various nefarious sources, and suggests, with good evidence, that Churchill's career would never have got to the starting line had the degree of undue influence to which he was subject, and the extent of the donations that would now be regarded as wholly unacceptable, come out publicly. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right in what she says. There was a logical flaw in what the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) was arguing: there is a balance to be achieved between transparency and complexity and artificiality, and the more there is the""panoply of rules and bureaucracy"" to which the Neill committee referred, the less likely there is to be true transparency, and the more likely there is simply to be avoidance.